Learning to Sell Interactive
With terms like "click through," "PPC," "RSS," and "user generated," no wonder online seems like a foreign world to newspapers. To overcome this, and to bring news organizations' staffs up to speed, publishers are sending sales and editorial teams to intensive, crash-training sessions where they are learning the ropes of the interactive ad business. But why are editorial teams involved? Isn't this the territory of sales departments? The following article shows how editorial and sales can work together t help each other in the interactive world:
"During its Q4 2006 earnings call earlier this month, Gannett Company chairman, president and CEO Craig Dubow mentioned his own company's training plans. As part of the firm's 'audience-based selling' push, Gannett will hold four-day education sessions for its sales staff to help them understand things like targeting certain audience segments, something interactive media thrives on but which is a far cry from traditional newspaper advertising.
"The program, said Dubow during the investor call, 'pushes that selling focus to all parts of the Gannett Company.'
"Rather than offering clients old-school print ad products like full-page ads, the publisher wants its salespeople to become accustomed to selling cross-media audience segments, such as stay-at-home moms. 'It's revolutionary to ad sales people,' said Tara Connell, Gannett's VP of corporate communications, adding, 'Unlike in the past, we can say, "We'll deliver a group to you."'"
"Over the next six months, hundreds of Gannett salespeople will attend four-day training sessions, mainly at the company's Virginia headquarters. The effort complements Gannett's ongoing editorial shift from newsrooms to platform-agnostic 'information centers.' Individual newspaper teams will be responsible for delivering a plan to the publisher. Then, said Connell, 'the two initiatives will begin to merge together.' In addition to understanding how their content can help an advertiser reach specific audiences, editorial staffers can assist sales teams by providing data they use in reporting, on local restaurants for instance, to the sales department, she added."
Read the complete article.
"During its Q4 2006 earnings call earlier this month, Gannett Company chairman, president and CEO Craig Dubow mentioned his own company's training plans. As part of the firm's 'audience-based selling' push, Gannett will hold four-day education sessions for its sales staff to help them understand things like targeting certain audience segments, something interactive media thrives on but which is a far cry from traditional newspaper advertising.
"The program, said Dubow during the investor call, 'pushes that selling focus to all parts of the Gannett Company.'
"Rather than offering clients old-school print ad products like full-page ads, the publisher wants its salespeople to become accustomed to selling cross-media audience segments, such as stay-at-home moms. 'It's revolutionary to ad sales people,' said Tara Connell, Gannett's VP of corporate communications, adding, 'Unlike in the past, we can say, "We'll deliver a group to you."'"
"Over the next six months, hundreds of Gannett salespeople will attend four-day training sessions, mainly at the company's Virginia headquarters. The effort complements Gannett's ongoing editorial shift from newsrooms to platform-agnostic 'information centers.' Individual newspaper teams will be responsible for delivering a plan to the publisher. Then, said Connell, 'the two initiatives will begin to merge together.' In addition to understanding how their content can help an advertiser reach specific audiences, editorial staffers can assist sales teams by providing data they use in reporting, on local restaurants for instance, to the sales department, she added."
Read the complete article.
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