Make Advertising More Predictable - Four Strategies For Success
Josh Stinchcomb
Global Chief Revenue Officer at Wall Street Journal | Barron's Group
As the industry rebounds after the global societal shock caused by Covid-19, we are in the midst of a digital advertising boom. However, as all publishers know, it can be hard to predict what next year will look like.
Advertising has always been viewed as a variable revenue stream—lacking the “recurring” status afforded to subscription businesses. It’s one of the many reasons that media companies are so keen to diversify into membership offerings and beyond.
While ad budgets do ebb and flow and strategies evolve in response to changing consumer behavior, there are some simple things publishers can do to create more stability and consistency in their advertising revenue. As is the case in most businesses, if you focus on customer satisfaction and are willing to take a somewhat long-term view, it is possible to create real client loyalty—and, in the process, improve renewal rates.
Advertising revenue can (and should) be more “recurring”. Here’s how:
1. Measure renewals.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Analyzing and understanding your renewal rates leads to both a deeper understanding of business drivers as well as a window into the value the customer places on your product or service.
Segment your customers based on their propensity to renew, layering in as many additional data points as possible (e.g. category, region, sector, salesperson). If you get under the hood of your renewal data, it could be the key to understanding current performance and identifying the gaps (and opportunities) in order to develop your long-term retention strategy.
2. Super-serve your customers and communities.
Effective account management can not only help retain, but actually grow business from your existing client base. Invest in and recalibrate a team focused on providing support rather than transactional services. Building strong relationships beyond sales will help you develop a deep understanding of your clients’ unique challenges—allowing you to develop more personalized solutions.
Moreover, a commitment to delivering exceptional service should be something that permeates every single role across your organization. If you make it easy to do business with you, clients will remember and reward it!
3. Design commercial deals that incentivize and benefit from longevity.
Reward your partners with incentives—such as special rates, launch opportunities and added value—that reflect their long-term commitment.
However, avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Instead, apply knowledge of your clients’ unique challenges, values and ambitions, based on learnings from your historical and existing partnerships, and work collaboratively with them to create personalized incentive packages.
Finally, always remember that incentives should not be viewed as a one-off gesture, but rather a consistent demonstration of the advantages of doing business with you over the long term. By offering tailored commercial deals that strengthen and evolve YoY, you will ensure your clients feel truly understood, valued and rewarded.
4. Listen to your customers (regularly).
Let’s face it: Feedback is not always easy to accept—but it is necessary. The only way to build a recurring business model is to ensure you are regularly listening to your customers—and acting on their comments. As an example, we’ve launched a Customer Satisfaction Survey for all our big ad programs to better understand our clients’ needs and how well we are fulfilling them.
Implementing a system to garner regular feedback from your clients not only gives you a leading indicator of renewal, but makes client’s feel heard and confident that they chose you as a partner.
As marketers look to publishers to help them find success in the face of a fast-changing media landscape, it’s partnerships grounded in service, empathy and trust that will deliver long term. For clients, this means improved ROI. For publishers, it will help to create greater stability in their advertising revenue streams. Let’s make advertisers happier and advertising more “recurring”!
I’d love to hear how you’re approaching this - please comment below or get in touch, [email protected].
EVP, FinServ | Emerging/Converging Markets across Accounting, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Investment, Real Estate, & Technology
2yJosh, thanks for sharing!
Head of Global CRM & Customer Data @ Ingredion | MBA, B2B/C Digital CX & eCommerce
2yYes Josh I like all 4 of your suggestions and would expand on the 4th. Customer feedback in the form of comments and survey responses are helpful, but what about, assuming a relationship of trust, establishing a shared view of the client's success metrics at the beginning of a relationship and an agreed methodology to track them via a shared dashboard? Data sources could be both proprietary to the client and syndicated. The data/analysis could be layered and partitioned in such a way as to maintain "need to know" access control via existing authentication platforms. Of course this could be an opening of the kimono that could be beyond the comfort level of some, but what fun is work if you can't move someone's cheese every now and then in the name of good progress (and revenue growth)? And as Dan Stoner said below "Learn the advertisers' business well enough..." such that one knows what will drive results and at the same time have earlier alerts as to when course corrections are needed.
Managing Partner & CEO, North America at Artefact | Let's talk Data, Analytics & (Gen)AI
2yNice piece! Applies perfectly to Consulting and Professional Services as well
Weaponizing content in the war against mediocrity at Hemmings/ACBJ/Condé Nast
2yLove this refocus on the fundamentals, Josh. And to add to it, my approach has revolved around taking cues from the great ad agencies: Learn the advertisers' business well enough to build a campaign for them. We've gained some real traction by applying the tenets of Brand Essence to the relationship, discovering a brand's rational and emotional qualities and then delivering real ROI against them. As a publisher, we find it's the most effective way to leverage our audiences and the content we produce in creating a more longterm relationship and not spend so much time/energy on advertiser turnover.
Josh Stinchcomb As always, you focus us back to the basics. I would had internal feedback...are we listening to what our sales and client services teams are telling us and making adjustments based on that feedback, because long-term colleagues are a big part of retaining clients.