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Let’s cut to the chase. As media campaigns become increasingly integrated and most media company’s product offerings AND services have increased over the past few years, it’s become more complex than ever for customers to understand what it is that your media company actually does.
Many of your customers (and salespeople quite honestly) are not really sure what you do besides sell your main products—be it newspapers, radio, or television. How do you educate your prospective customers and the marketplace on what it is that a modern day media company does besides selling their core products they have become known for? Do you task your sales teams with educating the marketplace about the fact that your radio station now resembles more of a digital agency offering PPC, Social Media, and SEO services? Or do you leave it to a new B2B website to take care of that while your salespeople sell? Great question, let’s explore that more.
In the blog post, “3 Things Every Media Company Needs to Do in 2015” the first thing mentioned was that every media company needs a website for their B2B brand. As the introduction to this blog post pointed out, media selling is becoming more complex as the number of product (and service) offerings increase and media companies resemble digital agencies offering customers a wide range of capabilities. How do prospective customers determine if your media company fits their needs? A great way to showcase your expertise and thought leadership in your target market is to create a B2B website that addresses your company’s capabilities and gives more information than just rates and specs.
Media companies that develop B2B websites satisfy 3 related goals:
- Establishing themselves as an expert in more than the areas they are known for
- Being found when prospective customers are searching for solutions to their marketing and advertising needs
- Allowing the salespeople to do what they do best—sell advertising, and not have to explain over and over that the company can do more than just sell newspaper, radio, or television ads, focusing on the big picture and really solving client’s needs.
Additional Benefits of a B2B Website for Media Companies
A number of media companies have in-house design teams that can not only help clients with designing ads but also have teams of accomplished website designers that are focused on building clients' landing pages or entire websites. Having your internal team of designers build your own B2B website can not only showcase your brilliant designers, but can also showcase your work for potential clients. At LeadG2, we like to call this “eating your own dog food.” If you want to sell digital media, social media, and website design to clients, you are much better doing so when you have a great website yourself that showcases your abilities.
What Happens If Media Companies Disregard This Advice?
If after reading this post you say to yourself, “we don’t need no stinking B2B website,” you are opening up the door to your competitors that are already blogging, actively posting on social media, and cultivating a B2B social media audience (not just listeners, viewers or readers). The media companies that embrace social media, blogging, and online lead generation are sure to become the leaders in the space and will be the ones being found online when a local advertiser searches for marketing help. In today’s world of everything starting with a Google search, you can either be found or be lost. Which would you prefer? And what would you tell your own customers?
If you don’t know where to get started, we recommend a few resources to help get you started:
The Future of Sales and Marketing
Inbound Marketing 101 - Media
LeadG2 - The Book
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