6 strategies for approaching ad buyers in your community

This is a series on Better News to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative and b) share replicable tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole. 

This piece features tips for business development professionals working in news from researcher, entrepreneur and media operator Ted Williams. These insights were shared during a live Q&A session with alumni of the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program in August 2024.

As news organizations work to diversify revenue streams, they continue to serve as an advertising and marketing platform for local businesses and community institutions.

In late 2023, research from the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media found that 27% of advertising buyers surveyed in North Carolina were interested in spending more of their budgets toward local media organizations the following year.

What do these ad buyers want to see from the local media partners? Media operator and entrepreneur Ted Williams led this research and shared key insights for business development professionals working in news:

Readers are buyers, too.

Remember that ad buyers are often already daily readers or consumers of your journalism.

“A lot of them are busy, or they just don’t know they can buy, or no one’s ever asked them,” Williams says.

He suggests this tactic for newsletters: Include information on advertising availability –  “five ad seats are open for next year” – and include a clear call-to-action like “reply if you’re interested.” This could also work for cold-calls and emails or crafting on-air messaging for broadcast.

This kind of invitation can be a good way to find prospects, especially for journalist-led organizations or one-to-two person teams with less time to devote to sales.

Content-led pitches win more deals. 

It can be tempting to start a business pitch by focusing on the news organization’s mission, readership and reputation in a community.

Instead, ad buyers are more likely to fund news organizations that approach them with ideas that are rooted in storytelling and relevant to consumers.

“You need to figure out who within your audience is a potential ad buyer. Then how do you come up with a really compelling content-led idea that excites them and feels authentic to them?” Williams says.

Williams shares one scenario of making a content marketing pitch to a bank: “I’d love to tell the story about how people are coming to you for your checking accounts. Here are ways that I would tell checking account stories.”

If you’re looking for potential funders, you can find tips on developing a pitch here.

Integrate barriers into sponsored content.

For news organizations interested in developing sponsored content, Williams suggests two conditions to make producing and selling easier: clear labeling of the sponsored content and a structure that allows for creative execution. Here’s what developing a clear format for sponsored content can look like:

• Make sure posts follow a template with only one photo and a set word count
• Consider only opening sponsored content opportunities to local events, tourism or economic development initiatives
• Produce profiles of local executives as an ad product

Williams says these barriers help clients to think more along the lines of simple creative execution, rather than the potential hassle of working directly with the news organization to brainstorm and plan out a more complex campaign.

Don’t sell against Google and Meta.

Businesses usually have different budgets for subsets of online advertising. This means that news organizations aren’t always competing with Google and Meta for advertising dollars. Both sets of budgets are growing, according to Williams.

It’s possible for businesses to dedicate a certain amount of their yearly spend to advertising with local media organizations, while also allocating resources to digital campaigns that can yield more specific data and generate leads to potential partners.

Williams, who co-founded the Charlotte Agenda before it was acquired by Axios in 2020, recalls how this distinction helped his sales team deliver high-quality advertising products to partners.

“We wanted to be in the digital branding space, not in the lead gen space, because Facebook and Google are going to be better at that,” he says, referring to how social platforms are adept at capturing information from a wide range of potential customers.

Developing unique value propositions for your news organization and a knowledge of local audiences not only builds your brand, but also strengthens your sales team’s ability to stand by your marketing products and advertising offerings.

There’s more than one sales path.

Working with ad buyers typically requires an understanding of products and services, analyses of audience needs, and meetings to maintain the long-term partnership.

However, some businesses prefer quick, transactional opportunities that don’t require a phone call with someone from a news organization. Seeing a media kit and rate card, then cementing the details through email or an online portal can be ideal, depending on the sales team.

Identifying how the company prefers to work and communicate can save you time and effort while also meeting the ad buyer’s expectations.

Target goals help you see a “return on effort.”

Audience goals defined with your advertisers – reaching 25- to 45-year-old young professionals in your city, for example – can help assess your staff’s “return on effort” over time.

“When you wake up in the morning, what’s the return on effort of the activities that you’re doing every single day? Because I’ve noticed a lot of media companies hate to kill things,” Williams says.

The best managed media companies, according to Williams, edit down processes and products over time to only do what drives their business and mission forward.

Need a place to start? You can read more about making a Stop Doing list for yourself or your team here.