August 8th and 9th at the Local Media Association’s “Selling Digital Marketing Services” conference, two opportunities really stood out.
1. Real Estate Opportunities
First were the “facts and figures” Gordon Borrell and Jim Brown shared related to the white-hot opportunities in Real Estate. For example:
- The average brokerage firm spends $52,969 on advertising (average firm means 3-4 people)
- Real Estate advertisers versus other local advertising OVER-INDEX on the areas we serve. The top four categories are direct mail, email, social and NEWSPAPER – agents and brokers also like classified, SEM, Magazine. They UNDER-INDEX in digital display, event, other print & SEO.
- As an example market, Gordon highlighted Oklahoma City. Can you believe real estate spending tops $25 million in advertising & marketing – WOW! What is being spent in YOUR market? How much do you get with your print and digital marketing services?
iPublish Real Estate AdPortal provides a complete real estate solution for newspapers. Brokers can build, buy & schedule any size print ad in the same bundle as digital and social ads. New features like native ads for print and digital, video for listing and agent promotions, audience extension, email marketing, Waze ads, Facebook and Instagram have been added to AdPortal Real Estate. It’s a full service solution that maximizes your margins and overall opportunity for real estate and grows your share.
2. Invest in Services & Resources
Gordon Borrell challenged our industry to “think bigger. Invest in services & resources.” He highlighted the impact on the overall valuation increase companies reap when they grow digital marketing services revenue. He showed an example of defining what is an SMB and the various sizes of business that truly make up a local market’s total advertising and marketing opportunity.
Thinking back on my days as a digital sales manager at a newspaper, I could picture myself wondering: “How do we become the resource for what is truly most effective and impactful for our customers? How do I find the time, the money, to REALLY do all the things I know we need to do? How can I explore those opportunities and not distract my sales teams? How do I get great margins on the 3rd party digital services I need as door openers, especially for key products like video, Facebook, Instagram & Waze? With so much going on all but the largest customers could fall through the cracks. Sales people could spend too much time chasing dollars that are too small.” I can picture myself feeling overwhelmed.
Newspapers today need a low cost, low risk, local retail advertising solution that gives them an opportunity to fulfill SMB strategies across many media platforms. AdPortal SMB gets you in the game quickly and effectively! Your call center or self-service portal can offer O&O print and digital in the same bundle with options such as audience extension, Facebook, Waze, Instagram, video and more. SMB AdPortal is setup with your preferred partners, your pricing and your packages for print/digital/social which allows you to reap the revenue and benefits of an integrated system. 1 or 2 sales per month and you are already profitable on this initiative!
GateHouse has gone live with their first paper. Working with a respected market leader in self-service digital and print, you could have your SMB Adportal up and running within a short time and for a reasonable cost – what have you got to lose? Contact us today, I’d love to show it to you.
