- Impact
- 50
In addition to eyeballs, you have to get advertisers. This side is my area of experience. My former company had 10K local advertisers (when I was there) and we have only an inbound sales force meaning that people would call us inquiring about advertising.
For a GEO owner, getting national advertisers in EASY. Use Commission Junction, Linkshare, or an in-house affliate program. Another avenue is to form a relationship with an ad agency. For example, we have a long term deal and relationship with a large hotel ad agency that represents many properties.
The real challenge is getting local advertisers. They see our ads, call us wanting to spend money and I still have 3-5 sales people who have to spend all day on the phone and only convert 25% of those inbound calls to sales.
So if you plan to launch a GEO TV and you want local advertisers, you are going to have to setup a 800 number, a merchant account, and have at least one person taking calls and emails full time (if you become successful). Look at Costello. They have sales people in Palm Springs and they are a sales organization.
My experience is that one sales person is needed for each 2,000 in-bound advertisers. Between inquires, complaints, ad setup, and other customer service issues, there is alot of touch points.
If you want to get aggressive, then you can do outbound sales and that equation would change. Outbound sales can be tough. Expect to hire and fire alot of folks and have high turnover if and when you find a good outbound sales person. We hire former Yellow Page sales people when we can find them. For outbound, you have to have an office in the market. Nothing beat feets on the street leading to a face to face visit.
One thing you can do is rent advertisers via affliate programs with Pay per lead and pay per click companies.
Any feedback? Any questions?
For a GEO owner, getting national advertisers in EASY. Use Commission Junction, Linkshare, or an in-house affliate program. Another avenue is to form a relationship with an ad agency. For example, we have a long term deal and relationship with a large hotel ad agency that represents many properties.
The real challenge is getting local advertisers. They see our ads, call us wanting to spend money and I still have 3-5 sales people who have to spend all day on the phone and only convert 25% of those inbound calls to sales.
So if you plan to launch a GEO TV and you want local advertisers, you are going to have to setup a 800 number, a merchant account, and have at least one person taking calls and emails full time (if you become successful). Look at Costello. They have sales people in Palm Springs and they are a sales organization.
My experience is that one sales person is needed for each 2,000 in-bound advertisers. Between inquires, complaints, ad setup, and other customer service issues, there is alot of touch points.
If you want to get aggressive, then you can do outbound sales and that equation would change. Outbound sales can be tough. Expect to hire and fire alot of folks and have high turnover if and when you find a good outbound sales person. We hire former Yellow Page sales people when we can find them. For outbound, you have to have an office in the market. Nothing beat feets on the street leading to a face to face visit.
One thing you can do is rent advertisers via affliate programs with Pay per lead and pay per click companies.
Any feedback? Any questions?
