Do you feel like your digital advertising solutions are hard to differentiate from the competition? At this stage, most of the products themselves are a commodity. The basics of display, geofencing and streaming ads don’t look that unique in terms of fundamentals. It’s easy to feel like you don’t have an edge in selling local digital campaigns.
If you think about all general products in the world, you can put most into the commodity category. However, some brands prevail while others don’t. You are in an excellent position to win your market when you can bring your expertise, high-quality inventory and the ability to sell multiple types of ad products. Here’s how to stand out in the crowd.
How Your Digital Advertising Offerings Can Get Attention
There are three crucial ways to rise to the top of the competition in a commodity market. Let’s review each.
You’re a Market Expert in the Most Trusted Medium
Radio stations have strong roots in the community. Most have been around for decades, growing as the cities around them have. Local businesses appreciate this connection, which does a lot to build trust. Radio’s trust factor gives you an opening with these advertisers.
You also have the advantage when it comes to understanding your market. A national agency can’t provide these insights like you can. What’s happening economically on a large scale doesn’t necessarily correlate to the experience of your Main Street.
You have insights to share with them that aren’t possible without being on the ground and working with many other local businesses.
If the digital advertising offerings are really apples to apples, your expertise and the trust associated with your brand can be the deciding factor.
Inventory Quality Does Matter
One aspect of digital ads that isn’t the same across all offerings is inventory quality, which describes the websites, apps or streaming content serving digital ads. It directly corresponds with the DSP (demand-side platform) for programmatic and SSP (supply-side platform) for OTT/CTV connected to third-party digital advertising systems.
Inventory quality is not uniform across DSPs and SSPs. Why does this matter? Ads serving on low-quality content may underperform in terms of clicks and play-through rates. Advertisers will also have deep concerns about their brand being next to this content.
Transparency is essential here. Delivering reports showing all the sites where their ads served provides peace of mind and tends to boost performance. Dig into this topic with businesses. You don’t have to get overly technical; simply ask if they know where their ads run or play.
You Can Offer Digital and Radio
The third way you’ll stand out is that you can deliver digital advertising and radio spots for an omnichannel campaign. Your ability to do this enables local businesses to use multiple channels with consistent messaging that improves the performance of their spend. Radio and digital work together to deliver the greatest reach while targeting specific audiences.
When you provide this, your customers can also reduce the number of vendors they work with for advertising. They may still have budgets for broadcast TV, but you can win all their digital and radio dollars.
You’ll also be able to report on these tactics in a comprehensive analysis, showing how they boost each other. For companies that are only radio customers now, you’ve already earned their trust and business through one media channel. They’ll certainly be willing to hear your digital pitch.
Digital Advertising Is a Commodity: Stand Out for What’s Behind the Tactics
Digital advertising products are homogenous across sellers. However, as discussed, inventory quality differs. What will set you apart from the rest comes down to your expertise, their trust in your organization, and your ability to offer them digital and traditional advertising.
Making these attributes the core of your sales pitch elevates the products. That’s the path we encourage every station to take in selling digital, and we’ve made it easy with the only digital advertising software built for radio. Marketron NXT is easy to use, integrates digital and linear, and has the highest-quality inventory.
It’s an outstanding product, but it’s more than a platform. It’s backed by a wealth of resources to ensure your success, from customized onboarding to digital sales upskilling and access to digital strategists.
Let’s stand out together! Get started by requesting a NXT demo.
