How to Find Advertisers for Your E-Zine and Website

I received the following question from one of my Doctor Ebiz subscribers. The answer was a bit long for the brief Doctor Ebiz format, so I thought I'd include it here.

"How do we get some large advertising clients to advertise on our site -- like OfficeMax, Navy Chaplaincy, Visa, etc? We are developing relationships with sponsors and advertisers that are targeted to our niche audience (CBD, Lifewaystores.com, Barna, etc.), but we have more inventory than we have advertisers right now (1.5 million monthly page views) so we could use some big advertising clients." -- Brian M. Mavis, SermonCentral.com http://sermoncentral.com

This is a difficult problem many sites are facing. Most sites that sell advertising now have more ad inventory available than they can sell. Be wary of networks that offer to sell your excess inventory at $1 to $3 CPM (cost per thousand banner views). Also avoid a cost per action (CPA) affiliate model that doesn't really generate much ad revenue. If you go down those roads you'll never make your site pay for itself. One approach is to outsource sales to an organization such as B2BWorks.com that will sell your inventory at a higher rate card price, though they will take a big chunk of the revenue.

The best approach for small businesses, however, may be to hire an aggressive in-house (or virtual) salesperson, or do it yourself. Here are some of the steps.

1. Prepare a demographic profile

Prepare a demographic profile of site visitors or newsletter subscribers. You can see how we prepared a demographic profile for of our site visitors. http://www.wilsonweb.com/ads/demog-profile.htm The better your visitor's demographic profile fits an advertiser's ideal marketing target, the higher the rate you'll be able to charge. This is a lot of work, but essential to sales.

2. List potential advertisers

List all the possible categories of advertisers that might be interested in marketing to your website visitors, and under each category, list some of the better-known businesses, both off- and online. Also take notes on what companies are advertising on your competitors' sites and e-zines.

3. Build a database of advertiser contact information

Collect telephone contact information for each potential advertiser into a Microsoft Access or Outlook database for each of these companies. Often, it's hard to find the right person immediately, so you might start by asking for the marketing department. Take notes in your database to record names, telephone extensions, and e-mail addresses of key contacts for future reference. If you have several sales people, consider using a Web-hosted interface, such as SalesForce.com, so each of your salespeople shares the same growing contact database and knows who has already been contacted, what was offered, and what result was achieved. http://www.salesforce.com/

4. Determine available ad spots

Determine the number of advertising spots available in your inventory, and find a way to keep track of the inventory you have already sold vs. what is still available for sale.

5. Develop a rate card or media kit

Develop a rate card or media kit that lists the kinds of advertising you have available. Lists details such as banner pixel size, maximum file size, specs for e-mail text advertising, etc. Spell out the terms for payment. You can see an example of our online rate cards for both banner and newsletter advertising. http://www.wilsonweb.com/ads/

6. Get to work telephoning

E-mail and postal mail approaches probably won't sell much for you. You need a trained salesperson on the phone selling for you. If you don't have a full-time person, then set aside a specific time slot each week to do your telephoning, systematically working down your list of prospects, and then calling back. Seek to add to your list of prospective advertisers each week. It's hard work and there's lots of competition out there for online advertising. But if you're persistent, have demographics at your fingertips that prove the value of your site visitors, can offer a media kit you can e-mail, and are willing to cut some deals that lock in advertisers for 3- to 6-month contracts for lower-than-rate-card prices, you'll start to bring in revenue from your website.

In their book Advertising on the Internet (Wiley, 1999), Robbin Zeff and Brad Aronson include a chapter on "Selling Online Advertising" that you'll find helpful. You can also find more information in the Developing Website Revenue issue of Web Marketing Today, Issue 60, September 1999. http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/issue60.htm