Where should I spend my Digital Advertising dollars in 2023?

As the holidays come into view on the calendar, so do the budget meetings, review meetings, and strategy planning for the upcoming year.   A question that we get asked quite often is “How much should I invest into digital advertising next year?”

This is a great question, as we are seeing an increase in digital advertising spend throughout the United States.

According the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), digital advertising is expected to see an almost 7% increase from 2022 to 2023.

In addition, if we look at global expectations, we can see a high level breakout as to where some of those dollars are going to be invested.

As you can see, Online Video and Social Media Stories are the top two categories where businesses plan to increase their spending.   And while we offer many of the others listed above, the opportunity to understand options for Online Video and Social Media Stories is where we will focus.

When it comes to Online Video, there are several options as to where you can invest your money:

OTT (Over-the-Top) Video
Video Pre-Roll
YouTube
(all of the other platforms that offer video as a creative option)

Starting with OTT, there are several types of OTT that you can include into your Marketing Mix.

OTT
OTT with Visit Tracking
Amazon OTT
Social Mirror OTT

What is OTT, or Over-the-Top Advertising?  This is an umbrella term for video programming transmitted via the Internet that bypasses traditional cable or broadcast (linear) distribution. It can be consumed on any device including computers, mobile devices, Connected TVs, and gaming systems.

However, here at Vici, everything that we do is over the top (pun intended).  That means, ALL our OTT inventory runs on Connected TV’s (CTV); which is the premium and most preferred inventory.   eMarketer reports that 95% of marketers reported CTV achieved desired key performance indicators and it is the most used device to stream programming…so wouldn’t you want your ads to appear here?

That means with all of our OTT outlets, including Amazon OTT and Social Mirror OTT, you’re getting prime inventory for all of your campaigns.  And, with OTT Ads, they are unskippable.

When you think of OTT and where you ads may appear, think of Amazon Firestick, Roku devices, Chromecast, AndroidTV, Apple TV, Sling TV, XBOX TV, and so many more!  We have access to most of the major networks and channels.   The two exclusions (for now) where your ads can’t appear through our OTT offerings are Netflix and Hulu (in beta).

In the Amazon OTT, we get to take advantage of Amazon’s targeting data and serve ads to your potential customers on Amazon-owned streaming platforms, like Amazon Firestick and FreeVee.  In addition, we also get to take advantage of the streaming partnerships Amazon has, and have your commercials follow Amazon users to those platforms as well.

For Social Mirror OTT, we get to take the content that you’re already utilizing on your social media platforms, and create an OTT ad out of it.  We can utilize any horizontal/vertical image/video content that you have, use a description that coincides with your social content, and we also create a QR code that will link to your website.

Next up is Video Pre-Roll.  Video Pre-Roll ads play before the content someone has clicked to watch and they appear on thousands of websites and apps, across all devices. These types of ads can be skippable and unskippable.  It depends on the publisher that’s serving the creative.

These ads, since they are served across all devices, they can be seen on laptops, desktops, smart phones, tablets, and even gaming devices.  Whether you’re logging on to ESPN.com to watch highlights of this week’s football games or going to watch a video on HGTV about how the latest DIY project you want to make on your home, there’s a good likelihood that you’ll see an ad before you get to the content that you’re wanting to watch.  That, my friend, is a video pre-roll ad.

Lastly, is YouTube.  Bought by Google back in 2006, YouTube is currently the 2nd largest search engine behind Google.  YouTube ads are video pre-roll ads, just on YouTube, meaning that before you can watch the video you want on YouTube, you’ll get served an ad.  But, with 63% of people saying that they bought from a brand after seeing their commercial on YouTube, it’s a great place to have your message running.

Social Media Stories

The reemergence of storytelling is one of the most powerful tools you have to share with your customers.  There are several ways to include social media stories into your marketing mix.

First, you can utilize Facebook/Instagram stories to promote your business.  Thanks to the launch of Instagram Stories back on August 2, 2016 and Facebook’s duplication of the offering in 2017, you now have the ability to share your story on both platforms. These stories inspire action. After seeing a stories ad, 50% of viewers visited websites where they could buy it and 31% have gone to a store to check it out.

The newest player to Social Media Stories comes to us in the form of Social Mirror.

These ads have several engagement opportunities:

Clicking on the logo or advertiser name is going to take the user to the advertiser’s website
Tapping on the right side of the story, will take the user to the next slide of the ad
Tapping on the left side of the story, will take the user to the previous slide of the ad or start over
Tapping and holding will allow the user to pause the story
Tapping on the last slide will take the user to the advertiser’s website

The Social Mirror Story Ads format is the style of Social Mirror creative that has the highest click-through, over the last two years that we’ve been running this.

As you can see, with anticipated increase in digital advertising spend next year, there are many ways to get your message out there.  Video and Social Stories are two of the biggest projected areas for growth.  These are two areas you definitely want to include in your strategy for next year.

The post Where should I spend my Digital Advertising dollars in 2023? appeared first on Vici Media.

How Does Amazon Know So Much About You?

I have always been a pretty neat, clean, and tidy person. I don’t like clutter, I like seeing the lines on the carpet from a vacuum in a room, and everything (and I mean everything) has a place. Well, having kids changes that because now my living room looks like a bomb went off at any given point with the number of Magna-Tiles, Paw Patrol cars, and wooden blocks that are strewn all about. Just the other day as I had stepped on another Tyrannosaurus Rex that I thought, “there’s gotta be a better way to keep all these toys somewhat organized,” so I immediately got onto Amazon and purchased a bunch of mesh zipper pouch bags. I thought they would help keep all my son’s dinosaurs in one pouch, all his cars in another, his blocks in another so that he could still find what he wanted, and my living room would look a little normal.

That’s just one example of when I have used Amazon in the past week. I have also bought Halloween costumes, fog juice, ink for my printer, and a smart plug. While I am feverishly making purchases left and right from Amazon to make my life easier, Amazon is gathering all sorts of data about me based on my purchases, searches, interests, behaviors, and more. Amazon is now the second largest data collector on the internet, so all of this data that’s gathered is then used so that businesses, marketers, and advertisers can reach a very detailed, targeted audience.

With four different ways to reach Amazon users with ads, businesses have options on how targeted they want to get, and also on what kind of ads they want to serve to users. Through Amazon, you can reach consumers with Behavioral Targeting, Product Targeting, Custom Audience Matching and Lookalike, and Retargeting.

With Behavioral Targeting, you are showing your display, video, or Over the Top (OTT) ads to specific consumers based on what they’ve purchased, browsed, or searched for on Amazon, and then show those ads across Amazon.com (if it’s a display ad), Amazon owned properties and on thousands of partner websites and apps. Through my recent activity on Amazon of what I browsed for and purchased, I put myself in the following categories:

Halloween Costumes

Halloween Costumes and Decorations – In-Market
Apparel (Kids and Baby) – In-Market
Baby Apparel – In-Market

Fog Juice

Halloween Costumes and Decorations – In-Market
Party Supplies – In-Market

Ink for my printer

Office Products and Supplies – In-Market
Premium Office Products – In-Market
Ink and Toner – In-Market

Smart Plug

Smart Home Products – In-Market

With Product Targeting, we are getting a little more precise because we are building an audience of people who have searched, browsed, or purchased specific products on Amazon, and then showing them a display, video, or OTT ad on Amazon.com (if it’s a display ad), Amazon owned properties, and on thousands of partner websites and apps.

To put those same products into perspective for Product Targeting, maybe Party City is running a campaign and they want to reach moms, so they build an audience of people based off those that have searched for, browsed, or purchased Halloween costumes, party décor (fog juice), or Halloween candy. If Staples was running a campaign wanting to promote their home office equipment, they could start serving me ads if they are looking for people that have searched for, browsed, or purchased office furniture, desk chairs, or printer ink.

With Custom Audience Matching, Amazon will take a list of email addresses, physical addresses, or phone numbers, match them to Amazon users and show a display, video, or OTT ad across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon owned properties, and on thousands of partner websites and apps. You can also choose to use a lookalike audience which is then finding other people with similar characteristics and behaviors on that original list, and then serve them ads. When you sign up for an Amazon Prime account, you never would have thought that when you signed up for an Amazon account, you were signing yourself up for a whole lot more than Amazon Prime!

As a business owner, it sounds real sexy to think of your ads being on Amazon.com, and sure, that is really neat, but the real power of partnering with Amazon is reaching people with that same targeting data that Amazon has created, but while they are off of Amazon. That’s what is happening when people are seeing ads on Amazon owned properties and on Amazon Publishers. As consumers, we typically go to Amazon.com, search for something, put it in our cart and leave, so we aren’t spending a ton of time on Amazon.com. We are, however, spending time on IMDB.com, Freevee, Twitch, and FireTV, which are all properties owned by Amazon. Additionally, Amazon has partnered with thousands of different websites and apps so that you can be served ads while on various websites and apps that are not affiliated with Amazon, called Amazon Publishers, and these are just a few:

As an ad platform, Amazon is growing at a very rapid pace. Their share of U.S. net digital ad revenue is 10.3%, behind Facebook at 25.2% and Google at 28.9%. Now 10% might not sound like a lot, but Amazon has only been in the advertising game for 10 years. Both Google and Facebook have been around a lot longer than that, so to be that close in 10 years says a lot.

On the consumer side of Amazon, millennials are the biggest audience using Amazon and outpace Baby Boomers by a ratio of two to one when it comes to using Amazon as a shopping tool. That’s not too much of a surprise seeing that at the time of Amazon’s founding, the oldest millennials were only 16 years old, and today millennials are between 25 and 40 years of age and just at the life stage when consumer incomes and spending begin to peak. Boomers, now 57 to 76 years, are going in the opposite direction with income and spending dropping as they reach retirement age. If a business is looking to target Millennials, Amazon is a great place to do that. They are the generation that is utilizing the e-commerce site the most, which is just one of the ways Amazon is gathering that first party data.

The post How Does Amazon Know So Much About You? appeared first on Vici Media.

Introduction of Social Mirror OTT Ads

As technology advances, so does the need for creativity.   When you can advance both at the same time, that puts you ahead of your competition.  That is what we do.  We always Beta Test new and innovative technologies to keep our clients on the cutting edge.  We want you to have everything that is new and shiny, and an opportunity to shine along with it.

We recently rolled out Social Mirror OTT.  OTT is an acronym for Over The Top.   But, before we dive into Social Mirror OTT, let’s make sure that you’re clear as to what Social Mirror is.

Social Mirror Ads look like your social media display or video posts, but they appear on other websites and apps.  They also run across all devices, including desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and even gaming devices targeted to the audience that you want to reach.

Each ad links back to the social platform it is mirroring and, has a second call to action button that links to the advertiser’s website!  Ads contain unique social actions related back to the originating platform (for example, the like icon, the heart icon, the pinning icon, the retweet icon… those actions are available). These ads can integrate with all the major social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube. Creatively, ads can be  display, video or carousel.

How do these ads work?  Pretty simple, actually!

Step 1: Create a social post and provide us with the URL of that post. Like this example here of a Tweet on Twitter from Yankee Candle:

Now Step 2: Enhance it with additional call to action opportunities.

We take your post and create it as an ad – that looks just like (and links to) the social post – and run it across thousands of websites and apps!

The best part is the ad has three call-to-action opportunities:

Clicks on the Social Media logo and your profile image, take the users to your Social Media business page.
Clicks on the Call-To-Action button take the users to your website.
Clicks on the Social Media icons below the ad take you to that post on your Social Media page

One aspect of Social Mirror ads that differs from that of Social Media Advertising is the ability to reach your target audience.

Behavioral Categories – Showing your Social Mirror ads to specific consumers based on their previous on-line behavior, across all devices.
Keywords – Showing your Social Mirror ads on webpages and apps that contain keywords related to your business, across all devices.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Showing your Social Mirror ads to people using machine learning to target consumers based on who is engaging with the ad, across all devices.
Retargeting– Following people after they leave your website and showing them your Social Mirror ad, on other websites and apps they go to, across all devices.
Custom Audience Matching and Look Alike – We target people (or businesses) on your list of emails, addresses, or phone numbers, when they go online and show them Social Mirror ads when they are browsing across websites and apps.

Once we have uploaded your database, we’ll be able to provide you with an Insights Report.  Just another advantage over traditional Social Media Advertising.

In addition to your traditional posts on social media, we can also create Social Mirror Stories Ads as well as create a Social Mirror OTT campaign for you.

OTT, or Over The Top is an umbrella term referring to video programming transmitted via the internet, which bypasses traditional cable or broadcast distribution.   It can be consumed on any device including computers, mobile devices, and Connected (Smart) TVs.

At Vici, all of our OTT campaigns are served ONLY on Connected (Smart) TV’s, the premium and most preferred inventory.

So, with Social Mirror OTT, we are able to take content from your Social Media posts (any of the 8 major social platforms mentioned earlier) and use that content to create an OTT Video commercial.  We’ll take your social post and create an OTT ad that runs on Connected TV’s!  These ads will feature your logo, your business name, even a description on the screen.  To top it off, we’ll also include a QR code that links potential customers to your website.

Let’s talk about how they work:

These can be horizontal or vertical videos.
Videos can be any length between :10 up to :60.
You provide us the URL of the social post and the elements.
You provide us the website click through URL and we create the QR code that links to that webpage.
Monthly reports will showcase how many scans were received.
The ads don’t link to the social account. The QR code instead scans to the desired website.
We creates the QR code. Technically, this could be provided to us. However, if that’s the case, we won’t have the ability to report on it.   These ads could also be done without a QR code, if desired.

We’ve just launched this product and have already seen massive success, just like our standard Social Mirror Campaigns.

Your clients turn to you for your expertise.  They rely on you to keep them up to speed on what’s new and what works.  This is new.  This works!

Be the resource to your clients that brings the cutting edge technology to your clients.  Bring the new and shiny and feel confident in the opportunity to produce results.   We’ve already tested this, so you don’t have to.

If you’re looking for opportunities that will make you stand out from your competition, this is it.

The post Introduction of Social Mirror OTT Ads appeared first on Vici Media.

Introducing the Insights Report for Consumers and Businesses

Ever want to be a mind reader? Be in a crowded room and read the thoughts and interests of those around you? Or even in a restaurant and wondering what the other guests are talking about or into? Now it is time to look into your digital crystal ball with Insight Reports. Is it mind reading…well no, but it is the closest thing to it to learn more about consumer demographics, business revenue footprints and knowing more about a clients database.

How is this possible?

From a database list, we use cookie-less data and match first party data whether it’s phone numbers, names, emails, physical addresses, domain URLs, mobile device ids, HHIP addresses, other wifi addresses and compares it to offline data (like census and income data) and location data (mapping people from a business location to a home IP address) to determine who a person is and what their characteristics are.

What is included in this report?

It provides details on location, age, life stage, ethnicity, political party, household income, charitable contributions, home value, discretionary income, net worth, invested assets, genders present in the household, and number of children.

Let’s take a peek at each section of the Insights Report for Consumers:

The first part includes a segment summary.

Total Households is the total number of postal addresses we can match to targetable households.  (Please note this number is not always the one used for the match rate. It depends on the match type – if the match type is addresses, we’ll use this number. If the match type is emails, we’ll use emails and so on).

Total People is the total number of people living across all matched households, this is from our offline data of people-based profiles who share the address/location.

Total Household Devices is the total number of devices being used by the people within all households.

Total Top Household Devices is the total number of frequently used devices we can match within a household.

Total Household Network IPs is the total number carrier IP addresses, associated with your mobile phone dynamic IPs (when roaming, on LTE, etc). Generally, this number is higher than Wi-Fi IP’s because network/carrier IPs are constantly changing, and they rack up a bunch of IPs found.

Total Household Wi-Fi IP’s is the total number of IP addresses from Wi-Fi routers/modems we can detect in total within a household.

Total Phones is the total number of landline phones across all households, which were can match within a household. Note that these are landlines, not the mobile phone numbers so this number is typically lower because landlines are of limited use.

Total Emails is the number of emails that are owned between all houses. Please note we can’t expose these email addresses.

The next section of the report covers location data.

Urban means lives in a town or city in a more densely populated area. Suburban means lives just outside a town or city is a less densely populated area. Rural means characteristic of the countryside rather than the town in a sparsely populated area.

The next chart is the age breakdown by age segments.

The next chart shows a Social Matrix of those matched. This is where the mind reading comes in. You and gain valuable insights on your database. For instance, things like your audience could have a high % of “Luxury Lifestyle” meaning they are 52–64-year-olds living luxurious lives due to high-paying professional jobs and greater disposable income or “Core Families” meaning 40–51-year-olds with a strong focus on the family. Career and job are secondary leading to financial planning issues and lower credit status.

Other Insights include race and political party affiliations.

Insights Reports includes Household Income Data compared to the national average:

Information if they are charitable contributors in the community compared to the national average:

Home Value data compared to the national average:

It also includes Discretionary income data:

As well as Net Worth data compared to the national average:

Is your database list investing their assets? Invested Assets data is included in Insights Reports:

And more demographic data included gender and children in the household:

Not only can we take a deep dive with a consumer list, but also with businesses.  Insights Report for Business look a little different. Data includes top business types, top business organizations, # of employees and revenue.

For example, you can see how many employees each business has to determine if they are a small, medium, or enterprise operation:

So, what to do with all this data?  First, we can find these people online through custom audience matching and serve them a variety of different digital ads. Native (including video), display, video pre-roll, online audio, OTT or Social Mirror. So many options!

This data can be used for future targeting options or used for lookalike targeting to find other consumers or business that look like your list. Adding on social matrix info, political party, income, or even net worth could really expand the reach to an audience you may otherwise have missed.  Take your campaigns to a whole new level with Insights Reports and Custom Audience Matching!

The post Introducing the Insights Report for Consumers and Businesses appeared first on Vici Media.

How to Use Digital Advertising During the Holiday Season

Turkey Trots, Macy Day Parade, Black Friday, Menorahs, Hanukkah, Santa Claus, Tree Lightings, and New Year’s!  Throw in a few other days like Columbus Day and Veterans Day and you have a whole lot of celebrating being done over the months of October – December.

For ideas on Halloween, make sure you read this blog.

It’s true.  No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the holidays have arrived, and that means it’s time to cozy up with your in-laws and it’s also time that people are willing to open their wallets to spend money for others, and for themselves.  While in the spending mentality, what’s the best way to get your message in front of them?

First, let’s look at where a lot of people go to for gift giving of all kinds…Amazon.  If you aren’t selling on Amazon, that’s OK! I promise. You don’t need to be.  Amazon has created an opportunity for you take advantage of their Targeting Data, and use it to reach your potential customers with your digital advertising.

Amazon has several different ways you can target:

Behavioral – Showing your display, video, or OTT ads to specific consumers based on their Amazon purchase history, searches, and browsing, across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon properties and thousands of partner websites and apps.

Product Targeting – We build an audience of consumers who have searched, browsed or purchased specific products on Amazon, and show them your display, video, or OTT ad across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon properties and thousands of partner websites and apps.

Custom Audience – We take your list of customer emails or addresses, match them to Amazon users and show your display, video, or OTT ads across Amazon.com (display only), Amazon properties and thousands of partner websites and apps

Retargeting – Following people after they leave your website and showing them your display, video, or OTT ads across Amazon properties and thousands of partner websites and apps.

If you’re using Behavioral Targeting as a strategy in your marketing, know that with Amazon, you have tens of thousands of categories to choose from.   Whether you’re selling jewelry, furniture, home décor, restaurant gift cards, or tickets to a holiday concert, there’s a targeting category for that.

With Product Targeting, your targeting can be even more specific.  With this strategy, you can pick products that Amazon sells, and we’ll create the audience that you can target.  For example, to reach new parents, the products you might pick are infant car seats, diapers, and baby books.

Using Amazon’s Custom Audience targeting strategy allows you to take advantage of your client database, if you have emails and/or physical addresses (Amazon has these because they deliver to those addresses).  Once we have that database, we upload it to Amazon’s DSP and find out how many of those people we can find with Amazon profiles.  Then, we start serving ads to only those people (or create a lookalike audience) while they’re on Amazon.com (display only), on Amazon owned properties, or within the Amazon Network.   To do the Custom Audience on its own, without the lookalike audience, we would need 7,000 matches.

Retargeting is a great addition to any campaign, and Amazon is no different.  Retargeting allows us to reach the “low hanging fruit.”   What this means is that when people come to your website, it’s most likely because they’re interested in your product or service.  When those people leave your website, we want to stay top of mind and keep your ad in front of them, so they can come back to your site and become a customer.

Next, let’s look at Mobile Conquesting.

During this time of year, your customers are typically out and about more often than they are throughout the rest of the year.  Family comes to town, friends come and visit and it’s all about recreating memories and continuing traditions.  During this time, no matter where they are, you can pretty much bank on the fact that they’ll have their smart phones with them.  And, if you know where your customers are going to be, or where they currently spend time, and you could get your message in front of them, why wouldn’t you?

The plan here is two-fold.  First, we find the behavioral categories that line up with your target audience.   Let’s say you own a jewelry store.  In that case you’d want to target jewelry shoppers, maybe targeting men to buy jewelry for their significant other, or maybe luxury and affluent shoppers.   Once we know who we’re targeting, and what geographic area that you want to target, now comes the fun part.  The 2nd step is using geo-fencing to target specific locations/events where your customers may visit during the holidays.  We can geo-fence your competitors, the airports, shopping centers, and even the drive-through holiday light events.   In my opinion, the best part of this strategy is using the geo-retargeting element.  This allows us to continue to serve ads to the people that were inside of the geo-fences that we established for you.  Meaning, yes, the geo-fencing will target people while they’re at the restaurant, bar, or holiday event.  The geo-retargeting allows us to continue to target those mobile devices when they continue to celebrate throughout the holidays.

Lastly, two more quick ideas.  One, if you’re not already utilizing Facebook and Instagram’s Carousel Ad to promote everything you want your potential customers to see this holiday season, you should be. Let’s face it.  People are on social media all the time, especially during the holidays.  Two, be sure your Google Business Profile is up to date so when your potential customers start looking for you online, they can find all they need to about your business!  Good luck this holiday season and remember that there is a way that your message can be in front of your target audience over the next few months.  You just need to right partner to help you execute.

The post How to Use Digital Advertising During the Holiday Season appeared first on Vici Media.

How Are You Engaging With Consumers on Your Website?

Let’s play a game where you guess what generation I am classified from clues that I give you. First clue is that I am in bed every night at 8:30pm. Second clue is that I don’t have a TikTok account. Third clue is that I have seen Engelbert Humperdinck live in concert…twice. From those three stats, you might say I would be considered a Baby Boomer, so I’m anywhere from late 50’s to early 70’s. Believe it or not, even though I am an old soul, technically I am a millennial. For the most part, I don’t have the “normal” qualities of a millennial and I act more like a Baby Boomer, however, when it comes to certain things, I certainly am a millennial!

One of the times I am is when it comes to dealing with or interacting with a business. If I want more information on something or even if it’s something customer service related, I want to find the way to interact with them the least; I don’t want to pick up the phone or go to their location. I would much rather go to the website, their Facebook page, text with them, or utilize a Live Chat feature they might have on their website. Live Chat is a great tool for businesses to incorporate into their website because it allows for consumers to interact with a business the way that they want to. Me, being a millennial, would much rather go to a website and use Live Chat to speak with someone and give up my contact information. My parents on the other hand, they are “old school” and feel more comfortable going to a physical location or picking up the phone and speaking with someone. Here is an example of how Amazon is a business that offers various ways for their consumers to interact with their team by having the Live Chat feature, or requesting a phone call:

Having a Live Chat agent on a website is the difference between brands talking at consumers, which is all a traditional website can do, and talking with their consumers. Live Chat is staffed by live humans who are trained agents that have knowledge about the business from their website, and through a series of questions that the business will answer. The other upside to having a Live Chat agent is that it allows for a business to have representation 24/7/365, without paying an employee to be available 24/7/365. With over 50% of consumers saying that a business needs to be available 24/7, Live Chat is a great tool to make that a possibility. Also, by having representation around the clock, this allows for leads to be captured, even when a business isn’t open. If it is late at night and I am just getting around to check out a product or service and I go to a website that has Live Chat and can give them my contact information for them to follow up with me, that is something that I can check off my to-do list, and there is nothing more satisfying to a millennial than crossing off something on their to-do list!

Another reason to consider adding a Live Chat feature to a website is because of the increasing amount of information that someone can receive from a Google Business Profile. This can act almost like a full screen sized mobile ad because it lists the address, hours, phone number, if that business accepts appointments, reviews, service options, updates, directions, menu (if applicable), and more about that business. Because of this, searchers are getting the information they are looking for without even going to the website, resulting in a “zero click search”. Live Chat can integrate with a Google Business Profile so the chat option can appear in Google Maps on a mobile device, and also in Google Search on a mobile device. Sixty five percent of Google searches do NOT result in a click to a website, so even if potential customers don’t visit the website of that business, they can still interact with that company, because of Live Chat.

When it comes to digital advertising, Live Chat isn’t exactly considered a marketing tool, but more of a lead generation tool. The main goal of the live chat agent is to gather four key pieces of information:

The visitors name
The visitors contact information (a phone number or email address)
What that visitor is looking for is something that business offers
The geographic location of that visitor

If the chat agent gathers that information, that is considered a sales lead and the business can then follow up with that lead. Live Chat is also a great way to demonstrate a return on investment because you’re able to the trail that consumers are engaging in. We can show how many people saw an ad, clicked on it, went to the landing page, and then initiated a chat with the Live Chat agent. From there, the business receives the transcript of the chat that look place and can follow up with that person and convert them into a customer. This is a great tool that shows the sales journey from someone seeing an ad because of a targeted campaign, to become a customer.

Now for certain types of businesses, it might make more sense to have a Virtual Assistant type Live Chat on their site, instead of a Live Chat agent. Virtual Assistant is for simple conversions like signing up for a newsletter, collecting emails, or asking for more info, without paying per sales leads that comes through.

Virtual Assistant is an automated bot, so it is not staffed by a live agent, and instead of paying $10 per lead fee, the business pays a flat fee per month. If a business isn’t trying to obtain leads but instead are trying to get more email addresses, or newsletter sign ups, subscriptions, etc., having the Virtual Assistant is the more cost-effective route.  Keep in mind Virtual Assistant does not currently integrate with a Google Business Profile or have the ability to do SMS text messaging, like the Live Chat agent.

With this option, the website visitor is presented with up to four options to choose from. After the visitor clicks one of the options the Virtual Assistant can ask for name, email, phone number, and offer a link to a page of the website.

Here are some example bot options for when the Virtual Assistant asks, “What can I help you with?” to visitors:

Home Improvement

Free Estimates
Scheduling
Support
Contact Information

Legal

Free Consultation
Contact Information
Existing Clients

Medical

Services
Appointments
Patient Support
Contact Information

B2B

Pricing
Products
Contact Information
FAQ

Education

Tuition
Tours
Contact Information
Current Students

As consumers, one thing that we have come to expect when dealing with a business is good customer service, no matter where we go. When helping businesses come up with ideas for their ads, one of the top things I always hear when I ask “what sets you apart from your competitors?” is that they have excellent customer service. That isn’t something that sets you apart from your competitors because that is something that is expected everywhere, but customer service has become a broad term. Does it mean adding a personal touch, responding quickly to questions, not being on hold for long, or maybe offering a discount? To me, the wanna be Baby Boomin’ Millennial, it means all of those, but something else I really enjoy, is being able to interact with a business the way I want to, when I want to.

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How to Create Compelling Online Videos

Video is Hot Hot Hot and stats prove that it is in high demand by digital users.

User-generated and professional videos increase brand engagement by 28%.

Particularly millennials trust user-generated content and video twice as much.

And 80% would rather watch a live video than read a blog. https://livestream.com/blog/62-must-know-stats-live-video-streaming

Hopefully you keep reading this blog to learn more about how to create online videos that will ultimately engage your audience.

First step is to remember the ABC and D’s

Attention, Branding, Connection & Direction.

Let’s talk about them each individually.

ATTENTION:

Capturing your audiences’ attention from the start is key and keeping their attention. Attention is a top driver of high-performing ads. What does this mean? The first five seconds is crucial, considering all we are exposed to online daily. Consumers love a good story and this can be done with great audio or visuals or both.  You can achieve this with exaggerated reactions, sound effects or voices that cut thru the clutter.

Imagine you are telling a story to a family member or close friend; you need to jump in right from the beginning in order for them to be interested in what you have to say. Focus on what you have to sell whether it be a product or service. Using multiple angles and close-ups are also some nice video tips to keep the user engaged. It is important to pair that with nice  visuals to draw the viewer in. For instance, if I saw this video below, I would wonder why is there a dog and a kid in space and I want to view more.

Many believe videos have to be overproduced, but many user-generated content videos perform just as well as higher quality content as it seems more genuine.

BRANDING:

Making sure your video conveys an accurate picture of your business or brand is important. This can be with consistent logo usage, colors and text. Don’t abandon things that would not resonate to the users and are off-brand.  This can also include consistent music, voices and/or jingles. If these standards have not been established, it is important to make some decisions so they can be carried out across all creative messaging. You want them to remember your brand and set the tone for what your brand is.

CONNECTION:

If you have ever met someone for the first time or even gone on a first date, it is important to connect from the very beginning. First impressions are key. In this case remember after you hook them in the beginning and grab their attention, you want to keep their attention. Make sure your video is not too long and is fluid and follows the flow of a heartbeat, nice highs and lows. You can do this with repeating visuals and make sure the story you are telling is not complicated and continue to use close-ups and visuals to carry it out.

DIRECTION

Lastly, direction. What is it you want the consumer to do? Remember a special offer? Call a number? Visit a location? Feel a certain way about your brand? This should be woven into the video and also included at the end as reminder to the user to DO WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO. If  you have ever heard the phrase, “Keep it simple stupid!”, this is important so it is clear what you want them to do. Do not overcomplicate things by having them remember too many steps. The call to action should be simple and concise.

Ok, now we have covered the A, B, C and D’s. You are Ready for the Action!

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How do Clients use Digital Advertising in October?

The Starbucks Pumpkin Spice latte debuts today, August 30, 2022.  Yes, there’s a feeling in the air with marketers, that October is right around the corner.  That means pumpkin-spiced everything. Walks to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness. A high volume of commercials from the politicians who are running for office.  Fall is officially upon us, and advertisers have a lot of reasons to advertise in October.

I think October is primarily known for being home to Halloween.  And with Halloween comes haunted houses, city-wide Halloween Movie Nights, themed nights at bars, and so on.  With events, you typically don’t have the opportunity to promote for months at a time.  In fact, you only usually get a full month’s commitment to run in 3 or 4 weeks.   Luckily, with digital, promoting an event is something that you can do.  When promoting an event for Halloween themed events, as mentioned above, there are a few products that are most popular.

Facebook and Instagram:

Let’s face it.  As people start prepping for this holiday, pictures and conversations of costume ideas get shared, liked, and some of them even go viral.  Having presence on these social media platforms will be a great place for your client to promote their events.  Using Facebook and Instagram, there are 2 types of ads that are the most effective.

First, the Carousel Ad.

What’s great about these Carousel Ads are that you can showcase so many aspects of your clients’ events.  Is there a costume contest?  Food and drink specials? Specialty music?  Do they have photos/videos from last year?   We recommend a combination of 10 images or videos to showcase what’s taking place at the event.  That means up to 10 different ways to get someone’s attention!   And each image or video can link to a different page of the client’s website that talks about that aspect of the event.  Are they selling tickets?  Have one of the images link to the page where a customer can buy a ticket today.  Is it a Haunted House and they are only open on weekends?  Have an image talking about hours and link to the page of the site that lists the hours.   This type of ad offers so much flexibility.

The second ad type that you can use is the Event Response Ad.  This is something you would pair with the carousel ad above.  Event Response ads can work with either B2B or B2C events because you get to choose the targeting criteria.   Facebook layers thousands of targeting categories on everyday users, like where they are, their job title, their age, gender or interests.  On the left side of your Facebook Business Page is a link called “Events”, where you create a free event with the date, address, and all other pertinent details:

From there, we use that event to target potential attendees inside their News Feed.   When someone expresses interest in your event by clicking “Interested”, the event details will automatically be added to their calendar on Facebook.   Facebook continues to gain frequency on those interested by posting alert reminders about the event as it draws closer.   Your event also will show up in your friends News Feed as something they could be interested in.   Here’s an example of an Event Response ad with advertising power behind it:

When using Facebook to target people for Halloween, here are a few categories that may help:

Halloween

Haunted Attraction

Haunted House

Halloween Costumes

Halloween Horror Nights

Horror Movies

The 2nd product to target your October events are Social Mirror Ads.

These ads are knocking it out of the park with our clients, averaging 7x higher CTR than the national average!  With Social Mirror Ads, we are taking your Social Media content, from any of the 8 major social media platforms, and mirroring that content onto other apps and websites to target potential customers when they are not on social media.

The first step is the client would give us the URL of the social post they want to use to create the ad – in this example, it’s a tweet that this advertiser published:

Then, we take that post and create it as an ad – that looks just like (and links to) the social post.  Again, these ads are running across thousands of apps and websites (not the social media platform).

Whether your client is like most other businesses, using Facebook and Instagram, or on any of the other 6 major social media platforms:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Pinterest

Snapchat

YouTube

TikTok

We can even create a Story Ad which mimics many of these platforms story format.  Using this type of advertising allows them to enhance their social media presence by putting it in front of their target audience when they aren’t on social media.  This is a great opportunity, especially for those clients that invest a lot of time and money into the creation of their content!

Targeting through Social Mirror also allows you to be pretty specific when looking for your customers.  Here are some categories you can use via Social Mirror:

Halloween

Halloween Candy Buyers

Halloween Costume Buyers

Halloween Super Shoppers

Halloween Products

Halloween Party Supply

Halloween Decorations

Halloween TV Specials

Halloween Enthusiasts

Holiday Entertainment Lovers

Horror Enthusiasts

Horror Movie Fans

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to help your clients promote their upcoming Halloween events, or just change their targeting to the demo of people that are going to spend a LOT of money on Halloween.  Also, as you’re speaking with your clients, here are a few stats you can share with them.

Americans spent around $10.14 billion on Halloween in 2021 (a record high).
The average amount spent on costumes, candy, decorations, and greeting cards per person is $102.74.
45% of consumers shopped for Halloween in September of 2021 or earlier.
39% shopped during the first 2 weeks of October.

During October, you also see a lot of pink, representative of the support for Breast Cancer awareness.   In my career as a radio salesperson, and even since I’ve entered the world of digital 6+ years ago, I’ve seen a lot of business owners give back to their communities by supporting their local Breast Cancer organizations.

There are a lot of ways to be able to do this and for businesses to promote their dedication to their community.  One of the top ways that I would recommend to a business owner would be using video.  I say this because when someone can convey their message verbally, there’s a lot of power that can be used in the tone of your voice, as well as in the words you speak.

There are a lot of video options out there, but I’ll share our top recommendations.

Video Pre-Roll

Have you ever gone to watch the latest highlights on ESPN of the game that took place yesterday?  Or maybe wanted to go watch a DIY tutorial on HGTV?   If you did, you probably saw a commercial play before you can watch the content you went there to watch.   That’s a video pre-roll ad.  They are either :15 or :30 in length and can be done with behavioral targeting, keyword targeting, artificial intelligence, and retargeting, and can run across all devices. These ads can be skippable or un-skippable, but that isn’t something that the advertiser is able to dictate. Whether ads are skippable or not is determined by the website in which they are appearing. By having a combination of skippable and un-skippable ads, those un-skippable ads are aiding in branding and awareness, and with skippable ads, research shows that people who have the option to skip but don’t, are the consumer who are really interested in your product or service.

Another opportunity to utilize video is through OTT (Over-The-Top) Advertising.  OTT is video programming that is transmitted via the Internet, not cable or traditional broadcast. People can watch their programs of choice by watching through connected TV’s (like an Apple TV), using a set top box like a Roku or a Chromecast that turns their “dumb TV” into a smart TV, or through a gaming console. These ads are similar to TV ads where the ad will run inside of the programming that the user is streaming, and they can be :15 or :30 in length.

Using both Video Pre-Roll (VPR) or Over-The-Top (OTT) to promote a business’ desire to give back to the community is a great strategy.  Here are a few of the categories you could choose from for your clients’ targeting:

Charitable Donors

Interested in Charity by type of Charity (Animals, Health, etc.)

Charity Event Attendees

Amount people have donated to charity

And in this case, for Breast Cancer Awareness specifically:

Breast Cancer Fund Raisers

Breast Cancer Caregivers

Charity Walks

Cause marketing is a great opportunity for your clients to give back to the community and bring awareness not only to their generosity, but also to the cause they are supporting.  In October, I’m sure there are many options, Breast Cancer awareness just being one of them.

Lastly, come October, Politicians are in full swing of their Ad Campaigns, which makes right now a great opportunity to start speaking with those candidates, their representatives, and the organizations behind issues.  No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, you know you’re going to see and hear ads from everyone that’s running.

Digitally, we see a lot more money being spent online (over 22% of budgets).

So where online is money being spent?  From what we saw this year during the primaries, there are a few products that I saw get most of the budget:

Over-the-Top (OTT)

Social Mirror

Mobile Conquesting – Address Targeting.

Since Over-the-Top (OTT) and Social Mirror were covered earlier I won’t repeat the same info.  However, here are just some of the reasons these two products are used (think behavioral categories):

Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting

I think we can all agree that every time there’s an election, we get bombarded with pieces of direct mail for every candidate we know about (and maybe some we didn’t).   Well, think of Address Targeting as Direct Mail for the Internet.

These politicians have huge databases.  Maybe it’s from their team knocking on doors, or information they’ve gathered in other manners.   How this works is the political team would provide you with the list of physical addresses.  Then we draw hundreds or even thousands of tiny geo-fences around an address (business or residential) to serve ads to consumers on their mobile phones and tablets.  Address Retargeting is continuing to serve ads to those same people when they leave their houses and use their mobile devices.  Advertisers can target a list of current customers, past customers, or any type of first party database list they have collected.  These ads can be mobile display or video ads.

Here’s a visual of impressions served to hundreds of targeting addresses:

With this tool, they can pinpoint the exact houses (or businesses) they want to reach.  We can also reach 100% of an address list that they have (except for PO Boxes and specific apartment numbers).   This strategy also uses frequency within the campaign, meaning we want to hit each of these addresses’ multiple times throughout the month, as opposed to just one time with Direct Mail.

Keep in mind that because Address Targeting is sent through mobile devices, be aware of the conversion you are asking the end consumer to complete on the website.  Typically, for political, it’ll just be branding and awareness, but if someone has to fill out a long form, a multi-field application, or a conversion that is better suited for a computer with a keyboard, this product may not be a good fit.  You want to make sure the action you’re asking a customer to complete after they click your ad is easy to do on a mobile device.

Whether your clients sell pumpkin spiced lattes, own a Haunted House, are supporting Susan B Komen or another non-profit, or are wanting to get elected for a specific office, October is jammed pack full of advertising opportunities.   These are just a few.

The post How do Clients use Digital Advertising in October? appeared first on Vici Media.

Are You Investing in Digital this Political Season?

The “ber” months are approaching quickly and that means cooler weather, reasons to eat a lot of pie, and everyone’s favorite- political season. That’s right, political season is already ramping up and we are seeing and hearing ads for all sorts of political races from local ballots to nationwide races. This year, political ad spending is set to smash records in the midterm elections with $9.7 billion dollars being spent on political ads during the 2022 election season.

Now, chances are that your particular candidate isn’t going to have millions of dollars to spend on a digital campaign, but take a look at your local races like Mayors, Clerk of Courts, County Assessor, District Judges, Prosecuting Attorney, State Representatives for your area’s districts, Family Court Judges, etc. On the local level, there are a lot of different ways you can use digital for political races and get a slice of that political pie.

The map above is broken out into congressional districts and it’s a great illustration showing the predicted percentage of local spending that political advertisers will take up as we march closer to that political window. Anything shaded in dark blue to light purple and then into dark purple means that those areas are predicted to have political spending be as much as 50% of the local ad spend, so this can help give you an idea on how much is going to be spent in your area for political.

Something else that can be helpful when talking to political candidates or campaign managers about how much they are looking to spend is to ask them what the average amount spent per eligible voter is. That number can vary greatly from $5.00 a voter, to more than $100 a voter but the average amount spent per eligible voter is $40.87. When talking with campaign managers or candidates themselves, you can ask them what their win number is, or how many votes that they have calculated that they need to get in order to win. Most will have calculated this number or at the very least looked at the prior election to know what the win number was for that winning candidate, and then you can multiply that by the number spent per eligible voter to get a benchmark on what a budget should be. For example, if we are dealing with a candidate with a win number of 500, their budget with a per eligible voter spend of $40.87 would be $20,435. That sounds like a pretty hefty number, but their opponents are looking at the same numbers they are, so they want to be aggressive!

When it comes to political races, broadcast TV is going to continue to get the elephants share of the spend, but digital ad spending is the next in line with the highest level of ad spend at $697 million dollars being spent. With 43% of voters searching for more information about a candidate after viewing an ad, digital is coming up at the heels of broadcast TV. Broadcast also has some restrictions when it comes to running ads because they don’t have endless amounts of inventory, so this is a great opportunity to talk about different digital offerings, like Over the Top (OTT) for those campaigns getting shut out of broadcast TV due to limited inventory.

OTT is definitely a top product for political and it’s estimated that $1.5 billion will be spent on OTT ads this year, which is surpassing the $1.3 billion that is expected to be spent on Google and Facebook. By using OTT, it is great for that top of funnel awareness to get the candidates name out there, but it also allows you to get more targeted by utilizing Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Retargeting, and the targeting categories are really great for political:

Another well-known strategy for political is Mobile Conquesting because of the ability to target by some type of database list. Anybody who is running for an office is going to have access to all kinds of database lists either that they have collected, or through their affiliated party. With Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting, they could target voter lists so that we are reaching people that are affiliated with a certain party, or donor lists where we show ads to previous donors and ask them to donate again. With this strategy, we are going to reach 100% of that list and they can use display ads, video ads, and even add in Cross Platform targeting ads where we are reaching people on multiple devices and not just on their mobile device.

Now if the candidate doesn’t have a list to target or just wants to reach a little bit more of a broader audience, we can use Mobile Conquesting with Behavioral Targeting. With this targeting strategy, we can actually target by Congressional District as the geo, and the categories are also pretty specific:

The most common type of political campaigns are those that are running for offices, whether it be local, statewide, or national, but there are other type of political campaigns that you want to keep your eye our for, and those are ballot initiatives. Ballot Initiatives is a means by which citizens may propose to create, amend, or repeal a state law or constitutional provision through collecting petition signatures from a certain minimum number of registered voters. These types of initiatives or campaigns also have advertising budgets. One really good resource to use when looking for theses ballot initiatives is ballotpedia.org. This website lists national elections, state elections, city, county, ballot measures, local elections, etc., and all you have to do is go to the left side and look at ballot measures in your area and you can get an idea for what is being proposed, created, amended, repealed, etc..

Now that you have an idea on who you want to talk to and even some products that you want to talk about, here comes the hard part and it’s getting that meeting. How do you reach out and make yourself stand out compared to all the different types of media that are also trying to get a piece of the political pie? How do you position yourself as an expert? How do you make the candidate or campaign manager want to meet with you instead of someone else? You want to make sure you are using a valid business reason! Ask them if they are looking to target people by their political affiliation, interests, age, income, or voting district, and talk about the products you can do that with such as Video Pre-Roll, Social Mirror, OTT, Native Display, Native Video, or Display ads. Maybe reaching a large Hispanic population is something that they are interested in. If so, you have an entire presentation deck tailored for that. Talk about all the different ways that they can use a database that they might have with Native Email Matching, Facebook Custom Audience Matching and Lookalike, or Mobile Conquesting Address Targeting and Address Retargeting.

Once you do get that meeting, make sure you are doing your homework ahead of time. There is the potential for a lot of money with political campaigns, so you want to be prepared. During that first meeting, have an idea of who their target voter is, but clarify it with the candidate or campaign manager. Are they looking for certain ages or genders, is there a certain income they want to target or certain interests. If it is a Democratic candidate, be sure to highlight some of those categories that they will be interested in. If there is a certain ballot initiative, see what categories would be the best fit for that initiative. Ask them what the geo is that they want to focus on. If it’s a county race, you will want to make sure you are hitting all the zip codes in that county. Also, check out their Social Media accounts to not only see what accounts they have, but also get a feel for what they are about, their style, where they’re from, and even their values so that you have an idea of who you are going to meeting with and representing.  Don’t forget to use your Political Capabilities Presentation deck that we’ve created for you in your shared drive.

Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll even find out what kind of pie they like.

The post Are You Investing in Digital this Political Season? appeared first on Vici Media.

Are You Following the Proper Steps to Close Digital Sales?

ABC is an acronym for a lot of things. If you’re learning CPR, they teach you ABC to look for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. If you’re a parent, ABC could mean “Another Blowout Coming”. In the broadcasting world, ABC stands for American Broadcasting Company. In sales, ABC is most commonly known as “Always Be Closing”, and in this case, ABC isn’t as easy as 1-2-3, so let’s look at some ways to make it a little easier when pitching and closing your digital prospects.

In a typical sales process, there are six steps:

Prospecting
Preparation
Presentation
Overcoming Objections
Closing the Sale
Follow UpFor prospecting, some great tools that you can use when looking for digital clients are Ghostery, SpyFu.com, and Facebook. Ghostery is an app you can download on your phone, or a paid extension that you can install on your browser. What you’re using this for is to see if that prospect has any advertising trackers. If they don’t have any advertising trackers, that is a good prospect to start from the beginning and mention some easier products like Display Ads. with. If they do have some trackers, this is a great opportunity to talk about some of the more advanced products like Social Mirror ads, Amazon, or Mobile Conquesting.

With Spyfu.com, you can look and see what some of the most popular keywords are that people are searching for for that business. This can help you get that first initial meeting with the prospecting by using a valid business reason like “We can target keywords related to your business such as (insert keywords found from SpyFu.com).  We do this by showing your online ads to people who visit webpages that contain your keywords. Can I schedule a meeting with you to talk about this and some ideas to market your business?”

For Facebook, you can actually see if a business is currently running ads on Facebook. If you go to their Facebook business page and go to Page Transparency, it will show it they are currently running ads or not.

If we take it one step further, we can see where they are running ads. If you click “Go to Ad Library”, now you can see they are running on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Audience Network, and Facebook Messenger. If they are not using all the platforms that are available, this is where you can use your valid business reason to talk about Facebook and all the platforms that are available. “I was on your (Facebook) or (Instagram) page today and I was wondering if you were taking advantage of all the new ways Facebook now has to target your ads with products like Carousel ads with click to call options or Lead Ads, and run these ads not just on Facebook but on Facebook Audience Network which features thousands of top apps Facebook has partnered with, Facebook’s Messenger app, and even where we can take list of potential or past customers and target them with your Facebook ads. Can I schedule a meeting with you to talk about this and some ideas to market your business?” If they are doing all the platforms, you can complement them on using Facebook as a piece of their marketing puzzle, and talk about using that same post, but reaching people on other websites and apps with Social Mirror ads.

Now that we have our prospecting down, let’s look at what is involved for step two where we are going to do our preparation. The worst thing you can do when going into a sales presentation is to be unprepared.

Before you meet with the prospect, do your homework. See what kind of trackers they have from Ghostery, look up their keywords on SpyFu.com, see how many locations they have, look at different social media sites and see what kind of platforms they use. The answers for all these questions are not only going to help you put together your presentation, but it’s also going to show the prospect that you took the time to do some research before meeting with them. During that first meeting, you are also going to figure out a little bit on what they have done in the past that has worked for them, where they want to reach people, who their target audience is, and what goals they would want for a digital campaign. Are they looking for in-store sales, or website traffic, or branding and awareness? That is important information to know in order to come back with a custom proposal to pitch back to the prospect. You also want to be sure to ask the prospect how much budget they want to use and when a good time would be to get back together and go over the customized proposal. The goal of that first meeting with the prospect is to get the second meeting, step number three.

When presenting the tailored presentation to the prospect, communication is key. Be sure to guide them through the process so they know what to expect. You want to gain the credibility and trust with the prospect because if they feel confident in you and you come across as wanting to help them and they trust you, they are more likely to move forward with the sale, bringing you to step number five, closing the sale.

Before we get to ABC, closing the sale, there are some points that you want to make sure you are hitting as you are presenting your presentation. First, remember that you want to present yourself as an advertising expert. You want to make sure that you’re explaining the products in a way they client can understand and that you’re expressing your belief in the plan. For example, “These are the categories for Facebook that we found that are going to be best to reach the audience that you want in order to solve your challenge. We’re also going to include Retargeting because we know people are going to your website, so we want to stay in front of them”. That is going to help you build that credibility and trust. You also want to let the prospect know that you are looking at this marketing plan from their point of view and physically say to them “Here’s what I would do”. Those five words strung together carry a lot of weight. If you deliver this with confidence and put yourself in their shoes, it’s going to show. “I think these might be the best categories that might make the most sense” compared to “these are the best categories that are available to target your audience on Facebook” is a big difference and it comes across with a lot more confidence.

You also want to incorporate trial closes into your presentation. Trial closes are questions you are asking during the presentation that move the prospect further to that “yes”. Ask them how they feel about what you have presented so far and be sure to use open ended questions, or questions that can’t be answered with a “yes” or a “no”:

With all the information you’ve received so far, what questions do you have?
How do you feel about the product and what we’ve discussed so far today?
What do you think about the products I’ve presented?
If you could change something about this proposal, what would it be?

By asking these types of questions, you can better understand the customer’s perspective and draw conclusions about their needs.

The next step is overcoming the objections, and more than likely, you will get some during the closing process. The first thing you want to do is listen and not interrupt when the prospect starts to talk. Let them empty their cup. Active listening will make the prospect feel like you have good intentions, and it will help to continue and build that trust and credibility. You also want to summarize the prospects intentions and repeat back to them their concerns. This is another opportunity to ask more open-ended questions that could help you to reveal other concerns they might have. When you respond to them, address all the pain points that they mentioned, even if they seem trivial.

Now comes the fun part; you’re going to go ahead and close that deal! When you do close the deal and you get that pretty John Hancock signature, talk to the client about some potential conversions to track and show them how that would work. Show them those conversions on a laptop or a desktop, but then also show them on a mobile device. Ask them what type of creative they will need. Is that something they are creating or is that something your team is creating? If they are creating it, you want to make sure they have all the correct specs to do so. If you are creating it, what kind of look or colors do they want the ad to have? What is the click through landing page? Sometimes it is the homepage of the website, but sometimes it’s not. If they are promoting a certain sale or a certain product, you want to be sure they are landing on that offer page or that service page. What is the call to action going to be? Do they want to sell tickets, do they want phone calls, people to go to the website, or click on a certain page? You also want to explain that the client most likely won’t see their ad, and be sure to get out ahead of that one. Also give them a sample report for the products that you pitched and let them know you’ll come back and go over their monthly reports with them. This last step is tying everything together and putting a pretty little bow on it. You are continuing to guide them through the process and also continuing to strengthen that credibility and trust.

And then the final step in the sales process, is to follow up. Don’t just sell the deal and then only come around when it’s time for a renewal because you won’t get one. Be sure to stay in touch with the client. Sent them an email with a fun little factoid or stat about their industry and digital advertising. Keep on top of their creative and make sure it is being changed as needed. Make sure their website it secure and up to date. Be sure you’re holding their hand all the way from the beginning to the end.

Now that you know your ABCs, it can be as easy and 1,2,3, so go out and do it all over again.

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