Is Your Sales Team Prepared to Handle Advertiser Objections?

Meet Objections with Data to Prove Your Point

Data is objective. When you present your advertisers with it, you have a persuasive argument on your side against their tactic or approach objections. Your salespeople should present key digital advertising metrics when selling.

There are two ways to do this:

• Use your own data: If you have results from similar campaigns that demonstrate success for an advertiser, it can be very powerful to share with advertisers who are hesitant to move forward.
• Seek out industry-specific data from reliable sources that illustrate the potential for campaigns. For example, if the customer is hesitant about OTT/CTV video ads, share with them the projections for this category. By 2022, the penetration for this category will be 6% in the U.S., and the expectation is that it will be 93.3% by 2026. Thus, your advertisers can reach their audiences in this format. It’s also much more engaging than static ads.

Explain to Advertisers How Digital Works in Simple Terms

Many advertiser objections come from fear of the unknown. If your customers aren’t digital-literate, they may dismiss your recommendations. Taking the time to explain how each digital tactic works in simple terms can change their perspective.

Focusing on how digital ads are served, targeting opportunities and leading with education can be an excellent way to handle objections. To help yourself prepare, download our e-book on how to explain digital tactics to advertisers.

Demonstrate How Broadcast and Digital Work Together in Omnichannel Campaigns

Getting customers to diversify their ad spend can be challenging. They may believe that if what they’re doing now is working, there’s no reason to shift gears. However, the advertising space is changing, as is how consumers engage with content. That means advertisers do need to change course to reach customers where they are.

There’s lots of data to confirm that digital and broadcast work better together. Radio can actually lift digital ad tactics. Broadcast and digital advertising with the same message end up performing better. Broadcast enables broad reach, while digital enables targeting.

In talking with customers, advise them that channels shouldn’t live in silos. When you develop a multimedia campaign, your advertisers have the best opportunity for positive ROAS (return on ad spend).

Answer the Money Questions

One of the most challenging objections to overcome is when businesses believe your proposals are too expensive. They may even counter that they can get better deals elsewhere. However, that’s likely not the case. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

What you’ll need to do is break down the costs. If you do so, they can understand the value of the advertising they are purchasing at a granular level.

One of the most common price differences relates to targeting capabilities. You’ll want to ask the advertiser how the other company targets and if it’s sophisticated enough to include location, demographics and interests. Hyper-local targeting such as geofencing, for example, does cost more. However, there are benefits to using it that can deliver better results.

Break Down the Limitations of Local Businesses Managing Digital Advertising In-House

Some businesses may be comfortable with self-serve digital advertising options, feeling they’ve got things covered. However, they don’t know what they don’t know about the limitations of these platforms. For example, Facebook guidelines note that Facebook will determine ads’ size, placement and positioning. Is this optimal for the business’s advertising goals?

You want to convey that working with you on digital campaigns offers more access to different sites and audiences. You can also ask them what they do when a problem occurs. In most cases, it’s hard to contact anyone for support, or it takes days to receive a response.

Another advantage of letting experts handle digital advertising is the reports you provide. They are easy to understand and transparent, and they aggregate all results. With self-serve, on the other hand, they’ll need to pull multiple reports and spend hours making sense of them.