We all know that the mess of humanity we used to call ‘the audience’ is rapidly splintering and the Internet has only sped the process. What hasn’t been grasped by many agencies and advertisers huge opportunities to be found down the middle and lower ends of the Long Tail.

One of the outcomes of this new economy is there will be far fewer huge blockbusters but far more success stories. Or as Anderson put it in the subtitle of his book, we’ll be selling less of more.

Video blogs like Ask A Ninja and Rocketboom are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenues working on shoestring budgets with audiences that the major networks wouldn’t even notice.

The combination of cheap bandwidth, low cost equipment and software that can do for a few dollars what it used to take thousands and enough creative people who feel liberated from the mass market economics of the previous century are making this all possible.

The mainstream media isn’t immune to this phenomenon. If you have children between the ages of 4 and 14 then you’ve probably spent long hours suffering repeat viewings of High School Musical. If you don’t have children in that age span, you probably have never heard of it. Yet despite this, High School Musical was the number one-selling CD and DVD last year.

In the age of big media, the number one CD would have been ubiquitous. The songs would have been on the radio around the clock. But the marketing minds at Disney knew their audience very well and targeted pre-teens where they are – on the Disney Channel and on Disney Radio and through the even more powerful pre-teen underground grapevine. By the time the High School Musical live show reaches your town, every pre-teen has had the songs and dance moves drilled into their heads not only by Disney but also by their peers. The rest of the audience is irrelevant.

There’s a lesson to be drawn here. It’s now taken as gospel that with the exception of large internationally known brands likes Budweiser and Coke, big event advertising (think the Super Bowl or Thursday night prime television) is no longer the ticket to brand awareness. But where do we go from there?

With the splintering of the once monolithic mass media into hundreds of cable channels, 12 and 24-screen movie theaters and millions of blogs, podcasts and video blogs, the audience has also splintered into millions of small communities who each in their own ways can find and support the kind of content they want.

Since bandwidth and the underlying technologies are so inexpensive, artists and creators no longer feel the pressure to justify their work in terms of the number of eyeballs who will see it. For most bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers, reaching a few people is enough and if costs have to be met it’s easy enough to find just enough advertisers or just put out a Paypal link.

For advertisers and marketers, it means you don’t have to worry anymore about reaching the largest audience possible since with the narrowcasting of the media and Internet, you can more easily find just the people who would be inclined to give you a look.

It’s important to understand we are in the post-blockbuster era. With hundreds of cable channels and infinite shelf space on the Internet, there’s no scarcity of content to fill it. Some of it might appeal to you, or your customers. And the rest might make no sense to you at all. But you can be sure there’s someone watching Ask A Ninja and if you are selling nunchuks, you better take notice.

Marchex determined its best practices by looking at large and small online advertisers. The “2007 Search Marketing Insights for Retailers” report includes details on shopping search, SEO strategies and keyword optimization.

“We developed this report to provide retailers and the larger online advertising community with new and actionable information, along with direct findings from our work with thousands of advertisers,” said Scott Greenberg, Marchex’s advertising services SVP in a statement. “For example, in the emerging field of comparison shopping engines, we found that our seven largest partners attracted more than 163 million unique users in December 2006, a very significant and highly targeted audience for retailers.”

The company plans to offer similar whitepapers on a regular basis for online marketing areas like local search and direct navigation.

“Clients and their agencies today need solid, reliable information on what works in Google and Yahoo! online advertising – and what doesn’t,” said Hall in a statement. “As a freelance online copywriter I have hundreds of people contacting me asking questions such as: How can I structure an online advertisement that will get a good response? How can I get more cost-effective results from my Google PPC ad? I set up the PPC Advertising Hotline to give these folks some of the answers.”

The advice is free, and callers only pay for the cost of the phone call. The recorded lecture is less than 5 minutes long. In the coming months, Hall plans to add advice on how to stretch an ad budget, how to write good ads, what to ask yourself before running a campaign, how to run a corporate promotion online, and how to sell services with Google and Yahoo PPC ads.

“Corporate search marketers need help in convincing executives about budget needs, in determining the right skill set for hiring,” said committee co-chair Duane Forrester in a statement. “We also want to help people who are transitioning from bricks and mortar marketing to online marketing. There is a great educational need for people like myself, who basically are learning these tools on the job.”

Help will also come to search marketers from SEMPO’s in-house SEM committee, which formed last year to educate in-house SEM professionals about SEM tools like web analytics. In-house marketers can join SEMPO as individuals or as part of a corporate membership, and access any of its services. The organization is also recruiting members for its in-house SEM committee.

“As the advertising industry continues to evolve, marketers exploring the effectiveness of mobile marketing are faced with a new set of consumer protection concerns presented by this potentially powerful advertising venue. In response to these challenges, the AzoogleAds team has instituted an aggressive policy to ensure the integrity and the quality of the traffic we deliver to our advertising partners,” said Azoogle COO Don Mathis in a statement. “Our advertisers, as well as the mobile phone service providers, expect that the traffic we deliver is legitimate, informed and consensual.”

Azoogle is now requiring things like easy-to-understand terms of service, friendly opt-out procedures, strict customer privacy, and the rejection of questionable content. Azoogle also has Acceptable Use Policies for email and adware downloads.

Here are several ways to help you avoid coming off like a used car seller:

1. Put your self-interest on the back burner
Your goal is to make quota. But all those proven, consultative sales techniques you have learned will NOT work unless you put your self-interest aside while you build a new relationship. This is due to the fact that “The inner part of every person can tell the difference between someone who is genuine and someone who is not,” according to Dale Carnegie’s philosophy.

As sales people, we need to step outside of our own self-interest and communicate from the customer’ point of view. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER FIRST…before you call. Even the best of sales strategies will seem transparent, if you are not genuinely sincere. All the consultative strategies work “after” the main relationship is in place.

2. Listen, listen, listen… 80% of the time
When you’re building a relationship, you’re selling trust, and trust comes from “active” listening. This means taking time to digest what is being said and putting a harness on the urge to ignore it, and getting ready to fire back your sales pitch — the dreaded sell of features & benefits. Most sales people think the client conversation is an opportunity to show how much they know about their company, the industry or the product. This is dead wrong. It is a time to prove trust, and if you are listening 80% of the time, you’re not selling but purely learning about issues, pains, budget, and the urgency to fix problems.

3. You must ask the correct questions
Since selling is about helping executives make buying decisions, the best thing to do is ask questions to help the discovery process along. Typical salespeople will ask questions to qualify the prospect; as how much budget, when do you want it, when is it being signed. While this is necessary, if the prospect feels they are being qualified, they become reluctant participants in the selling event. It’s the grade of questions that separates the pro from the novice,

Use questions that draw out pain, such as:
- Can you tell me about this issue in detail?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how is it affecting you, 10 being the worst?
- How long has this been going on?
- What has it cost the company?
- What have been done to correct this?
- What happens if you do nothing?
- How are you personally impacted?

4. Become an equal to the executive
Decision-makers do not usually want to spend time with salespeople. Period! They want to work with businesspeople that provide solutions, and fix problems that address painfully business situations. Be an equal and be confident. We all want to do business with peers and as soon as someone feels sold, they stop sharing information with us. This must be avoided at all costs. To do this, re-title yourself and think differently, not like a typical vendor.

5. Count before you respond
When responding to common objections, take a deep breath and hold it for 3 seconds. You need to be calm, focused, and fit the context of the relationship you are building. If you need to use some tech-talk to answer an objection, count to three, and sound natural.

6. Trust comes from sharing…do NOT interrupt
Do NOT sell to your prospect while they are sharing. Acknowledge their emotions and business logic, and if you do not by asking some well-formed qualifying questions or a comment like “we can do that”, they make a pre-conceived opinion that you do not care. Instead, write down a note in front of them, and make the point at the end of the session.

7. Do not abuse knowing their name
When talking; do not over-use the prospect’s name. If they were a family or friend, how many times would you say their name? Be careful in even using formalities like “Sir” or rude notations like bud, partner, etc.

8. In essence, care about them!
When relating to people, care about them and tell them. People buy from people they like, period! Be likable by being sincere, caring, and above all, intellectually capable of providing value to their problem or pain.

Conclusion
Selling is hard work, especially in the online media world. You need to stand out, be unique, and quickly sell your value to higher-level executives. Using a disciplined, structured approach will get you there faster, as it has over the last 20 years in filed selling across the country. Practice well, practice smart, but practice.

This particular company had a specialized marketing department with some proprietary software to track its efforts, customized to their needs, but suitable for their competitors. They called in the consultants because they wanted to make money from this combination of software and personnel, without impacting their own internal productivity from this department.

So, the first thing we did was develop a report card just for them. The report card showed that the CEO was indeed accurate in his assessment — his software was unique and exploitable. Regrettably, neither the people or internal processes were set up to exploit it.

Despite your impressions about consultants, our recommendation wasn’t to fire everyone. In fact, their people were quality people and their culture still new enough to change, so our final recommendations suggested role additions, simplifications, and changes, enhanced recruiting, training, and healthier churning, and better knowledge management. From these changes and anticipated client relationships, it was possible for this department to break a $1 million in revenues in less than 5 years.

This is an extreme example of how a consultant may increase the value of a marketing department to an organization, but the idea remains the same: investing to audit your marketing department may discover hidden value and value-destroyers. Imagine being able to stretch your seemingly already-overstretched budget without sacrificing even the least critical program in your portfolio?

Consider the following:

1) During an engagement for a cable network, we learned that by following the “party-line”, which they had been contributing to because of their sizable marketing budget, they were overspending by about 20%, entirely due to distractions from the overwhelming workload by their executives. Upon studying the workflow bottlenecks and giving them the templates to better evaluate the performance of their media partners, after a single month, they were able to realize promised savings.

There is no law that states you can’t modify your relationships with media and creative partners. The challenge is in having the right personality in place to take the moderated lead on these sort of efforts, particularly since so much of the business is based on “valued” relationships. If you can’t find that person, the next best thing is to piss off the people who are currently in place enough with data that proves their “friends” are ripping them off.

Regrettably, buying creativity can’t quite have a spending benchmark, (a lesson this author learned from having taught college-level copywriting), but it can have a formal framework on how to manage, which include metrics like total number of ideas acceptable; not daily limits, but definite deadlines; full disclosure and support from clients; and most importantly, non-exclusive agreements.

Agencies sell ideas and it’s not rational (financial or otherwise) to have a single agency of record as the sole source of external, “objective” ideas. (This argument doesn’t entirely exclude media buyers, since consolidated buying is a proven source of savings. But when concentrating spending, media buyers always overlook more relevant, better targeted channels. Fee-based media advisors are recommended here).

The current structure of agency competition where accounts are “in play” also perpetuates this irrational delivery of ideas. When advertisers open their accounts to multiple agencies and vendors, adjusting fees in the process, and open-ending their agreements to allow agencies the freedom to perform their duties at their optimal levels, rather than treating them like machines operating off legal and accounting instructions will ensure the delivery of the maximum number of relevant, executable ideas.

(Signs of this sea change in the advertiser-agency relationship have been emerging for the last two years, but it has been achieved by elevating the account management contact point to the holding company level instead of the agency level. Whether or not this delivers the variety of ideas a marketer truly deserves is still in debate).

Taddy Hall, the chief strategy officer at the ARF and one of the authors of the guide, said that the publication is designed to be a “go-to guide for advertisers and their agency partners who are seeking to get maximum benefit out of the Internet.” He feels that, “Most marketers believe that advertising online can work-but when they go to use the Internet, they don’t have nearly the degree of confidence they have when using other media.”

Hall added that the guide will also include strategies for topics such as using the Web for branding, the role of search in both online campaigns and overall marketing objectives, and email as a marketing vehicle. The project has been overseen by senior executives from thirty industry organizations including the IAB and Online Publishers Association, and is planned to be released in November.

This is the most common voice salespeople hear over the phone these days working in the interactive industry, especially when reaching out to numerous agency media buyers and planners. I understand you are all busy: the numerous meetings you attend, having to speak to the clients that you represent on a constant basis, the wining and dining, all the free ball games you attend and those trips to Bermuda. With it all, I have a few pointers that won’t just make my life easier, but may actually make the clients/brands you represent a lot happier.

Pick up your phone

This is the number one phrase heard on the sales side. What’s so terrible that you can’t just pick it up? This is not to say that planners and buyers never pick up the phone, but a majority do not. While it’s understandable that agencies are constantly slammed with numerous pitches and emails day and night, chances are a qualified/intelligent sales rep wants to contact a planner has already done some research. They may also have a really unique idea that could fit well with your client, which leads to the second point.

Listen to those out of the box ideas

Sure, some of those ideas may be crazy, but they may also have some great potential. For example, banner advertising, in regard to branding, is a fad that is slowly fading. Video advertising, skinning, entire site sponsorship, unique mobile advertising, virals among other things help incorporate brand awareness in a unique way and make interacting with the brand a whole lot more interactive.

Believe it or not, that salesperson actually knows a whole lot more of what’s out there. If he is an intelligent individual, he may even have consulted with the operations team to explore other creative ways to brand and see if it will actually work. Remember, this sales rep wants this campaign to be just as successful as the agency does. He understands that you have a responsibility to invest your client’s money wisely. One of the primary goals of any sales rep is to have a solid relationship with all the planners, buyers and directors at these agencies.

Size doesn’t matter

Media Metrix and @Plan are great tools to utilize when checking stats on Web sites, but they do not truly speak for an entire group and niche audience. It seems that planners out there only rely on the same sites to advertise on all the time simply because of high numbers. Let’s not forget about those smaller more niche sites. Planners and buyers would be surprised to see that users who go to those types of sites are users that come back very often. They do not just come back occasionally, but all the time. But while numbers are important to present to the client, they should not mean everything. In most instances, numbers can be very skewed and biased. There are a lot of niche audiences to brand to and they should be included in the media plan.

The point is, whether on the agency side or the sales side, there is one common denominator and that is money and how we can both make more. The bottom line is the planner has to present the ideas to the client and the client bestows the final yes or no. Believe it or not, your client is looking for a new, fresh idea; it’s just some of the planners are afraid to present it. Listen to those persistent sales reps, because they may just land you that promotion to media director. And you would owe it all to that one phone call you picked up, having heard that creative, out-of-the-box idea.

“The 2-Minute Explainer consistently ranks as one of the most frequently visited pages on our web site, and often acts as a springboard to longer visits and eventual conversions,” Jason Hekl, Senior Director of Marketing at InQuira said in a press release. InQuira markets enterprise search solutions for web self-service and call centers.

IT companies that have reported success with the 2-Minute Explainer at industry conferences include RSA Security Conference (Lancope) and Microsoft’s TechEd (DesktopStandard), and TIBCO, a provider of business integration and process management software.