Building a Local Digital Strategy for Broadcasters

Selling digital advertising to local businesses comes with opportunity and competition. As we’ve learned from extensive research, generating more revenue for your station will come from digital. Whether you’re an expert or a novice, we keep hearing from customers asking how they can compete against agencies and digital advertising giants. The simple answer is to capitalize on your local market expertise, knowledge and relationships. By focusing on these differentiators, you can build a local digital strategy that allows you to win more deals.

Our local digital experts have some key advice on doing this, so keep reading for insights.

What Is a Local Digital Strategy?

A local digital strategy for selling is a defined approach for prospecting, pitching, engaging and creating relationships with businesses to acquire their digital ad business. It’s a living document that will evolve as internal and external factors change. Sales managers typically develop it but should do so in collaboration with their team. It should highlight several things:

Your unique elevator pitch and value prop for why advertisers should work with you on digital
Best practices on how to create a digital mix of tactics to meet specific advertiser goals
Key differentiators you possess, starting with your local expertise. Others can include the attributes our customers have, such as launching campaigns with digital and linear, detailed reporting, access to a variety of tactics, the ability to do digital ads for restricted categories, and optimization features for ad types like SEM (search engine marketing).
How to handle common objections (Check out Sales Meetings in a Box for ideas.)
Tips on creating a CNA (customer needs analysis) for digital and the “right” questions to ask
How you’ll market your station as a digital ad solution partner (Find out how to do this in our e-book, The Broadcast Marketing Playbook: Helpful Tips and Strategies to Attract New Advertisers.)

Your local digital strategy can include more things specific to your market or industries you believe are the best targets. Next, let’s look at some other ways to drive the local angle.

Winning the Market Against Fierce Competition

One of the biggest roadblocks to winning more digital customers is competing against others. Most businesses are investing in it. Some do it in-house, which can be overwhelming and hard to manage. Others happily outsource it to an agency, marketing firm or freelancers. So, what do you have that they don’t?

Your station is a part of the community and likely has been for a long time. You understand the nuances of your market that others don’t. It could be that you know the demographic makeup and qualities of your city’s neighborhoods. You may also have a pulse on what local folks care about, which can translate to how companies advertise to them. You know the “local” language, too.

You can also stand out on the local level by using your on-air personalities as influencers. They can do on-air spots about your advertising solutions. Additionally, they could play a role in digital advertising, like social media ads. Your access to local influencers is another component others don’t have.

With those advantages, you can earn trust early and often. It’s the same type of message you’ve been sharing about the localness of radio. When a company works with you, they can get both and all the benefits of your local reach and expertise. Additionally, these small businesses appreciate keeping things local. They spout these messages to consumers, and they can follow the same path by partnering with you instead of a national agency.

Every company is ultimately selling the same types of ads. Thus, you’re selling your unique expertise and your value. It will echo through the noise of what other salespeople are offering. Remain true to this as the guide of your local digital strategy.