Ad Sales Reality Facing B2B & Association Publishers

Selling B2B advertising is not for the faint of heart. Particularly if selling print advertising.

How often have you heard Print is Dead. Nobody reads magazines anymore. We're moving the print budget into SEO, Digital, and/or Content Marketing where the metrics will prove ROI?

Here's just a few of the issues facing your publication every day:

• Whether right-sizing, down-sizing or the economy, today's business environment translates to fewer people doing more work and time is at a real premium. Very tough getting quality face-time with key sales prospects.Even getting them on the phone or having them respond to an email can be a tough challenge.
• Competitors slashing ad rates to next to nothing and advertisers expecting your publication to follow suit, regardless of circulation differences and editorial investment.
• Way too many advertisers and agencies taking the easy way out when it comes to media planning. Updating the previous plan, making it next to impossible to crack the schedule for newcomers. Or following the path of least resistance, relying way too much on client input as to where to invest ad dollars ("Our sales rep's tell us where to advertise"). Ad vehicles not making initial media cut have next to no chance of being reconsidered.
• More advertisers and agencies limiting sales interaction to frequently incoherent RFPs, often with less than 3-5 day turn-around time, extremely limited in scope and no interaction.
• 99% of media kit requests are strictly for PR purposes with absolutely no intention of ever placing advertising.
• Finding, hiring, training, motivating and keeping productive ad salespeople, all too often, is a "hit or Miss" proposition with a much heavier emphasis on "Miss".

Nelson & Miller salespeople live in the real world, successfully confronting these issues every day for the publishers we represent. We are very adept at selling digital advertising but all too often that's trading print dollars for digital dimes.

While very successful selling digital advertising, maximizing print ad sales is our mission. Our outlook is Darwinian - Only the strong survive. If after the past 15 years, a trade/association publication is still published, advertiser's key customers are reading the publication every bit as avidly as before Al Gore invented the Internet. Or they wouldn't be around; Only the strong survive.

Nelson & Miller's strength to publishers is how we fight to keep print on the schedule. If that's what you need, let's talk.