Digital transformation is top of mind for many agencies and media publishers as consumer trends continue to shift and digital advertising technologies expand. Over the past few years, publishers across the globe have been under increasing pressure to find ways to grow subscriptions and audiences, increase adverting spending, and diversify their solution suite to build sustainable, recurring revenue. Since 2004, about 1,800 newspapers have closed in the United States, according to Penny Abernathy in her research on news deserts. What’s more, upwards of 1,700 of these were weekly publications. “The pace of closures, up till now, has been about 100 a year”, said Abernathy.
Finding Cost Savings
As the industry continues to evolve rapidly, both advertising agencies and media publishers must find new and innovative ways to maximize relationships with local businesses and work to expand advertising solutions to both retain the advertising business and grow revenue. The cost issue weighs heavily on these decision makers, as local business owners’ marketing budgets are shifting away from traditional marketing towards digital, consumer journey-driven approaches. Yet, nearly every department within publisher organizations are being asked to cut expenses or look for cost saving measures within their existing initiatives.
According to a survey on B2B digital strategies by LongHill back, every publisher’s response indicated that digital growth is a major priority for their media companies – whether that be through new journalism solutions or updated advertising solutions. So where do these solutions come from, especially on a shoestring budget?
Augmenting Existing Advertising Solutions with Digital Advertising
One way to achieve this is to expand traditional advertising offerings with digital marketing and advertising services. Highly-targeted programmatic and social advertising solutions pair incredibly well with traditional media including direct mail, newspaper, magazine ads, and even publisher-owned site advertising. This is because most media-based organizations and ad agencies focus their client’s advertising strategies on reaching the right local audiences to drive an action to achieve the client’s goals.
Something as simple as placing site retargeting pixels on your publisher’s site, and then selling advertising campaigns targeted to reach the audiences can help create a new revenue stream.
You can then focus efforts on extending the reach of the advertising campaign in total, and make an impact on your company’s bottom line.
In addition, offering solutions like website development, AI-driven chat tools, organic social presence management, and SEO services will enable you to provide a comprehensive set of solutions to help local businesses build their brands. In turn, that gives you the ability to grow revenue alongside them, as you work to fulfill their advertising needs to ensure their business grows.
Outsourcing Your Digital Advertising Solutions
In previous years, outsourcing received a bad rap due to the nature of the outsourced solutions and the quality of experience which often didn’t meet consumer expectations. The good news is that outsourcing has come a long way since the days of the past, and is now powered by advancements in technology that support communication, fulfillment of digital advertising, and content marketing solutions across the globe.
As these technologies advance, it is increasingly likely that your competitors are utilizing outsourced solutions in some capacity or another to fulfill their advertising and creative production needs. According to the ‘State of the Market for Offshore Creative Production’ report by TKM Consultants, 53% of advertising agencies utilized outsourced partners overseas in 2020, and that number has been growing ever since.
Sure, there are some advantages to staffing in-house to serve your clients’ needs with digital advertising solutions. When you weigh the cost aspects of hiring full-time staff, building out the processes, and developing the team, consider the following:
- Knowledge base, skill gaps, and expertise: Your existing employees may not currently possess the skills needed to set up, manage and optimize complex digital advertising solutions at scale. Additionally, they may not have the knowledge needed to develop processes for ease of use by clients, sales teams, and coordination teams. Hiring for these skill sets can also be a challenge, especially given that it is difficult to articulate exactly what expertise is needed before you’ve begun the work. All of this can be avoided if you were to outsource digital marketing fulfillment.
- Time and scale constraints: Digital solution fulfillment and creative production can be a time-consuming process, and can quickly cause volume and capacity issues. If and when you face these issues, you’ll have to develop a solution to scale your team quickly and efficiently if you are staffing in-house, which isn’t always easy. Additionally, spending time on these tasks can often cause your existing staff to deviate their focus from further developing your owned media solutions.
- Deadline critical: One of the major differences between digital and traditional media is that digital doesn’t usually have a deadline like traditional media. Therefore, the faster you launch digital marketing campaigns, the faster you see revenue. This doesn’t always come easy when you’re staffing internally to power your digital marketing solutions, as volume and scale can be an ongoing issue that is difficult to forecast and prepare for as you grow.
Choosing a Partner You Can Trust
AffinityX offers a robust suite of digital advertising solutions and services including programmatic media buying, paid search engine marketing, SEO, and more, all tailored to meet the needs of local businesses at scale, and help companies like yours develop and grow revenue. For 30 years, AffinityX has served as an extension of teams like yours, working through sales and ordering processes, integrating technology solutions to streamline ordering, developing sales and marketing collateral, and training sales teams on how to position and win with digital advertising sales.
By utilizing AffinityX’s suite of digital marketing and advertising services, we can help you take your advertising offerings to the next level, building new revenue streams and maximizing your revenue potential. Get in touch today to learn how we can help with your digital transformation!