Our process has increased revenue for many associations. It could help yours, too!
For many associations, hiring a full-time advertising sales person just isn’t feasible. Budget restraints often land this task on the lap of the staff member with the most availability – which let’s face it, is sporadic at best. By limiting your advertising sales to solely inquiries, your association is missing out on a huge non-dues revenue opportunity.
Which is why, whenever a new association client comes on board, we always ask how their advertising sales are performing? Can we improve upon what you’re already offering?
Our decades of experience in publishing have honed a uniquely successful process for boosting sales numbers and increasing advertising value for associations. If you’re interested in exploring the potential of your advertising, here’s a quick breakdown of our process.
The first step is for your new salesperson to spend ample time researching the association. Top priority should be to review the history and current status of the organization in regards to sales efforts. Areas of improvement can come to light by asking you questions, which can also reveal future growth opportunities that can be focused on at a later date. Some of these questions include:
- Do you offer a publication to your members?
- Would your association benefit by adding a quarterly or annual directory, or restarting a past publication?
- What is the value of your online advertising currently, if any?
- Can we add some new qualities to the existing sales plan?
- Is your website up to date, editorially and technically?
- Are you maximizing all of your current resources, and are there new areas in which you would like to expand?
Once we have done our homework, we set tangible sales goals and then begin assessing any necessary changes and a plan of attack for exceeding those goals. We compare your current rate card, if available, to that of competitors and similar publications to see how your rates compare – you may be surprised by the results!
The uniqueness of your association helps dictate how we design a fresh, tailored media package that is suited exclusively for your association. We need to educate ourselves with your association’s expectations, needs, and downfalls to be able to effectively determine new rate pricing along with any other modifications.
Once we have gathered our data and feedback from you, we focus on designing the new rate card, which includes media efforts and statistics along with other valuable information for advertisers. This alone can take several weeks to perfect before we can start selling and growing your non-dues revenue.
Another step we highly recommend is your introducing the new salesperson directly to your members. Why? This will help make for an easy transition when the salesperson begins to reach out on behalf of the association. Three possible methods for conducting this introduction are a postcard mailing, a dedicated email blast, or a mention in a newsletter. And, if you really want to warm things up, add a photo of your new sales rep to give a more personal touch and to show members who they will be working with.
Once selling tools have been established, it is time for us to prospect for new advertisers and bring past/current advertisers on board for the next sales initiatives. Current member lists and understanding an association’s vision of whom they’d like to reach outside of that list are also essential for us to do our job well for you. We have been extremely successful in our current and past endeavors, but don’t just take our word for it, read our SBAM and MRWA case studies. !
Article written by:
Katie Rollert
Advertising Sales
