I’ve been running from one association client meeting to another over the last few weeks. There’s the budget shortfall and the recession and the advertising downturn but, thankfully, they’re figuring it out and keeping their heads above water. One of the things they’re figuring out is how to sell ads in this environment.
- The decision to buy has become much more short term. Digital media kits that can be updated frequently, ever-newer metrics that show success and opportunity-specific sell sheets give associations something new to talk about with potential advertisers. Multiple insertions aren’t entirely a thing of the past but buying the next three issues rather than the next 12 is a lot more likely. Coming up with packages that take that into account appeal to short-term thinking and the search for immediate results.
- Where they used to sell access, now their selling against content. This is a real departure from the old days but is a logical evolution. Access to an audience was ad sales’ main value proposition. That’s why BPA audit numbers are important. But, given digital media, the audience is free to go wherever it wants. Publishers, be they main stream or association, no longer control access. What sells now is content. “They can’t afford to make a mistake,” one sales rep told me. “Advertisers look for subject matter that is as close as possible to something they want to be aligned with.”
We always use to talk about church and state, the necessity to keep editorial “pure” and untainted by advertisers. That is still a necessity but the realization has dawned that not only can you sell against content without deforming your editorial but advertisements are information too. New business models that blur the lines between the two are a promising way forward for print media.
Don’t sell your content but make it relevant to your readers and sell against it to your advertisers.
