The market has become saturated with advertising platforms over the past 10-20 years. From streaming to social, cable to e-commerce, advertisers can have their pick of what audiences they want to target and how. So how do advertising platforms gain an edge on the competition? A huge advantage that modern ad sales teams have over their predecessors is the ability to easily and effectively analyze data. They can quickly see whether or not the campaigns they are running for their clients are on track, and make any necessary adjustments to meet their delivery agreements. Accurate performance data helps publishers prove their worth and build relationships with their clients.
Performance Analytics Builds Trust
Advertisers typically have a set amount of marketing budget, and they need to decide where best to spend their money. To do this, they rely on analytics back from their publishers to prove that the advertising worked.
Traditionally, this data simply represented the number of people that viewed an ad. But performance data is much more widely available today. Modern publishers must prove that clicks and associated transactions are true. For newer publishers looking to establish relationships with advertisers, this data helps to build trust.
This analytic data is key for determining ROI. When an advertiser commits a dollar figure to a number of clicks, they want to see that the publisher delivered. It’s also vital for gaining insights into competitor information, which benefits both publishers and advertisers. For example, Coca-Cola might notice that Pepsi is doubling them up on ad spend through streaming services. The effectiveness of those campaigns might drive Coke to do the same. As a publisher, not only providing these analytics, but providing them quickly will help ensure they get a piece of that advertising budget pie.
Tracking Campaign Delivery
Many sales teams in other industries simply have to sell a product, and that’s where the analytics end. But with ad sales, closing the deal is just the beginning. The signed IO is an agreement that you’ll provide the Advertiser with a certain amount of customer engagement so it’s vital that the publisher ensure that these campaigns are not over or under-delivering. By referencing the data, publishers and advertisers can work together to adjust placements, creatives, and audience targets to keep the campaign on track.
Over-delivery actually presents ad sales teams with an opportunity to grow their revenue; they can use this information to convince advertisers to spend more on a particular campaign if it’s performing well rather than simply end it ahead of schedule. In the majority of cases, companies will spend more if they can see that their ads are performing ahead of expectations. It’s also important for publishers to stay on top of this, as they would have to eat the extra cost if a campaign exceeds the client’s agreed-upon budget.
Campaign Ops Teams Use Data to Maintain Workloads
Salesforce opens so many doors when handling relationships for ad sales teams. Not only is data critical for evaluating performance, teams need it to make sure that they’re operating efficiently. For example, if you have people working with particular clients that are affected by seasonality, you might need to shift resources around. Perhaps you work with several retail clients whose sales, and therefore campaigns, pick up heavily around Christmas time. Using analytics in Salesforce, you can move campaign ops team members onto the retail accounts to help manage the extra workload.
Proper Analytics Keeps Quotas On Track
Sellers always want to know how they are pacing to their goal. Whether it’s a personal quota or an upfront commitment, they track their performance based on their attainment. However, calculating quotas and commission splits manually can be quite tedious, and building out ad sales splits to fit a company’s commission model in Salesforce is often cumbersome and taxing on the system. One huge benefit of CRM Analytics is being able to do those calculations and any related work right there in the platform. For advertisers that like to buy in with an upfront commitment to lock in great rates for the whole year, CRMA can help teams ensure that they’re on track to fulfill those upfront commitments and not leave any money on the table.
In short, advertising teams can string all of these benefits together to create an efficient workflow that optimizes campaigns for their clients. They can easily see their pacing and quota percentages and identify any potential red flags. The operations team can then move resources around if necessary to get everything back on track, and at the end of the day, the successes are reported back to the advertiser. This helps to build trust and maintain lasting relationships.
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