20 action tips for updating digital media kits
From our survey of digital local media kits, we identified 20 action tips that make digital kits more useful as sales tools for both sales reps and advertisers:
1.Separate the digital and onair/print media kits, then list products under each category.
2. For digital kits use visual icons with text links to illustrate product groups. Include infographics for audiences so advertisers can also visualize audience data.
3. Each product should have a page with a visual of "what the product is." Extras can include key benefits, quick definitions of glossary terms, la carte pricing and a testimonial.
4. Include interactive examples or demos for online product pages for video, audio and rich media ads.
5. Show banner ad sizes - and modular print sizes - visually as bright color blocks where they appear in-copy.
6. Capture and retain advertisers contacts online through call-tracking numbers and email registrations. Your online media kit is also a lead capture form! Place contact phone numbers and forms to "stay" on all pages in a prominent position, or place "call to action" phone number prominently on every audience and product page.
7. Recommend multi-media packages as well as a la carte offerings. If pricing is not-public, provide secure areas of the media kit site where sales people in the field can still find all the packages in an organized place on the cloud from a tablet.
8.Use tablets and flipbooks such as FlipSnack to present complex information in simple visual decks. Have at least one department tablet on hand for sales to check-out.
9. Create separate short-form slide presentations made up of seven to twelve slides for digital-only sellers, or separate kits for big-money sales categories such as political advertising.
10. Create separate bundles specific to small advertisers that expand market share. Name packages appropriately, usch as "Digital start-up," "Check-up," "Findability" or "Identity bundles" that include basic digital services with some advertising included.
11. Revamp navigational structures, if new products have been patched on top of old formats. Start by listing top navigation categories, then sub categories, then elements on the page. Avoid duplicative navigation, and put rates and/or a call to action at the end of each audience and product page.
12. Include testimonials at the end of sales decks or place a single testimonial on each Product Pages or Package.
13. Experiment with enhancing or changing the advertising brand to look more like an agency. Decide what needs to look different, what needs to include design elements of original brand elements for consistency based on company strategy.
14. Offer a "Free ad" prompt or "Ad specials" forms to prompt to capture more advertiser contacts.
15. Allow advertisers to sign-up for text-alerts for remnant space specials, event sponsorships, and free e-newsletters. Allow each user to pick and choose the method of contact and make her or his choice of the products about which she’d like to be alerted.
16.Create educational bi-weekly or monthly e-newsletters to showcase advertisers and advertising products and seasonal advertising opportunities, and include testimonials. Prominently display a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to this e-newsletter on each page of the media kit.
17.Don’t assume that leaving key information out of the online media kit will prompt a phone or email conversation between prospective advertiser and sales rep. The result might well be that that advertiser will head to the competitor’s site to find all the advertising information and tools. If key information is left out the phone number to contact a live person should be prominently featured in its place.
18. Use video to entice advertisers to new products, especially non-traditional products such as quaranteed clicks, leads dashboards, video, multi-media packages or search.
19. Post event sponsorship opportunities with dates (and multi-media packages if possible) and a calendar marked with key seasonal dates.
20. Remember that that a company's digital media kit is its own message to advertisers. It can showcase a company as secretive, stodgy and out-of-touch, or showcase a company as a digitally savvy marketer able to help merchants create better marketing strategies.
The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.
