Selling Ad Tech (old school audience management)
it’s so simple on paper…
Over the past 2 years I have been working to understand the advertising technology world as a consumer and as an investor. As part of this effort I try to talk with people who have forgotten more about this space than I may ever know. In a recent conversation about selling ad tech to agencies and brands, one of these people dropped the following knowledge on me — I added some of my own editorial, but this post is really about passing on his insight.
When selling your technology to an agency or brand you need to answer these questions as part of your sales/partnership presentation. Think about the meeting from the potential client’s perspective and recognize that they are coming in wondering about the following things:
How does it ACTUALLY work? (If we wanted to do this, how would we pull it off?)
What is required from the agency/brand/your company? (What are the steps from start to finish?)
What type of creative works best? (If you were to give the creative specs to the production department, what would they be?)
How would the brand/agency measure this integration and who are the partners we would use? (Make sure you don’t spend time bashing the current platform the potential clients are using. Instead, focus on how your tech fits into their ecosystem. The “more” it fits into their ecosystem, the more budget you can get pointed in your direction with less perceived behavior change.)
What does a test look like? (Specific details of dollars and scale)
What are the minimums and what is delivered from the test?
What is the “story arc” for optimization? (If we move from a test to a longer term buy, what gets optimized?)
Who does the work over the life of a campaign? (Who is responsible for identifying these learnings and implementing the optimization?)
Hope this is helpful to anyone selling a technology service and if you have other key questions/tips/tricks I would love to see them in the comments.