I interviewed our Digital Ad Sales leadership team -- SVP - Dan Peterson, VP - Shea Stringert, and Director - Nickolas Eddy -- about our digital advertising sales business. You don't want to miss the video we posted above to listen in on some of the inner workings of how ad sales work differently when it comes to small-medium sized businesses (SMBs) vs. mid-market and enterprises. In this blog post, I will go over two of the highlights I learned in being part of the discussion.
Check out part two of the interview
The Processes are Different
Digital ad sales teams have to go through an entirely different process when it comes to SMBs. The main difference is that digital ad sales for SMBs are based on the volume of accounts, not just the volume of ads for one account. This simply means the more accounts you can bring in and maintain, the more revenue you will generate. This is different from enterprise sales, which tend to be based on relationships and going after a singular ad buyer placing massive ad buys in one account. Sounds OVERLY simple, but most people miss this.
The way that I have come to think about it is through a fishing metaphor. I know that these are common but bear with me. When it comes to businesses going after SMBs they are like a fisherman's boat with a large net. The key to their success is to catch a lot of fish and maintain them so that they can receive their profits.
In regards to mid-market and enterprise sales, it is much more similar to Moby Dick. Catching the one big whale is the main goal for reaching success. Essentially, it is a numbers game. As a real-world example, for many companies, their representatives (reps) work within a 1:Few model. Meaning, that they have one representative working around 5-25 accounts at a time. In the SMB space, it is a 1:Many model or 1 representative to say 300 accounts. The scalability alone needs the experience to train, ramp, the analytics to drive rep success, and so much more.
Businesses outsource to us because of two main reasons. First, is the cost of doing it in-house vs what they save on their bottom line by working with us. Plus, we grow their SMB channels so much that the profits are way more than what they would see if they did it themselves. The second reason is because of the expertise and experience. Many companies come to us because we have the experience of rapidly growing their long-tail business for them, giving insight into what works in the digital advertising space, and giving them the peace of mind that we are handling it.
The Customer Persona is Different
When you are working with digital ad sales for SMBs the customer persona is different. You are going to be talking to the business owner, CFO, CMO, etc, all in one person. This can make a big difference in your pitch because they have different priorities and different time constraints, and they are typically looking to get more IMMEDIATE returns out of digital advertising. Not just more clicks, engagement, reach, or any other metric that may be important to enterprise businesses. They just want to see more profit, and SOON.
When it comes to hiring a company like MarketStar you can feel assured that we already know how to walk the walk and talk the talk to these personas because we have done it for a lot of companies. We can do the full spectrum of sales! From lead qualification to account management and customer success, and things like ad operations.
To learn more about what we do check out our solutions page here: Digital Ad Sales Solutions
Part two of this interview will be coming out shortly. To be the first to know be sure to subscribe to our blog!
