Build your offer carefully
Diversifying your offer can lead to the cannibalisation of existing products. A 360 multi-media offer in line with your business model will allow you to enhance your original media formats while driving growth. Communication objectives, duration, media mix... the solution can always be found in your existing offer.
Think of a radio agency that is used to selling short-term awareness campaigns… A 2 to 4 week digital 'highlight' offer combining Facebook, Instagram and Display could interest your clients.
Simple, packaged “bundle" solutions will be more easily deployed by your sales staff. In addition, the combination of your historical know-how and your new media will produce a "double impact" effect that will increase the value of your offer in the eyes of your customers, while preventing the risk of being replaced by a competitor.
Showcasing your new offer as an optional add-on to your existing solutions can also make it easier to sell it to your advertisers, e.g. "By adding 30% to your budget, you can gain access to our new digital option and double the number of people reached, thanks to the power and accuracy of digital media."
Train and support your sales reps
A coherent and complementary offer will facilitate roll-out for your sales team, who will find it’s a logical continuation of their sales pitch.
It’s therefore essential to train your sales reps on how media channels such as Google and Facebook work so that they can easily highlight the benefits of the new media. Provide them with the simple keywords for selling digital campaigns.
Equally important is post-training customer support for answering technical questions, which are often a worry for sales reps during initial sales pitches. The more comfortable and motivated your sales reps feel about the new offers, the faster your incremental business will develop. Providing a centralised hotline where sales reps can get quick answers on new offers can also be help to encourage them to roll them out.
Develop new skills and simplify operations
Marketing new media requires efficient internal logistics for running campaigns. Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, programmatic Display, YouTube, Waze, Snapchat... the list of digital channels is long and sometimes difficult to understand. You can therefore recruit enough traffic managers to master all the different media channels you intend to add to your offer... or use state-of-the-art technology to delegate production.
The second option allows you to adapt and control operational costs for a product that is not part of your core expertise. Indeed, when you operate local digital marketing campaigns with a low budget invested per media, the dilemma of profitability versus performance becomes more acute.
How can you manage the launch, campaign optimisation and reporting to deliver a successful result without your operational and trading costs skyrocketing? Integrating the new offer into your processes, from order to production to reporting, as well as the use of automation tools will save time and streamline operations.
Performance and competitive advantage
Digital campaigns are already the playground of specialised web marketing agencies. An advertiser may choose to work with them rather than with your new service. On top of the relationship you create with your clients, it is the performance and quality of your digital campaigns versus those of your competitors that will make the difference! Furthermore, you have a real advantage in presenting yourself as a single service provider for centralising the various media channels.
Of course you will be challenged by advertisers and competitors on your new offer. The use of innovative methods and technologies is your best bet, using data and machine learning as optimisation levers.
