The Early Bird Truly Gets The Worm!

It’s not too early to start selling! The 12-13 Season seems like a long ways off. But, for those that take on the publishing and advertising sales task for the program books, NOW is prime time to begin the sales campaign! Here are a some tips on how to make sure that you utilize this ever shrinking "window of opportunity" to maximize sales and minimize costs.

1. Analyze current season’s program book: How many pages were used, How many ad pages were sold, How many pages were used for in-kind trade, How many pages were used for content, How many pages were color, how many black & white?  The answers to these questions will give you important information on expected costs for the 12-13 season program book.   
2. Decisions from prospective advertisers take time. A big misconception is that the time that it takes to cultivate a prospect into an advertiser is days. It is actually weeks. Our average conversion takes 2.5 weeks!!!
3. Use Speculative ads.  Spec ads are a great tool for converting prospects into actual sales. We have found that using a spec ad with an advertising prospect can increase the conversion from 3% to 16.5%!!
4. Sell ads by edition: If you print your program book throughout the season and have multiple editions, sell ad space by edition. Think about it, this allows you to sell larger ads at a perceived lower cost to the advertiser and then contact that advertiser throughout the season to renew. The larger ads are also the most effective for the advertiser. It becomes a "win-win" proposition but you need to begin NOW!