Pitching Digital Made Easy: 4 Responses To Common Advertiser Concerns

Your advertising clients need omnichannel digital strategies now more than ever, but the sheer volume of decisions they have to make can feel overwhelming. Which tactics should they pursue? Who is their target audience? Which geographies should they reach?

With so many different avenues to consider, it’s no surprise that advertisers often have objections or concerns. These four common scenarios tend to come up when pitching digital strategies:

1. The advertiser doesn’t know what they want
2. They DO know what they want
3. They already use a different media partner
4. They tried digital before and it didn’t work

You need the right tools to put their minds at ease. SmartProposal is a great place to start: it’s a data-driven approach to marketing based on the local market and what your competitors are doing.

SmartProposal is the key to objection handling

SmartProposal is a great tool for both new and experienced digital media sellers. All you have to do is input the business name and a few pieces of information, and it will tell you exactly what geography to target, who the target audience is, and what demographics to reach (like age, gender, income, audience interests), plus the right products to choose, and the budget for each of those products.

SmartProposal is an AI recommendation engine that uses data from thousands of local and national media campaigns that have run over the last decade across all different markets in the US. This way, you’ll put forward a media plan that's based on real performance and closed deals, not from guesswork. Plus, it has a built-in reporting dashboard that shows exactly how your budget is being spent.

Here’s how SmartProposal can help you can handle skepticism with ease:

“I’m not sure, what do you think I should do?”

In the first scenario, local advertisers push back and ask for advice about which digital tactics to use. For media sellers, this means they suddenly have to become experts and make recommendations.

At this point, everyone knows what digital advertising is. If you bring up YouTube, Google Search, Facebook, or banner ads, they've heard of some of these advertising tactics, but they may not know exactly what they want.

With SmartProposal, anyone on your sales team can become a digital expert immediately.

If you've got media sellers that have experience selling digital, our custom proposal builder is easy-to-use and ready to go out-of-the-box. They can jump into the platform right away and begin generating dynamic proposals to upsell deals and win over clients.

Anyone that's new to digital, whether they're brand new to the industry or a legacy media seller that's been selling traditional products for decades, can immediately start building relationships with advertisers. They can feel confident in the platform and with the digital media plan they’re putting forward even if they're not an expert on each product.

“Here’s what digital ads I want to run…”

In the second scenario, the advertiser thinks they know what to do. Maybe they’re familiar with digital advertising, or they think they know all there is to know about digital advertising, but they may have unrealistic expectations. The reality may be that it won't be a high-performing campaign.

What we can do with SmartProposal, and what our top sellers will do right in front of clients, is show them what a  campaign would actually look like. For example, if you want to spend X budget and use XYZ products, you can demonstrate what the reach and frequency is going to look like.

You can also use  SmartProposal to show them what their competitors are spending and which products they’re running to help them make the best decision for their marketing dollars.

“Thanks, but I’m already working with Company X.”

If they're currently selling digital, a good place to start is asking:

1. What are you doing?
2. What media products are you running?
3. What do the results look like?

From this angle, you can show them the transparent reporting dashboard to demonstrate what they'd get by working with you. You can also show them an example of what budgets and products you would have put together based on the recommendations from SmartProposal, which is backed by more than a decade of local data.

“You know, we tried that before but it just didn’t pay off.”

From a media planning standpoint, if they tried an omnichannel approach before and it didn’t work, we want to know what inputs went into the campaign: Who did it target? Where? What were the audience interests and demographics? What went into the planning process?

If they haven’t had success with digital advertising, you want to start by asking the same questions:

1. How much did you spend?
2. What products did you spend it on?
3. Did you get any reporting or performance metrics?

Show them SmartProposal and the reporting dashboard. From a local seller’s perspective, you want to demonstrate what you would have put forward as a suggested media proposal based on the type of business, location, and target audience.

How does SmartProposal work?

SmartProposal is more about marketing rather than advertising. Your marketing needs to be impactful, strategic, and intentional.

SmartProposal takes the guesswork out of building media proposals for different local advertiser verticals.

In just a few clicks of a button, SmartProposal takes performance-based suggestions and puts them into a dynamic slide deck. It instantly turns all of this data into a comprehensive presentation with your look and feel, including your company’s branding, logos, and contact information, which you can immediately download into a PowerPoint or PDF and share with potential clients. You’ll spend less time building media proposals and more time actually having meetings and closing deals.

Schedule a demo today and start selling with confidence.

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