Jason E. Klein

How to Develop A Winning National Selling Presentation

To be honest, many local newspaper national ad sales presentations are a real snooze.  They combine a geography lesson with a pointed slam on the newspaper competition and unfortunately reinforce misconceptions that the newspaper industry is out of step.  A list of isolated facts about any market is usually pretty boring unless it is directly relevant to the audience. The newspaper buyer you are addressing at an ad agency may have little to do with market selection decisions, which are often made on considerations largely internal to the client, like the strength of product distribution or the need to support a particular promotional effort.

Any great sales presentation starts with outstanding preparation on the client’s business and goals.   At the national level, there is a wealth of information available via trade magazines, industry experts, the web, syndicated data services, and preparatory phone calls.  Get as versed as possible in the client’s business and language before you dig in to prepare a specific presentation.

I see many newspaper presentations every year. Here are eight suggestions on how to make yours stand out:

1. Customize around the Category and Brand.  This is essential.   Most national clients have highly refined media targets that go well beyond simple demographics.  They consider product and brand usage data, psychographics, and emotional factors.  As one media agency head says, if you are marketing Polygrip, you need to target the toothless.  If you can’t provide category specific data to the client, please don’t substitute a dozen charts on why Toledo, Ohio, is really a great place.  Use Scarborough and all the syndicated research you can get your hands on.  Plus be sure to provide category-specific data from your reader surveys.
2. Talk Local Engagement.  The truth is that most advertisers really don’t care about your editorial. But they do care deeply about your readers, how well they are engaged in your newspaper and how they interact with it.  Here is one area where national magazine sales presentations are well out in front.  Help the advertiser understand your reader inside and out.  Why do they read your paper? When? What are the most loved sections and writers?  What differentiates your reader from his neighbor, who doesn’t read the paper?  What do your readers do for fun?  Do they have teeth?  Are they forward thinkers?   Research on your readership is essential here.  Engagement is a huge theme now on Madison Avenue.  Local newspapers have it but forget to flaunt it. 
3. Integrate the Internet.  Take down the walls between online and offline, and make this a big part of every national sales pitch.  Provide metrics on your online versus offline readership, and recommend the best ways specific to the advertiser to use your Web site.  Let them know what opportunities are available to target their desired audience.  Provide a profile of your local online marketplace in terms of monthly unique visitors.  Let them know why your site is the best way to reach your local market.
4. Demonstrate ROI.  Results Talk.  Show case studies of relevant advertisers who ran successful ad campaigns in your newspaper.  Provide metrics that demonstrate that ads in your newspaper stimulate action.  National advertisers want more outcome-based metrics to show their clients that media spending works.  Show advertiser testimonials supporting successful and relevant ad campaigns.
5. Recommend Sections.  Please help the advertiser make an informed decision about main news or another section, and provide metrics to help them understand how well main news performs versus another section to reach the advertiser’s target.  Section readership numbers shouldn’t be treated as a state secret, and there is an obvious benefit in the higher engagement in a section like health that needs to be weighed against lower readership.  If I’m advertising Polygrip, it’s true that I may reach more toothless readers with an ad in main news but an ad in a health section may be more likely to stimulate purchase action.
6. Profile their Competitors.  Clients are interested in what their competition is doing.  Provide tear sheets of advertising done in your paper from the client’s category or similar categories.  What sections did they run in, how often, what unit sizes? 
7. Identify Targeted Opportunities with Lots of Lead-time.  National magazines have learned that it’s essential to provide an annual editorial calendar around special sections.  Most newspapers haven’t learned that lesson yet.  National budgets are prepared well in advance, and advertisers love participating in special sections when the timing works right.  Let the advertiser know what special sections or adjacencies are right for them with as much advance notice as possible, even if the details aren’t finalized. 
8. Sell the newspaper medium.  Recognize that your biggest competition for national dollars isn’t the larger DMA in your region, or the competitor newspaper across the river.  You are fighting for a piece of their overall media budget, which is probably dominated by television.  You are also fighting to get the concept of a multi-market newspaper campaign carved out of a largely national media budget.  Here is where metrics on the local media marketplace and your newspaper’s position within it are helpful.  The newspaper industry has made huge strides in the past year at making vastly more powerful data available to local newspapers to sell the newspaper medium.  You can download volumes of data at www.nnnlp.com and www.naa.org.  Make good use of this and you will elevate the level of your sales dialogue.

While some say the U.S. is the most sleep deprived nation on the planet, it’s embarrassing to use a sales presentation to catch up on lost sleep.  Follow these suggestions: keep your message lively, colorful, and brief; and remember that a two-way dialogue is much better than a monologue in a darkened room.  Do it well and you will help your client realize that newspapers are part of his or her future.