Ryan Dohrn breaks down the 4D Online Success Funnel and argues advertiser retention is the pillar most publishers ignore. Three tactics: segmented thank-you emails via Contactology, low-cost gifts through ePromos, and advertiser webinars on WebEx or GoToMeeting.
Hey everybody, it's Ryan Dohrn, and this month in our sales section of our e-newsletter, we are going to talk about what I like to call— maybe those of you that are in coaching training with me, you heard me use this reference before— 4D Online Success Funnel. And what does it mean? What it means is there are 4 basic areas, in my opinion, for what I like to refer to as online revenue success, or most of us like to call making money. On the left side, user acquisition and user retention. Basically, what are you doing to bring users in and readers in? And what are you doing to keep them around? Well, today as we talk about sales, we want to talk about advertiser acquisition. What are we doing to bring those advertisers in? But today we're going to focus on advertiser retention. What are you doing to keep those advertisers around? You know, the interesting thing is, I would share with you that very often advertiser retention is about the last thing on most organizations' minds. Of course, they'll usually say, hey, at the time of renewal, you know, give those advertisers a call. What is it that we're doing throughout the year in an effort to keep those advertisers around and to keep them happy? Let me share a couple of ideas with you. One of the companies I do a lot of work with is a company that's called Contactology. They are an email service provider. A couple of reasons I really like them. I want to send out e-newsletters each month to my current customers, to my prospects, and then maybe to my readers as well. Well, Contactology allows you to break those folks into separate lists really, really, really easily. Another thing I like about Contactology, I like Contactology because when you call in, you are actually talking to people that are US-based, that have a lot of experience in the publication business. So in this particular example, what I want to share with you is, you know, what I like to do is maybe twice a year sit down, write all of my thank you and sales e-newsletters for the whole year using a system like Contactology. I will set those up and schedule them throughout the year, maybe to go out on the 2nd or 3rd of each month thanking folks for their business. And that needs to be a diligent part, a sales e-newsletter, a great part of advertiser retention. Second is I like to use websites like ePromos.com, and what that is, is it allows me to be able to focus in on products that I can send that have a really kind of fun promotional flair to them. You notice here you can get pens for as low as 65 cents, kind of neat. Little t-shirts for $5, $6, tote bags, water bottles, etc. And I recently sent out to a lot of you an article about the impact that promotional items have on advertiser retention. It's phenomenal. People love to get little things from you, sort of like, hey, thanks, I appreciate that. Make sure it's not junk, make sure it's things that people really use and they'll really like. A third idea for you when it comes to advertiser retention I like to have and hold a lot of webinars. I happen to use, for my own particular company, I actually use the services that are provided by WebEx. And WebEx allows you to set up some really nice systems. For example, here's my BrainSwell Media WebEx. I can browse a meeting, set up a meeting, host a meeting, schedule meetings here via WebEx. There's all kinds of companies, GoToMeeting, Adobe Live. There's a ton of them that can potentially help you. What do you want these webinars to be about? I want these webinars to be about topics that are of interest, okay, to my advertisers. I don't want it to be about topics that are of interest to me as a publisher or a salesperson. I want it to be about topics that are meaningful to the advertisers. So what might you do? Maybe a topic on guerrilla marketing, maybe a topic on keeping advertisers coming back for more, maybe a topic on social media. And if you need to, you might have to hire an expert to be on that webinar with you. See, webinars are a great way to show advertisers that you care. And it's really important for you to have advertiser retention as a part of your overall plan. So again, user retention and advertiser retention are 2 sides of the 4-sided piece of this, what I like to call 4D strategy. Success funnel as you're working towards having really great online revenue success. Hi, this is Ryan Dohrn from BrainSwell Media. Thanks so much for checking in on my e-newsletter each month. If there's anything we can do to help you, from training your sales team to helping you have a better website to helping you with perfect SEO, which by the way, we're going to talk about in one of our video clips this month, feel free to reach out to us. Our first 45-minute consultation, always with you. Is absolutely free of charge. Again, don't forget about advertiser retention. It's an important part to your overall success of online revenue. Take care.
