Birthday Gift 3 of 3

It is January 26th and I think I’ve extended my birthday as long as I can. So, let’s finish up handing out some birthday gifts.

When last I wrote about my birthday gifts, I examined how audience duplication rates can impact your media buying strategy. Basically by understanding your duplications, you don’t have to spread your marketing dollars around. So, that brings us to the next strategy, which is building relationships and getting volume discounts.

Building Relationships
Like all things in this country, media buying depends on whom you know and what your reputation is. Do you like to beat up publishers and/or agencies? You do? Well, guess what, you are probably paying more for the same impression than the next guy. Wouldn’t you mark up your rates with a handling fee for a tough client? I would, no matter how much you spend. If you treat your publishers badly, you will probably burn out your account team, if you even get one, resulting in retraining. Sounds familiar, huh?

Building great media relationships is a pretty straightforward process. Just be honest with what your goals are and try and share as much data as legally possible. I had no issues with sharing click and conversion data with the publishers so they can optimize and see how they were doing. Of course, I got legal approval to do this. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to share your overall media buying strategy. As some of you know, I had a standard stump speech that I would give whenever I met a new member of the publisher’s team.

Remember build good relationships. If you have trouble with that, remember one of my favorite personal quotes:

Be nice to people who give you money, serve you food, provide you with data, and sell you media.

Volume Discounts, Baby
So, now you are armed with duplication rates and good relationships with your media counterparts. Now what? Easy, buy media on as few sites as possible that give you the reach that you are looking for. That way, you’ll maximize the amount of money spent on the sites, probably get a good account team, and then you’ll enjoy volume discounts.

What? Don’t think it is that simple. It is. How do you think the company I formerly worked for was rated as the 17th largest online advertiser in the United States? We didn’t spend as much money as the University of Phoenix, which is EVERYWHERE. Seriously, we were ranked that high because of the three simple steps I outlined over these past few posts – duplication rates, relationships, and volume discounts.

That’s all there is. Happy birthday

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

By the way, enter your email address below to receive a note when my blog is updated!

Enter your Email





Powered by FeedBlitz