Do digital and radio sales live in two different worlds at your company? Assuming your team is selling third-party digital, consider how siloed this approach is. Offering a variety of advertising tactics to your customers is essential to meet their needs and increase your share. Even if you sell both, your efficiency and performance may falter because they aren’t integrated.
If you want to deliver both types of advertising to your clients, you need a way to make it easy and simple for everyone. Integrating digital and radio sales is the favored path.
When you do this successfully, it has benefits for your sellers and customers. Let’s find out what those are and the technology you need to achieve this.
Digital Ad Sales Are Reviving Broadcast Budgets
Growing your station revenue can no longer depend on linear ad spots. Most projections for broadcast radio are looking at declines or remaining flat after this year’s political boost. eMarketer projects that 2023 will see a 0.2% increase, followed by a 0.1% decrease in 2024. Conversely, digital ad sales have a projected growth of 12.9% in 2023 and 8.4% in 2024.
In light of this forecast, many radio stations have already been expanding their portfolio to add digital. Organizations are focusing on their existing relationships and upskilling sellers to digital experts to accelerate revenue growth. We’ve been able to capture such successes in our case studies.
Read the Ozark Marketing case study to see how they experienced a 15% sales growth!
With the urgency to fill the gaps in station revenue budgets, you have to look at advertising holistically and adopt technology that makes it easy to integrate.
Integrating Digital and Radio Sales: Benefits for Your Organization
The benefits of integrating for your company go beyond the ability to have more revenue streams. True integration and the workflows that support it deliver more advantages.
If you’re selling both but depend on multiple platforms, it erodes your revenue because of inefficiencies. For example, if it requires hours and numerous systems to propose, execute and bill radio and digital sales, your sellers have less time to prospect and close new business.
The key is to consolidate radio and digital activities into one platform, so you can:
- Propose with one tool.
- Submit order entry and execution in one place.
- Streamline accounts receivable and consolidate invoicing.
- Deliver reports on all tactics.
If you have a cross-channel ad platform that can simplify all this into one interface, your sellers will appreciate the ease and convenience. They’ll also have more time for selling and participating in digital sales training to speak about digital and sell it confidently.
You’ll remove the barriers that are holding your team back from success. They’ll be more efficient and productive every day!
How Integrating Digital and Radio Sales Supports Your Advertisers
Local businesses seek out integrated solutions. They don’t want to manage multiple vendors and bills. They also realize that campaigns in silos don’t perform as well and would prefer to work with one trusted advisor. When they analyze performance and what to do next, they’d rather not have to sift through multiple reports.
Your expertise in the local market is now available to them for both radio ad spots and digital advertising. With integrated campaigns, they may also see a lift in digital results when they are coupled with radio.
Managing Digital and Radio Sales Is Easy with Marketron NXT
It’s not simply about selling third-party digital to advertisers. It’s about doing it in a way that causes little friction for sellers and their clients. As you look to the future of revenue generation for your organization, you want technology that makes things easier. Everybody can appreciate the ease, and that’s what you’ll get and more with Marketron NXT. It’s the only platform designed with broadcast sellers in mind, setting you up for success from day one.
It covers every step of the sales process, enables campaign integration and provides users with award-winning digital training. It’s the tool you need to move your sales team to the next level.
