Finding Viable Leads in Small Markets Ideas

Local media sellers in small markets often feel they’ve reached an impasse in prospecting. You deal with a lot of rejection, with many advertisers saying they have their digital ad needs covered. Like any great salesperson, you remain in touch and continue to deliver your compelling valid business reason (VBR). So, how do you find viable leads in a small market?

We’ve got some ideas to try out as you prospect and try to unseat the incumbent. Much of this relates to the value your expertise and advertising products bring that they don’t have currently.

4 Ideas to Build Viable Leads in Small Markets

Before you read these strategies, keep in mind that every company needs advertising support to reach some goal. The key to standing out is to be the best solution to meet that goal. Try out these ideas to give your prospecting a fresh spin.

Talk About Metrics That Matter

It’s very likely that local advertisers don’t receive reports on campaigns from their current vendor. Even if they do, the reports may be so complicated that it’s hard to understand performance. So, why not directly ask them how their last campaign performed? Get a bit granular around things beyond standard advertising metrics, such as:

Which creative performed the best?
Do they know impressions ordered versus viewed?
Which geofence or targeted geo had the best results?
Do they know about the apps and websites where their ads appeared?

These kinds of third-party digital analytics tell you much more than clicks and conversions. Those are essential, but they don’t answer questions about why an ad performed well or not. You could send them a sample report that’s easy to understand and insightful. It’s certainly a way to get them thinking about what they don’t know about ad performance.

Address the Quality of the Inventory Where Ads Run

If an advertiser works with an agency or other local media company, those groups submit programmatic ads through a DSP (demand-side platform). DSPs connect to third-party digital sales technology to bid on inventory and traffic ads. Not all DSP quality is the same; some DSPs have a lot of “junk” inventory that impacts how an ad performs.

It’s another question to ask that will have their wheels turning. Advertisers don’t want to be associated with low-quality websites. Explain to them how you can offer premium content placement that’s transparent.

Play the Local Angle

Another approach for finding leads in small markets is to use your local market expertise. This will work best if the advertiser works with a national agency or one outside your area. How could such an organization understand the local business environment like you do? They simply cannot!

You can demonstrate this by sharing insights specific to your region related to business growth, employment numbers and other details. These data points can turn a generic campaign into a more meaningful one for a specific audience. You could even provide a few ideas on how they could use this information. Tease it so they’ll want to learn more and meet with you.

Ensure Local Businesses Know You Can Support Many Ad Needs

Some companies may use agencies and do part of digital ad execution internally on platforms like Google Ads or social media sites. This is complicated and more expensive for them. It often creates a lot of ad dollar waste. Let these organizations know you can manage all tactics for them — display, geofencing, OTT/CTV, video, social, SEM (search engine marketing) and more.

It would all be on one proposal for them to review with targeting. You can build integrated digital campaigns, which are proven to perform better than one tactic on its own. In addition, you can add radio spots to the package.

They can work with one partner for everything, which uncomplicates the situation and will reduce their overall costs. You could make an impression with this approach.