The start of a new year is the perfect time to begin looking for innovative ways to draw in new advertisers, and 2015 is shaping up to be no different. Even though the economy remains sluggish, it has shown slight signs of improvement, and as a result, advertisers are beginning to loosen their wallets a bit more, meaning your publication can cash in. Below are a few tips to help you make 2015 the year you brought in more advertising revenue than ever:
Provide Content Marketing Services
While traditional advertising still works and brings in leads for advertisers, content marketing has become an alternative that many advertisers are interested in investing in. Content marketing is basically a strategy that involves providing relevant, valuable content to readers that incorporates an advertiser’s products, services, or brand. Essentially, you can think about content marketing as advertising without being direct.
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An example of content marketing might be where you write an article for your website about a new series of how-to books on writing that you’ll be publishing, and then you include in the article useful information about an advertising client that you have that offers technical writing services. By doing this, you give the technical writing client the ability to market its services while still advertising your upcoming book series.
Adapt to Mobile Technology
More and more people are turning to mobile technology, such as smartphones and tablets, to access the Internet these days, and if your website, companion websites, social media content, and more are not optimized for these platforms, you could be losing out on valuable advertising space. Today’s advertisers want to ensure that their ads are being seen by people not only through traditional media, but also through online avenues, and this means that you need to have an mobile-optimized Internet presence in additional to your standard Internet presence in order to attract advertisers.
Once you have your online properties optimized, you can then use this as a selling point when approaching tech-savvy advertisers. In fact, during face-to-face meetings, you could even bring along a tablet or smartphone to demonstrate the value for the potential customer right then and there.
Show, Don’t Tell
Lastly, you’ll want to be able to show advertisers where their dollars are paying off. In the past, this was difficult to accomplish as the advertiser would need to ask leads where they saw the ads that prompted the interaction, but today, using analytics, you can show advertisers exactly where an ad has been paying off on the web. This also allows you to make strategic decisions about ad placement as you’ll be able to see where changes to an ad make the most impact.
As with adapting to mobile technology, the ability to offer analytics to advertisers is a major selling point that needs to be highlighted during any pitch or proposal. Keep in mind, however, that investing in analytics may mean that you need to bring on additional personnel who will be able to track and chart out changes for your advertisers.