Content marketing specialists are working to convince advertisers and marketers to act more like publishers. How? By creating their own content, instead of sponsoring the content (via advertising) of traditional publishers.
Read this blog post from Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42, and then watch the short video at the end.
Traditional publishers need to recognize this challenge, and then find a way to take advantage of it. One solution: offer custom content creation services to your current advertisers. After all, your editorial team members are experts at content creation, and your sales team are (or should be) experts at selling the creative output of your editors.
Here’s a good article from Folio on the types of ads that perform best on the web:
The important factors in today’s ad realm are context—where an ad sits within the content layout—size and placement. While banner ads are widely used and still considered effective, ads that incorporate interactivity and capture the experience of the Internet seem to perform best.
Read more HERE.
Here’s a good article from Rance Crain of Crain Communications talking about why it’s important for B2B publishers to emphasize the personal touch when it comes to selling their magazine’s audience to advertisers:
Is the art of selling becoming too technical and impersonal? Are we in danger of relying on sales leads generated deep in cyberspace without any firsthand understanding of what our prospects really want? Has personal selling become a relic of the golden days of commerce? Do relationships and access to the key buyers mean much anymore?
Click here to read more.
Here’s a new poll question I just posted at LinkedIn:
For print magazines with digital editions:
1) We charge extra for digital edition ads
2) No extra charge for digital edition ads
I plan to leave the poll up for a week or two, and then share the results here and in several groups at LinkedIn.
There’s a new group at LinkedIn called Magazine Ad Sales, and I’m the Group Manager.
The Magazine Ad Sales group is for anyone involed in selling magazine advertising (print and digital), including magazine publishers, magazine sales directors, and magazine ad reps. The purpose of the group is to provide a forum for discussion, a place to post and read news and information, and a way to connect with other professionals involved in magazine ad sales. The goal of the group is simple: to help members sell more ads in their magazines.
If your job involves selling magazine advertising, please join the Magazine Advertising Sales group on LinkedIn.
One of the more time-consuming tasks in sales is capturing contact information from company web sites or web-based directories. So I’m happy to report I’ve just found a free tool, Contact Capture from Broadlook Technologies, which makes the job easier. And faster.
With Contact Capture, you simply select your contact data, copy it, and with 3 quick clicks of your keyboard, the contact data (company name, address, phone number, etc.) pops into the appropriate fields in the program. Then you can quickly send it into a contact management system/CRM like Act, Goldmine or SalesForce. Or you can export it to Outlook, Excel or a simple text file.
Broadlook also has a program called Diver that automatically extracts information from search engines. I plan to try it out this week. Stay tuned!
Ad Sales 360° will provide advertising sales services for SprayFoam Magazine in an agreement beginning July 1st. SprayFoam covers the use of spray polyurethane foam as an insulation alternative in residential homes, commercial buildings, and industrial applications. The print verision of the magazine is published 6 times a year.
For more information about advertising in SprayFoam, call Len Keeler at 951-672-1898.
The October 2009 issue of SprayFoam will close for ad space reservations August 14th.
Just started testing BatchBook from BatchBlue software, and from what I’ve seen so far, I like it a lot. The integration with ShoeBoxed (for converting business cards into importable data) will save a lot of keyboarding time, and the ability to track social media activity to my advertising clients is something I look forward to using. As someone who’s been using PC-based systems like Act! and GoldMine for years, I’m finally warming up to the idea of my customer data being in “the cloud” instead on my hard drive.
The best business models and the best content will thrive, while low-value, “me-too” media will fade away. It’s stressful and nerve-wracking, but at the same time exciting and energizing. We’ll always need content — whether its news, advice, analysis, entertainment, or inside information — and smart advertisers will always want their brands to be associated with quality content, whether it’s print or digital, if it reaches their target market.
