What Exactly Does Your Advertiser Get Online?

I attend several broadcaster conferences every year, and naturally I’m usually looking at them from two different perspectives. I’m there to learn and see people I know, but I’m also sometimes there as a sponsor. That means I pay attention to what comes with the sponsorship packages.

Some conferences do an excellent job of spelling it out. I know where our logo will appear, what kind of exposure we’ll receive before the conference, what happens during the event, what might be included online, and what they need from me. Others leave more to interpretation. I’ve occasionally arrived and discovered something was included that I didn’t know about. I’ve also expected something based on the way a sponsorship was presented and later learned it wasn’t part of the package at all.

Getting more than I expected certainly isn’t something I’m going to complain about. But both situations point to the same problem: I didn’t completely understand what I bought. That has made me think quite a bit about the sponsorships radio stations sell.

We’ve made these packages much more complicated over the years. A sponsorship that once consisted of recorded promos, live mentions and maybe a banner at an event can now include website advertising, sponsored content, streaming inventory, mobile app exposure, push notifications, newsletters, social media, video and several other digital components.

Can the person selling it explain all of that? More importantly, could the advertiser explain what they’re buying after the sales meeting is over? I think that’s an important test because a sponsorship can lose value before it ever begins simply because nobody completely explained it.

Suppose a station has put together a $5,000 high school football sponsorship. It includes on-air mentions, commercials during the games, a presence on the station’s football scoreboard page, display advertising throughout the sports section, inclusion in a weekly football email and a sponsor logo inside the mobile app. That’s a pretty substantial package.

But if the salesperson spends most of the meeting talking about the games and casually mentions that “there’s some digital stuff included too,” the advertiser isn’t really being shown the full value of the package. The station may deliver every single item it promised and still undersell its own product.

That’s the part I think we sometimes miss when we talk about transparency. We usually think about it as protection against overpromising. It is, but being vague can work in the other direction too.

If you’re including valuable digital inventory, explain it. Show the advertiser where it appears. Explain who uses it and why you included it. If their sponsorship puts them on a page that thousands of local football fans visit every Friday night, don’t bury that underneath “website exposure” on line seven of the proposal.

The seller needs to understand those pieces first.

This is one reason I’ve recommended that stations create a Digital Inventory List. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s simply a running list of every digital asset the station has available to sell: website positions, streaming inventory, mobile app placements, newsletters, sponsored content, push notifications, video, podcasts and anything else you’ve built an audience around.

The point isn’t just to give sales another sheet of things to sell. Sellers need to know what each item actually is, where the advertiser appears, who is likely to see it and why it has value. If something is included in a sponsorship package, the salesperson should be able to explain it without resorting to “and you get some digital stuff too.”

That sounds obvious, but digital packages have grown faster than the digital knowledge of many radio sales departments. Someone creates a new website feature, newsletter, mobile app opportunity or streaming product, adds it to the sponsorship sheet, and suddenly the sales staff is responsible for selling something they may never have seen.

“Website presence” isn’t much of a sales pitch if the seller doesn’t know where that presence is.

I’d rather see someone pull out a phone during the meeting and say, “Here’s our football page. Your business will appear right here throughout the season.” Now the advertiser can see the product. Do the same with the app. Show them the newsletter. Explain when the sponsored article runs. If there are streaming commercials involved, explain when listeners hear them.

We’re very good at doing this with radio because sellers understand radio. They know what a :30 is. They understand live mentions, sponsorship billboards, remotes and promotional announcements. Once we move outside the transmitter, the descriptions often become much fuzzier. That’s where expectations can start separating.

The advertiser walks away thinking one thing. The seller thinks another. The person responsible for updating the website gets an order that says “football sponsorship” and has to figure out what that means. Promotions has another version. Three months later, someone is trying to determine whether everything was actually delivered.

That’s not really a fulfillment problem. The problem started when the product wasn’t clearly defined and understood by everyone involved.

I think every sponsorship package should be able to pass a very simple test. Give it to someone who wasn’t in the sales meeting and ask them what the advertiser is supposed to receive. They should be able to tell you.

What runs on air? Where does the advertiser appear online? How often? For how long? What does the station create? What does the advertiser need to provide? Are there social posts? Newsletter placements? App exposure? Event signage? When does everything begin and end?

That doesn’t require a 27-page presentation. In fact, making the proposal longer can sometimes make the problem worse. It requires specificity. “Premium digital exposure” sounds impressive until someone has to fulfill it.

“Leaderboard banner on every high school football story from August 15 through November 30” isn’t nearly as sexy, but everybody knows what it means.

There should also be some kind of simple record of what was delivered when the sponsorship ends. Again, this doesn’t have to become a giant analytics report. If the station promised 12 newsletter placements, show that they ran. If there was website advertising, provide the available numbers. If sponsored content was part of the package, include links. If the advertiser received streaming inventory, report what was delivered.

That gives the salesperson something much better than, “Hope everything went well.” It also makes the next sale easier.

There’s another benefit that may be even more important for stations trying to grow digital revenue. When sellers completely understand every component of a sponsorship, they start learning what those digital products are actually worth.

The website stops being the free logo placement thrown in with the radio schedule. The newsletter isn’t just another bullet point. The mobile app isn’t “some digital stuff.” Those become individual products with audiences, purposes and value.

That’s difficult to accomplish if nobody takes the time to explain them internally or externally.

My conference sponsorship experiences have made me appreciate the organizations that make everything clear from the beginning. I know what I’m buying, they know what they’re supposed to deliver, and nobody has to reconstruct the original conversation six months later. Our advertisers deserve the same thing.

Before selling the next sponsorship package, hand it to someone at the station who didn’t create it and ask them to explain exactly what the advertiser gets. Then ask the salesperson to do the same. If either one struggles, don’t send it to the advertiser yet.