Today Danylo, Traffic Devils’ CBDO, will tell you how to go through this life-long quest without breaking down. We’ll sort out how to completely overhaul a department and answer the question ‘Does a ship stay the same if you replace every plank of the deck’, improve team efficiency, and increase the number of new partnerships x10.
No diversification – no result
If you plan to do so, the first thing to look at, is the department structure. To break through the ‘glass ceiling’ more successfully and quickly, it makes sense to answer some questions for yourself:
● Do managers cope with handling current advertisers, and if not – why not?
● Are there specialists who can attract new partners, and if so – how to build the work with search?
It’s often seen in BizDev teams that sourcing advertisers feels like random tossing around in between, servicing contracts already in place. This is neither good nor bad, it can simply reduce productivity
In such a setup, all the tasks of attracting and working with current advertisers lie with the BizDev managers, who simply cannot cope with all the processes simultaneously. In addition, the search for new partners causes additional difficulties.
To optimise processes for the search for new advertisers, the best solution is to create a separate team, put all processes important for the search and onboarding of new advertisers in a separate branch, and appoint a person responsible for ensuring that the number of contracts grows.
TRAFFIC DEVILS now has an entire sales team working efficiently, dedicated solely to the fact that they are looking for new advertisers.
But there is a nuance. For this team to work, there are three others working ‘behind its back’. BizDevs maximise profits from existing contracts, accounts deal with processes close to performance management, selecting optimal buyers for the partner’s needs, and the backend team – who do peripheral work day and night so that the other specialists are not distracted by service issues.
In such a split, it is really much easier for a sales team to shine.
Sourcing and retaining new advertisers
A whole network of communication channels is available to attract new advertisers. We use:
LinkedIn, for cold outreach like everyone else, and also to research company and top profiles in preparation for conferences.
Skype, where you can search for contacts too. Call it a hint. Review sites – no one will tell you more than a practitioner who has already worked there.
And also numerous analytics and spy services that help you track what your competitors are doing. For example, find out where (and what) other teams are driving to.
It is important to know how to use all the tools correctly, as each channel has its own specifics.
On review sites, you can parse new products that have only recently been released. In analytics services, you can track trends in queries and conversions to specific products to understand what is currently at the top and what is potentially interesting to work with. On Skype, with a certain skill, you can make direct contacts, just like on LinkedIn.
Additionally, on LinkedIn, you can search through the companies themselves.
When it comes to working with conferences, however, it’s important to imagine that you and your department are a bit of Ocean’s Friends.
Study the profiles of the advertisers you plan to meet, prepare selling points that may be of interest to specific decision-makers, select ‘affinitive’ after-parties that are worth going to, assign new players who will be at the event for the first time to a separate group with their own approach, and so on. Look for contacts, get in touch and get to know each other in advance – de-virtualisation is much better than cold introductions.
Preparation is 90% of success at a conference. The other 10% is keeping in mind to use it 😉
Working with new partners
First, it’s important to understand if you and the advertiser are a good match for each other. This is something like speed dating, where you’ll learn about all the details of the partnership: the best GEOs that convert, available payment systems, recommended targeting and previous results of launches. Unlike chat roulettes of varying levels of quality, you not only have to make a fateful decision within literally a few minutes, but also convince your partner to accept your offer, heart, and traffic over the same period of time. K is for cortisol. A for adrenaline.
The more information you get from the advertiser at the start, the fewer problems you’ll have post facto.
When this stage is passed, you need to decide on the inputs for the test run. It is important to find out what conditions are in place to limit the traffic for the test, how it will be paid for, and what traffic the advertiser is not obliged to pay for.
The last but not least step is to agree on the payment process in advance. This includes payment terms and dates, methods and required documents, as well as more precise points related to the specific type of
payment. For example, if it’s a RevShare, how long it will take to pay you.
Thus, this whole ‘’check model‘’, the task of which is to minimise risks, is used at the stage of transition to launch. This allows us to better optimise the results we get and not to create deceived expectations in our partners. In this way, we lay down the conditions for growth, and after that we work with the volume and its development.
What about scaling
For each advertiser with whom we made contact, we have a separate set of questions to ask. They are mostly formed at the stage of researching this advertiser, but then they are a great help in fixing the format of agreements with him/her and effectively scaling the driving to him/her. Once again, let us reiterate that preparation is 90% of success.
However, no preparation will help if there is no chemistry between the two. Therefore, the main tool of BizDev is constant personal communication. Roughly speaking, nobody wants to scale with someone with whom they haven’t at least had coffee.
Incorporating all these practices, in about a year we managed to bring around 500 new advertisers into our attentive hands.
From a new height, it all looks natural After all, we were looking for them first, and then they started coming to us themselves. Mostly, as is often the case, by word of mouth, thanks to all the work done by our team earlier.
