Selling Advertising The Agency Perspective
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Transcript of Selling Advertising The Agency Perspective
Selling Advertising: The Agency Perspective
Understanding How Agencies Think Will Lead to Greater Sales• Agency process
– Budgeting– Planning
• Agency timeline
– Annual cycle– Periodic adjustments
• Agency decision-making
– Who to address– Who to copy
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Understanding How Agencies Think Will Lead to Greater Sales
• Importance of RFPs (Request For Proposal)
• Agency compensation – how are they motivated?
• Types of Agencies
– Full service – mega, independent, and boutique– Creative service– Media service
• Is there a common thread?
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Understanding How Agencies Think Will Lead to Greater Sales• Agencies are lean and mean when it comes to
staffing
• Larger agencies and media service companies are preoccupied acquiring or maintaining lucrative agency of record (AOR) accounts, frequently heavily TV oriented
• Many advertisers are fixated on tv as primary vehicle, with all other media forms often termed ‘secondary’
• Always looking for thoughtful strategic partners not just order takers
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Current Conditions
• Equal, or reduced, budgets
• More options
• More goals
• Higher expectations
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Agencies Check List
• Lower than advertised pricing
• Strategic and appropriate marketing partnerships
• Early opportunities
• Want to be ‘first’ to know, have chance at
• On flip side, often are lemmings, following versus leading the crowd
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When do you Attempt to Intersect the Agency Process ?
• Budgeting
– Generally occurs 3-6 months pre-planning
– If multi-media account, occurs during tv upfront budget allocation
– Especially important in categories with large AOL accounts
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When do you Attempt to Intersect the Agency Process ?• Planning
– Those with advance planning usually use RFP device
– Getting closer and closer to buying cycle
• Buying
– Some annual schedules/programs negotiated early
– Often tied directly to negotiating pricing
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How do Agencies/Clients Address Mid-year Budget Cuts?• First protect what they want to keep
– Elements involving programs, not just insertions
• Then look at what’s left
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Long-term Results Requires Changing the Axiom• Strategic selling of annual schedules must get out
in front of the budgeting/planning process
– 20% of your sales effort should be addressing NEXT year’s sales
– Sell program for next year, and settle for the strategically-placed insertions this year
– Demonstrates client-oriented benefit (why a program will help their business) vs. vendor-oriented benefit (making your current number)
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Do you know what constitutes client/agency budgeting?• Client budgeting
– big picture from client
– looks at overall market share, potential growth, competitive situation, product changes
• Client/agency strategic planning
– review communication needs; address media types
– budget allocated by above needs
– creative process begins
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Do you know what constitutes client/agency budgeting?
• Media planning
– individual media vehicles examined
– alternative plans developed for client
• Media negotiating
• Client presentations
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Brand Planning• Develop media objectives, strategies, and plans
• Determine print buying guidelines
• Create RFP (request for proposal)
• Submit planned schedule to AOR, or client, as well as possible alternative options
• Review and incorporate negotiated pricing into media plans
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Media Planning/Buying Process
• Fact finding
• Developing alternatives
• Evaluating alternatives
• Making recommendations
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Media Planning/Buying Process
• Making modifications
• Executing (negotiating/purchasing)
• Stewardship
• Next cycle fact finding, etc …
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Fact Finding (Analytical Base)
• Marketing Strategy
• Creative strategy
• Audience targets
• Seasonality
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Fact Finding (Analytical Base)
• Geographic targets
• Brand purchase cycle
• Competitor’s strategies
• Research (primary and syndicated)
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Media Plan Documentation• Objectives: Marketing and Media
• Budget guidelines
• Media strategies
• Plan development
– Demographic, Geographic, Psychographic profiles
– Cost efficiencies, composition/coverage/user indices
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Media Plan Documentation• Recommendation/Schedule/Time Requirements
• Comparison to previous year
• Other considerations
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Stages of Plan Development
• Initial list consideration
• Target audience rankings
– CPM, composition, coverage
• Application of modifiers
– Audience skews, user/purchaser habits, lifestyle activities
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Stages of Plan Development
• Eliminate/shorten list
– Priorities against goals/objectives
• Scheduling/flighting
– Reach/frequency goals
– Purchase cycle periods
– Special issues/bonus circulation
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Print Buying• Establish buying objectives and strategies
• Submit RFPs to all proposed AND any alternative publications
• Meet with representatives for initial round of discussions
• Negotiate most favorable buys (individual and/or corporate if applicable)
• Uncover special opportunities
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Work Flow is Circular Year-Over-Year• Brand business situation
– Sales
– Competitive
• Marketing objectives/strategy
– All forms of company communications
• Media objectives
– Budget, target audience, geography, seasonality, communication levels, creative requirements, priorities
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Work Flow is Circular Year-Over-Year
• Building blocks
– Last year’s planned vs actual; applicable lessons
– Media inflation, and cost by type/element; competitive spending
• Alternatives and Comparisons
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Compensation Issues
• Based on mutually fair value and incentive based approaches
• Many client/agency contracts are based on hours-spent, so personnel become less available to outside vendors
• Marketers will pay well for great ideas and superb media management
– Often interpreted by agencies as ‘get more for less’ from vendors
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Selection Criteria • Environment (strong editorial appeal)
• Precise targeting (right prospects)
• Audience coverage (reach significant portion of potential)
• Audience composition (minimizes waste)
• Product/service usage
• Efficiency (combines circulation and cost)
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Unexercised Axiom• How would you change your approach if you
believed:
– Most media is bought, not sold.
– Most agency (and client) personnel ‘know’ what they want to put on client schedules before seeing sales representatives
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