TopLine Business Acumen Series Digest: February 23rd, 2021 Edition
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
By Tim Wolff, Vice President of TV and Digital Publishing Innovation, Futuri
In 2005, I created one of the first video podcasts (vodcasts) in our market. We used it for high school sports highlights, and I was pleased we grew to about 50 users. Still, it took about a day to process the video, and the effort wasn’t really worth it at the time. Like most media outlets, we put our focus elsewhere.
By 2006, we had generally done that with podcasts in general. They had taken off as “the next big thing” after the iPod was launched (thank goodness they aren’t called Zunecasts!), but after a few years podcasts seem to fade from everywhere other than NPR. The market was too small and the work too involved for most media outlets to invest in it.
Several years later, Serial became a podcast hit, and suddenly podcasts were the next big thing again. Everyone from newspapers to bloggers scrambled to create podcasts, while NPR had been there the whole time.
What changed?
As in many industries, the key changes were about distribution, production costs, and a singular hit to capture people’s attention.
By 2014 the biggest barrier to consumer podcast listening had changed. Users no longer needed an iPod or to go through iTunes (these days, Apple Podcasts); the podcasting app had become native to every iPhone. This was a key distribution change, making it easier and automatic for millions of people to quickly get into listening to podcasts. Serial was the first big benefactor of this, shattering previous records for podcast downloads.
Now, with smart speakers and phone connections in cars, podcasts are readily and easily available everywhere.
Meanwhile, processing speeds have become exponentially faster. What took hours to process a decade ago can now be processed in seconds. With equipment becoming cheaper and online tutorials abundant, anyone can make a podcast quickly and easily now.
But what about money?
Most of the 1,700,000 podcasts out there don’t make any money. So why should local news brands get involved?
The main reasons revolve around the key goals for any media outlet: Audience reach, consumer loyalty, brand expansion, and revenue generation.
Podcasts today reach a demo that is highly sought after for media companies and advertisers. Stitcher reports that the most popular group who uses podcasts are adults 18-34. Podcasthost.org shows that 41% of US podcast listeners have a household income over $75k, which is 10% higher than the US average. Civic Science data shows that 1 in 3 podcast listeners made a purchase after hearing an ad on a podcast. Sound like an audience you want your brand to reach?
As sources of news expand from traditional media to social, OTT, podcast,s and everything else, legacy brands need a way to stay relevant everywhere. By reaching your target consumers in as many distribution channels as possible, you build loyalty to your brand and personalities.
You also reach new people. Podcast listeners are 10% more likely to follow news closely (AudienceScan data), but might not be traditional consumers of your media products. Getting them content in a podcast may remind them of the value your media brand brings, whether that’s through television, radio, newspaper, magazines, or a digital outlet.
And that brings the big challenge: Can you monetize podcasts directly?
It’s about your goals and the audience you want
Most of the time, we think about podcasts with huge audiences in order to generate any revenue. To have a huge audience, you probably need a podcast with a national or worldwide scope, likely focused on a key area of interest (football, for example, or true crime). This seems like a problem for local media outlets, because the audience they are targeting is one of local consumers, limited by the geographic reach of the brand. Unfortunately, too many local media decision-makers get to this point in their consideration, and then stop. They don’t see the monetization model that makes sense for them, so they choose not to do podcasts. They end up missing out on two key opportunities.
First, local interest sponsorships are a big opportunity. Any sales person in a market with a major sports team can tell you that there are advertisers who have key interest in reaching those fans. And every television executive can tell you that weather coverage is a key driver of viewing. Advertisers are actively looking to sponsor great weather brands. Combine these key areas of your media company’s strength with advertiser needs, and podcasts make a lot of sense.
Second, local media often overlook the key interest areas that would expand far beyond geography. Say your market is home to a major Navy base, and you have reporters who are well informed on the base, as one of your biggest employers. Use their expertise to launch a Navy-focused podcast, and suddenly you have the potential of a worldwide audience. Maybe instead of military interest, you have a sports team with a worldwide following. Or maybe you have Civil War experts or auto manufacturing or shipping companies as huge parts of your market. Starting podcasts around those areas can tap in to the national or global interest, and build a large audience that resonates with advertisers, and provides outreach for you to grow subscribers to your own products.
Where to start?
Once you see the value podcasts can bring to your newsroom, you need to know how to grow the reach of your podcasts. Using social media, youtube (the second largest search engine) and your own websites are all key. So is having a partner that can distribute to every platform at once. POST by Futuri is perfect for that; you can post to multiple platforms at once, and they can instantly turn your audio podcast into video, for maximum reach. The Futuri team even has tools to help you monetize your podcasts.
The US is expected to have 100 million podcast listeners this year. If your newsroom is truly committed to reaching and serving your community, it’s time to get into podcasts. You can’t afford to miss out on this audience.
Tim Wolff is Vice President of TV and Digital Publishing Innovation at Futuri. He has 20+ years of experience as a digital and broadcasting leader who’s led top-performing teams across the country at companies including Gannet, Belo, and Cox Media Group Ohio, which includes three daily newspapers, three radio stations, WHIO-TV, and more. Wolff, who holds a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Missouri, also makes a mean green chile stew.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
We’ve all heard the phrase.
Everyone wants to close sales, but how about closing the appointment? Getting appointments with qualified buyers has never exactly been a piece of cake, but it’s only gotten harder over the years, even before you take the pandemic into consideration.
So how does a sales executive cut through the clutter to close more appointments? We talked with Jim Tarantine, Product Manager for Futuri’s groundbreaking sales intelligence system, TopLine, about what his team is seeing and how to grow your revenue by evolving your approach to closing appointments.
Q: Why has it gotten harder for sales executives to close appointments over recent years?
JT: There are so many more choices for advertisers today. Broadcasters used to have to think about things like newspapers and even the Yellow Pages, but a lot was about differentiating yourself from your competition across the street. Today, with so many digital choices added to that competitive set, there are way more people trying to get at advertisers to talk about how they can deliver results, not just impressions.
At the same time, on both the buying and selling side, resources have dwindled. The advertiser has less time and potentially less personnel to evaluate all the things to get results for their brand. If you’re not differentiating yourself right out of the gate by showing you’ve done your research about them and time with you will be well-spent, you’re not going to get them to commit that valuable time to meeting with you.
Q: Have changes in the way agencies work with their clients impacted the broadcast sales executives ability to close the appointment?
JT: Agencies are indeed getting more protective of their clients, and they don’t really want media reps in their space. To defend agencies a little, it’s harder and harder for them to keep business today, too. So even though that “don’t go directly to my client” thing has existed ever since I got started in broadcast decades ago, it’s only gotten worse as the opportunity for agencies to acquire business has gotten more complicated. Agencies are doing everything they can to deliver results and be a trusted partner to their advertisers.
When you think about that, paired with the overwhelming number of choices advertisers have today, evaluating your approach to closing the appointment in today’s environment is necessary. Are you presenting yourself as a subject matter expert who’s there to partner with an advertiser to help deliver results? Are you interacting with a prospect in the way they prefer? Things like that are more critical than ever to closing the appointment and, ultimately, sales.
Q: Talk a bit more about that. How can you get that information on someone you haven’t yet met? How can one sales executive possibly be a subject matter expert in every industry they’re pitching?
JT: I’m glad you asked! [Laughs] That’s where TopLine comes in. We’ve designed TopLine to help broadcast sales executives to close the appointment and close the sale.
With TopLine’s Appointment Prep Tools, you enter a small amount of information on the person you’re targeting. Through artificial intelligence, or AI, you’ll get information on the approach to which they’re most likely to respond. Is their personality more about you getting right to the point, or should you start with a little friendly small talk and virtual wining and dining? Do they want to see a lot of information, along with links and examples, or just the headlines? Not everyone likes to see information in the way you do, so tailoring your approach is crucial.
In terms of subject matter expertise, every single day, the TopLine team is creating content to give sales executives valid business reasons to share with advertisers and get them to take that appointment. In 2020 alone, we created more than 5,200 articles on local category business trends and provided more than 450,000 instant custom research stories for broadcast sales executives to open up new business conversations. (Of course, this is A LOT, so it’s all quickly searchable and sortable! Everything TopLine does is designed to help sales executives spend more time selling.)
Closing an appointment is infinitely easier when you use these assets to show an advertiser that you have real insights into what’s happening in their category today. As we say here, “Simply pinging advertisers over and over without insights is a one-way ticket to the junk folder.” Insights cut through the massive amount of clutter advertisers are hit with these days.
Q: That’s a great point, and it’s reminding me of many times when companies have pitched me to buy something based on what they wanted instead of figuring out what I wanted.
JT: Exactly. To be effective in closing the appointment, sellers need to take the approach, “It’s not about me. It’s not about the spots and dots or endorsements or websites I have to sell. It’s about the cars they have to sell, or the furniture they need to get out the door.”
So that leads to — what insights can you provide that tell the story of the customers who might be in the market for their product? (Especially at a time when the pandemic has changed so much!) How are consumers behaving differently in 2021? How are people approaching the buying process? That should start before you even mention your medium. For radio sales executives, once you’ve provided insights, then you can begin talking about radio and audio as a medium, and all the awareness, the endorsements, the on-demand content, the video content, the social media programs, the talent, the podcasts, all those things I can provide. And THEN you talk about your stations.
Unfortunately, I think that at times, we still shoot ourselves in the foot by doing it the opposite way. Here’s what I mean: You start with the latest ranker or the newest profile of my station, without any regard to the buyer’s personality, their industry’s trends, and how their customers’ behavior might be changing.
Q: Any other insights you’d like to share with readers who might be rethinking their approach to closing the appointment?
JT: TopLine has so much more to share on this topic, and we’ll do a series of pieces like this, but my quick hit to close on is this: Even if you’re not a TopLine partner and don’t have access to the wealth of tools we have to help you close more appointments and close more sales, at least show you’ve done some research.
I think many of us in management and buying positions are becoming savvier and savvier and understanding who’s just spamming you with meeting requests vs. who’s done their research. The more exact and targeted you can be in your language, the more likely you’ll get their attention right away. Saying, “I understand you’re in charge of the advertising team at CompanyX, and our StationY can help you get your message across to potential customers” isn’t going to get you far. But say, “I was just on CompanyX’s website, and I saw your article about Y, and point Z resonated with me. That’s where I think I can help you.” That’s the move.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
This week: Back to school opportunities, hair wellness takes off, rise in interest in auto sales, how mortgage lenders and real estate agents must set themselves apart, and more.
Futuri is the leading provider of cloud-based audience engagement software for the enterprise. Brands rely on Futuri to make their content more relevant, accessible, engaging, and results-driven. Founded in 2009, Futuri holds 11 published or pending patents in 151 countries. Named to the Inc. 5000 List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies for seven consecutive years, Futuri is the only audience engagement platform that includes solutions for sales, marketing, and content teams.
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