The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several account managers ask me questions surrounding a digital client needs analysis. Everyone wanted to know those three or four questions that would magically give them everything they needed to put together a fool-proof digital solution. The truth is: there are no magical questions.  

There is nothing special about a digital client needs analysis. When selling digital advertising, you need to learn about your prospect's business, their competition, and their primary business challenges.

Personal recommendations are a powerful thing. Good or bad, they have the power to persuade us in one direction or another. Think about it—when most of us have little to no knowledge about a particular company or product, we typically ask those whose opinions we trust: family, friends or coworkers. As we all become more and more connected, most of us have also begun to rely on digital reviews.

When digital marketing campaigns fail, typically there's something dirty going on. Marketers and business owners often miss the point of digital advertising. You need to think beyond the inventory being presented and focus on marketing needs and solutions that deliver on set expectations. So I have defined three of the most dirty words I hear used in digital advertising and ways to clean them up.   

How you conduct business, whether you are an owner, operator, manager, or sales executive, has become increasingly dependent on social media, but are we beginning to depend on it so much that we don't communicate productively?

When it comes to digital media expertise, it's easy to feel like an expert and a novice all at once. This is mainly because there are so many advancements in digital that it's hard to know what you should be focused on with respect to digital marketing.

Mid-February is an interesting time of the year. The stores, malls, and grocery stores are jam-packed with people shopping for Valentines Day. If you like to shop, this may be paradise… heading out with all of the other crazed shoppers, trying to find that one special thing for that special someone. But if you're not into shopping, you probably want to minimize the places you have to go.

Imagine if you only gave yourself one opportunity to find that special gift—you're determined to go to only one store. Some of you would get lucky. Others might find that is it out of stock, while others find that the one store chosen never even carried that special something. So what do you do if you weren’t lucky? Since you only gave yourself one shot, you have two options—find another gift or go home with no gift.

Don’t like those options? Me either, but when it comes to digital marketing, I see salespeople and marketers do just that all the time when using ad targeting to reach their target consumer—their someone special if you will. Instead of using multiple targeting options available to them, they make the decision to hyper-target… using just one behavior, age group, or a small geographic area. Doing that is the same thing as just going into one store to find your target gift. You might get lucky and generate results, but more often hyper targeting minimizes your chances to deliver results.