Buyer Beware: Media Sales
This is a two-part series where I look at what buyers of media should be aware of from platforms and what salespeople of these services need to take note of.
For the buyers in this space, I will break this up into four parts; the pitch, what to ask, signing the deal, and post-sales.
- 🔊The narrative: This is why your supplier is super awesome, beaming with colour and bursting with excitement. You will find videos of happy people using the service, scenes of celebrities, and emotional and moving moments (#movements and memes).
- 📈The Evidence: This is where they work geographically, how many people are employed, and the brands they have worked for — the big names are always upfront.
- ⚙️The products/inventory that they have.
- ⚡️a) why they can help you, and if you’re super lucky, and they have done their research, b) they will show you how they can work for you.
A note: Never ask questions in the pitch. Keep them until the end to ensure that your questions are not answered later.
👨👨👦👦Reach: how many people use/view their website.
From my experience, this has become the most crucial metric to speak to in the first meeting. Whilst it is easy to say x millions, it is not that simple.
- What are your MAUs (Monthly Active Users) or DAUs (Daily Active Users), and how is it calculated? Platforms should say that it is represented by the login of unique users, but some platforms state this number by the devices used to access the platform. Meaning that if you have a computer at work, home, a phone, and a tablet, you are effectively contributing to 4 MAUs/DAUs.
- How many people visit your website/service are users/browsers? Important as the % difference can tell you how their number are likely to fluctuate
- Videos: What is counted as a view? Some platforms say it’s 3 seconds entirely when the video is in full view of the timeline. Some say it’s 50% of the length, and others go for 100%.
- Engagement: What is their benchmark for engagement (sharing, commenting, liking etc.), clicks, conversions, and follows in your region, and what should you expect to get?
- App Installs: How good are they at doing this? Is it only app clicks, downloads, app journeys etc.
- CPM and milage: How much does it cost to get 1000 views, and is this frequency capped, i.e. how many times does one person see the ad before it goes away, if at all?
- Does my brand appear anywhere that would violate our brand safety guidelines?
- If something happens in the next 30 seconds (political, economical, terror-related, or accident), how long after will my ads disappear as to not appear next to them?
- How do they ensure that bots are not actively engaging with your content to drive their revenues?
- Trolls and parody accounts, what is their solution to this? I’ll be honest here, if your brand is strong, you should welcome them.
- Is my IP, and are my campaign plans safe?
- The supplier already works with the competition. How safe is my information?
📊Case Study and benchmark relevance
- How many (if any) case studies relate to the geographical region or vertical I am working in?
- How much actual work are they doing in the region? Accounts they have, and average revenue per account (if they will give you that).
Ask them who they compete with, or ask them how they differ.
Campaigns start late, and if you need help, will anyone be there for you? If the answer is a quick yes, dig deeper. From experience, your rep is your POC*, and they have a life after work and may get annoyed with you.
- Is there a rebate on what you spend, and if not, how much do you have to invest to unlock it?
- Are their academies, retreats, or swag involved in this transaction?
Many agencies and brands make decisions based on this, and I think it is not worth mentioning in the beginning. After all, you are just testing the waters with what should be test budget initially.
- Do I have access to post-campaign reports or only monthly, and can I ask for any on-demand?
- What assets can the platform provide, if any at all? This covers creative work, ideation, and campaign support.
- How much does this all cost, and are there any service fees included? Most importantly, what changes if I spend a lot of money versus little money? This will give you an indication of where they can upsell you and how limited you actually are.
- If I take a credit line with you, what are the most important terms that come with it? (Interest, volume you can spend, repayment period, currency support)
- Can you pre-fund your account, or do you need to always go through the supplier, and if you do, what implications does it have on service. In my former role, we would drop all support and make an issue out of it. It is also important to note how long it takes to fund your account; a bank transfer can take up to 3 days to be in your suppliers’ arms (and longer if over the weekend).
Signing Up
When you are finally signing the terms of the agreement, outside of the binding stuff, look out for these things:
- Is what was offered in terms of customer/after-hours support included?
- Are any asset creation/management included?
- Was anything promised in the pitch in the contract?
Here is the reality: many things that were said during the pitch sounded great and are, in theory, true but are not reasonable to expect all the time. For example, getting weekly or daily campaign updates, around the clock support, complimentary research data, or an actual hands-on approach to your campaigns. My ask here is for you to get something on an email that ensures you can hold the supplier liable for anything that is not up to your standards or the ones they promised.
Once you have signed up, there will no doubt be a lot of expectations from your side. After all, you have just made an investment into something new. Make sure you have made a list of what was promised.
Post Sales
Once your campaigns are live, here are the things to note and make sure you are holding the supplier accountable for:
- 🥸Account support outside of loading money and spending it
- You will quickly notice that once you are signed on and spending, there is the expectation that you will pay more, and I mean like +15–20% YoY more. With tools like Tableau, it’s easy to analyse your seasonality, spending habits, and usage patterns. The sales person will be expected to use this on the account, and I suggest you ask them for it as well to monitor your own spending.
- 🤦🏻♂️Take note of what happens when you ask your POC/AM* for something out of the ordinary:
- It could help with result analysis, campaign ideation, data downloads, or something else. If your POC/AM* sends you to support, you should understand that they are not there to help you but themselves. If your POC/AM* does all they can, you know you have someone on your side.
- 😅How much does your POC/AM* care about your campaign, brand and everything else that is happening in your world?
A great sales team will always comment on the good and bad aspects of your activity; they will even ask questions about events in your industry or news about changes in the company through Google Alerts and your Annual Report. A great supplier will upsell you on a genuine opportunity based on upcoming events or simply great results that they are seeing. Even better, they would tell you to stop spending money if it wasn’t practical.
Lastly, does the POC/AM* effectively make you better overall and help you achieve what you have set out to do?
What to do at your next supplier meeting or pitch
The salesperson who is talking to you is armed to the teeth with objection handling techniques, jokes, and slides to disarm your questions. They take pride in stumping you and weakening your statements or data points you might have to share. However, they also enjoy a good debate (if they genuinely believe in their product). So here is what you should do in the next one:
- Understand your own product stack, what you are using, how much it costs, and what it is delivering.
- Know your results, and not the monthly report. I am talking about the deep stuff like; cost per campaign, its duration, how much content is recycled, what is your engagement rate (likes, shares, comments, follows, unfollows), what is your objective, which part of your marketing funnel is weakest/strongest, and what are your competitors up to.
- Where are your customers’ eyes, and what are their personas (consumer segments).
At the end of the day, if you do not know what your brand needs and what your marketing objectives really are, then the rep will convert you, and it will be hard to understand why you’re actually using them.
*POC/AM: Point of contact OR Account Manager
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