When writing an SOW, you must clearly define your offering and establish the guidelines of your relationship. 

To do this, include relevant and specific information that will catch your prospect’s eye and allow you to highlight your agency’s unique value proposition.

That’s pretty ambiguous, though. There’s a lot you could include in an SOW.

So, what should you include? Here are 7 essentials.

What’s a Statement of Work (SOW)?

A statement of work (SOW) is a document that describes a project’s requirements. Said another way, an SOW outlines the scope of the work, deliverables, timelines, payment terms, and anything else pertinent to the business relationship.

A statement of work essentially sets expectations for the customer-business relationship and holds both parties responsible. An SOW also acts as “protection.” For example, if a customer and business disagree on the payment conditions upon the project’s completion, they can reference the SOW.

Statement of Work vs. Scope of Work

Statement of Work and Scope of Work are often used interchangeably, especially because you can abbreviate both with “SOW.”

They’re not the same—here’s the (relatively small) difference:

A Statement of Work is a formal document that describes the project’s goals. Meanwhile, the Scope of Work is a part of the Statement of Work that describes the plan to deliver the outcomes for which the customer is paying. Think of a Statement of Work as the book and the Scope of Work as a chapter.

What Should You Include a Statement of Work?

No two Statements of Work are the same because no two projects are the same.

Each project requires a unique SOW that outlines the specifics of that engagement. That said, almost all SOWs will include seven elements: the Scope of Work, deliverables, time and resources, payment terms, client services, changes, and terms and conditions.

Let’s look at each one.

1. Scope of Work

We’re already covered this essential, but it’s worth repeating.

The Scope of Work outlines what’s actually going to be done or what could be done if required. This is where you’ll use words like strategy, project, plan, etc. Your benefit to the client should be made most evident.

Your benefits should be at the heart of this section. What can you include to show them you took the time to carefully craft a plan to fulfill their needs?

2. Deliverables

While it’s important to lay out your goals and schedule, it’s also important to establish a two-way flow of deliverables. These are the guidelines attached to the Scope of Work.

As you build your SOW, lay out the key accomplishments and milestones and when their deadlines.

Consider this the verbal, more friendly version of the Terms and Conditions (see below). After all, a big factor in meeting your deliverables is having a cooperative partner.

3. Timeline and Resources

You should also include a detailed project timeline and any related resources, including the project’s duration, required tools and resources from both parties, and where the project will occur.  

4. Payment Terms

It is always smart to be upfront when discussing money, so create a billing plan with clear payment terms, including payment due dates, payment methods, and any additional terms that could apply.

Typical payment terms include “by deliverable” or “by schedule.” For the former, the customer pays when you reach certain milestones. Paying “by schedule” means the customer sends you payment on a pre-defined date, like every month or bi-weekly.

No one likes to feel duped, nor do they like hidden terms, especially in a down economy forcing many businesses to pinch pennies like never before.

5. Client Services

Tell your client who they will interact with when contacting your company and across what mediums, including email, phone, text messages, etc.

Communication is important in the relationship-building process. This section of a Statement of Work establishes how you’ll do that. 

6. Changes

There will most likely be some tweaks during the project—and that is ok.

During times of “scope creep,” i.e., the unauthorized additions to a project, it is important to show you are flexible and understand that sometimes change is necessary (within reason). 

That said, it is equally as important to communicate your expectations about any changes and how they will impact the original Scope of Work and project timeline.

7. Terms and Conditions

As with any contract, you must include legal information, including contract termination, invoicing agreements, damages, and other legal issues relevant to your relationship with the customer.

The Importance of a Statement of Work

There’s no right or wrong way to write a Statement of Work, but there are essentials, including the scope of work, deliverables, time and resources, payment terms, client services, changes, and terms and conditions.

Include these—and anything else you deem relevant to the project—and you’ll be in a prime position to demonstrate your willingness and interest in forming long-standing relationships with your clients. You’ll realize a host of other benefits, too.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

The ask: Reach out to the best ones and start a conversation.

Then, close the deals. Oh, and do it all by the end of the week.

It’s a tall task, but one that’s all too real for anyone in ad sales.

Which leads do you call or email first? Which ones can wait for a date to be named later?

The answer: lead scoring.

Let’s explore lead scoring and the top 3 reasons it’s so important to sellers’ success.

What’s Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of assigning a value to leads and ranking them against others. Lead scoring helps sales reps maximize their time, engage with the right prospects, and, ultimately, close more deals.

Lead scoring rules vary by company, but generally, higher-intent behaviors warrant more points. For example, a lead will likely get more points for requesting a demo than they would for simply opening a sales email or returning a call.

Similarly, a lead is likely to receive a higher score the closer they are to the company’s ideal customer profile (ICP). For example, a lead in the right industry and with the right budget would likely be ranked higher than one outside of the company’s industry purview.

Data points to score your leads

• Job title (seniority)
• Company size
• Department
• Location
• Budget
• Industry
• Time at company
• Content downloads
• Website engagement
• Email opens
• Social media engagement

The list goes on. The more points awarded to a lead, the higher they should be on your list. It’s that simple.

Why Does Lead Scoring Matter?

The definition above should paint a picture of lead scoring’s importance, but let’s dive deeper into 3 specific reasons sellers should put a premium on it in 2023 and beyond.

1. Lead scoring maximizes your time

No hard-and-fast rule determines how long a seller works each week.

While sellers often work long and unconventional hours, there’s still no getting around the fact that there’s only so much time in the day.

For that reason, time management is critical to the success of ad sales reps. It’s cliche, but time really is money.

A lead scoring system determines which leads deserve the most time and attention.

The system of ranking contacts assures that ad sales reps will speak to more qualified leads first, close more deals, and generate more revenue earlier and in a shorter amount of time.

The system also eliminates wasted time between calls because the ad sales rep can’t decide who to contact next.

2. Lead scoring improves communication

Prospecting is a critical and unavoidable step in the sales process.

If ad sales reps want to communicate effectively with a lead, they must first research the company, its go-to-market strategy, past and current clients, competitors, industry trends, and more.

Building a lead scoring model will help ad sales reps achieve their pre-sales goal of filling their pipeline with leads who warrant the most attention and have the highest value (to them and the business).

Ad sales reps can start crafting relevant and targeted pitches, beginning with their most valuable leads.

3. Lead Scoring Ensures Every Account Is a Qualified Sales Opportunity

A lead is scored based on their characteristics, like their personal and company demographics, and their actions, such as their internet and email behavior.

A lead who is a good fit demographically and engaged with the company will be given a higher score. Going further and categorizing leads into temperatures of “hot,” “warm,” and “cold” will help ad sales reps create more manageable call lists.

Reps should prioritize the “hot” leads or those scoring between 76 and 100.

They can then call the “warm” leads, which range between 26 and 50, and then move on to the least valuable, “cold” leads, which rank from 0 to 25.

Ad sales reps can refrain from contacting these “cold” leads altogether if they feel that the leads are hopeless, saving them even more time.

Lead scoring helps ad sales reps consistently pitch to qualified, valuable prospects or contacts with a high potential of becoming revenue-generating clients.

4. Lead Scoring Helps the Marketing Team

The value of lead scoring extends beyond the sales team. A good lead-scoring system can also be an invaluable tool for the marketing team.

By understanding what you deem a “high-quality” lead, the marketing team can better craft their campaigns to target similar audiences. They can even take it further by targeting their campaigns at high-scoring leads that augment the sales process and accelerate the deal.

Think of this as an extension of the sales team. The sales-marketing relationship has always been key; a lead-scoring system will do nothing but strengthen it.

Lead Scoring: The Key to Ad Sales Success

Sales are built on a sense of urgency due to the need to engage leads quickly.

Time management, therefore, is key for ad sales reps combing through a high volume of incoming leads or a large account list to find those most qualified.

Ad sales reps must accurately, yet quickly, examine the leads who have expressed interest in, and interacted with, their company. The more leads that become prospects and revenue-generating clients, the better.    

Yet, there are challenges that ad sales reps encounter, all of which prevent—or slow down—sales. It’s especially frustrating to reps when they waste their time on a lead with little to no potential to become customers. 

This is where lead scoring comes into play.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

After countless emails and even more voicemails, you’ve finally got your prospect on the phone. Even better, you’ve landed a Zoom meeting. 

Before that started, you had to find your perfect target, so you focused on maintaining a near-perfect prospect list.

Great job.

Now, it’s time to ask questions—you know, to get to know the prospect and push them toward a deal. But not just any questions, though. The key to building lasting—and profitable—relationships with your prospects is to ask the right questions. 

Your level of question specificity could be looked at as a funnel:

Introduction Questions

Questions at this stage of the relationship-building process with your prospects should be high-level and aimed at building rapport. Nothing more, nothing less. Said another way, they’re questions you would ask almost anyone. 

While these questions may seem insignificant to your ultimate goal of closing a deal, their relationship-building prowess is exponentially more important in the post-pandemic world. According to McKinsey & Company, more than 70% of buyers no longer want to meet sales reps in person but are open to remote meetings. 

These “introductory” questions can go a long way in fostering your relationship with prospects and setting a foundation to close a sale.

For example: 

• How is your business going?
• What are you doing this weekend/how was your weekend?
• I’ve gotten a sense of your business from your website and marketing
• materials, but I’d love to hear more from you. Can you tell me what you’ve been up to this quarter? 
• How did you hear about us? (Your marketing team will love you for this one.)
• What was your experience buying X?
• When was the last time you purchased X?

After you get through these top-level questions, it’s time to dive deeper and connect with your prospects in a meaningful, solution-focused way; it’s time to bring your product into the equation.    

Getting-to-Know-You Questions 

Questions at the “getting-to-know-you” stage are more profound and specific but still open-ended. At this point, the conversation should still be engaging. 

While the questions are still higher level, they should be time-specific and geared toward your prospect’s company, their experience, and what they’re trying to accomplish with your product (at least at a high level). 

For example: 

• What is most important to you and your team right now?  
• Who typically works with you to make buying decisions?
• What is your biggest area of focus in the first six months of the year?
• You specialize in X niche. Why did you choose it?
• Did you use a checklist or comparison matrix to help you make a purchase decision for X?
• Can you walk me through the process you’ve used to fix X problem?

By asking your prospect open-ended yet specific questions, they will be more inclined to be transparent and honest with you. 

Getting-Personal Questions

Not personal in how you’d talk to a friend or a colleague at a work event; personal in the sense that you’re starting to understand why your prospect is looking for a solution like yours. More importantly, you’re trying to figure out if there’s a match. 

For example: 

• How will solving this problem or achieving this business goal impact your organization and you personally?
• Have you used similar products in the past? If so, what was your experience? 
• How will you be “grading” the impact of this product? Which metrics will you use, and who will you report to? 

Knowing your product or solution’s impact on your prospect and their team is essential because it helps you better understand their mindset and focus on a specific, meaningful, mutually beneficial end goal.

Relationship Building is a Question-based Process

To grow your business, it’s your responsibility to make your buyer understand your solution is helping them overcome real-life problems – not hypothetical ones. 

If you follow a discovery process that includes asking the right questions, the buyer will lay out a roadmap for how you close more business.

To know what questions you should ask, it’s important to consider your prospect as a person and nothing else.

Think about the process of becoming strongly acquainted with another person. The first thing you do is introduce yourself, plain and simple.

After breaking the ice, you begin getting to know the prospect a bit more. You learn about who they are, where they’re from, and their current situation.

From there, you get personal. As your questions get more personal, they get more specific. This is where you learn about the other person’s why or intent.

Once you completely understand the other person, you can form a meaningful, mutually beneficial partnership. This, in its entirety, is the framework for deciding what questions to ask your prospects.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

After losing $30b during the pandemic, marketers are ready to make their grand return.

In fact, more than half of respondents to a study by The Event Participation Index said they’re extremely likely to return to in-person events by the second half of 2023.

We’ve covered trade shows and live events in the past, including an article about why you should host a trade show in which we reported that 95 percent of marketers think live events provide attendees are a valuable opportunity to form in-person connections in an increasingly digital world.

In a follow-up post, we looked at some simple things you can do to facilitate networking at your event.

But there is another critical element of hosting an event or trade show affecting both revenue and long-term relationships: event sponsors.

You’ve convinced brands to participate in your event, sponsoring a booth or a lounge or a networking event.

But what about after the event?

To get sponsors to return, you must show them a return on investment (ROI).

Here are two tips to get you on the right track:

Communicate About Expectations Throughout the Process

Ask your sponsors what they hope to get out of the event.

While ‘more sales’ is typically the underlying motivation behind most event sponsorships, brands should be able to express their goals in more specific terms—and you should be on board with helping your sponsor meet that goal.

Ronnie Higgins at Eventbrite suggests that sponsors narrow their expectations to a singular goal:

“What is the ultimate goal of your event? To generate qualified leads? Attract new employees? To build awareness or launch a new product? After making a list of all your goals, whittle down your answers to just one primary goal — the most important.”

Take your sponsors through this exercise ahead of the event. If their goal is product awareness, maybe there’s a way to work the product into what’s front and center at the event. If the goal is qualified leads, offering follow-up with the attendee list may be more beneficial.

Either way, communicating about your sponsors’ expectations ahead of the event will help you show how their involvement translated into ROI.

Make Sponsorship Packages With ROI In Mind

It can seem temptingly easy to create sponsorship packages. A headlining speaker, a feature in the program, a premium spot for a booth — these are all simple to include and simple to deliver.

But those elements of a sponsorship package are also difficult to translate into hard numbers for ROI, particularly from your end.

The CMO may have a vague idea of how many people approached her after her presentation, but you don’t.

Instead, build additional elements to your sponsorship packages that are simple to translate into ROI for your sponsors.

Include a coupon or link to your sponsor’s site when you send out reminder emails, and track how much traffic they receive as a result. Set up meetups between attendees and sponsors and examine how many personal connections that opportunity delivers. Create social media posts before, during and after the event featuring the sponsor and see where the engagement lands you.

And, provided you have permission from your attendees, offer attendee data to bolster the sponsor’s leads.

All of these efforts give your sponsors more exposure and give you the opportunity to deliver hard numbers when they come asking for ROI.

Proving the ROI of digital events to sponsors

The in-person event corner of the market suffered during the pandemic; the digital corner did not.

In fact, the global virtual events market was valued at more than $114b in 2021 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.4% from 2022 to 2030.

The rise of virtual events and growing participant preference will pressure hosts to prove ROI to their sponsors.

While you could tell sponsors to look at metrics like registrations, leads and demos, pipeline, and poll responses, Airmeet suggests realigning your sites on metrics like customer loyalty, retention, and referrals.

Other questions Airmeet suggests:

• Did organic brand searches go up after the event?
• What speakers and partners are you attracting?
• Have you generated any customer testimonials from attendees?
• Have any accounts expanded?

Switching your vantage point on these metrics and questions will put you in a prime position to measure—and prove—the ROI of virtual events to sponsors.

Proving the Value of Events in 2023

After a few years of budgets shifting away from events in lieu of content creation, digital events, and search ads, brands are returning to convention centers around the country.

While event hosts will remain eager to recoup lost revenue, they’ll be under more pressure than ever to prove their worth—sponsors in the down economy will demand it.

The events that can prove the best ROI will attract the most investments from sponsors in 2023 and beyond.

For more insights, sign up for MediaRadar’s blog here.

In the advertising industry, contacts change frequently and campaigns shift. Sales reps need to put quality time into researching their prospects and identifying whether they fit their ideal customer profile (ICP). 

When reps can easily find relevant and timely information on brands, they can prepare tailored pitches for more qualified prospects.

But ad sales intelligence isn’t only for ad sales reps: agency executives and marketers can use these platforms to optimize media spending, monitor competitors and uncover new opportunities.

Make sure you are choosing the solution that is right for your business. 

What is Ad Sales Intelligence Software?

Sales intelligence tools help sales teams gather information on prospects and customers. With these tools, sales leaders can better understand their markets, access buyer intent data and other account details that could help convert future customers.

Ad sales intelligence tools are tailored for ad sales teams, along with agencies and marketers. 

They address the specific needs of ad sales reps and other advertising executives because they give information on brands’ advertising spending, campaign strategies, contacts, contracts, media buying periods and more. 

Within these tools, users can create lists to organize their prospects and prioritize their biggest opportunities. 

Before making any effective sales pitch, sales reps need to do their homework on who they’re reaching out to. Ad sales intelligence software makes this process more efficient and effective.

Top 5 Benefits of Ad Sales Intelligence Software

1. Ad sales intelligence tools tell you who to contact

Ad sales intelligence platforms enable ad sales reps to effectively prospect for new business and connect with the right buyers. They issue reports on spending trends in major industries, allowing teams to uncover unique opportunities. 

Once a sales rep has identified the brand that fits their ICP, they can access the key contacts at that company. These contacts can be added to a list of prospects.

Quality software will provide accurate contact information for key decision makers representing the brand. The data should be regularly updated because contacts tend to change regularly.

2. They give you insights on when you should reach out

This type of software offers reps insights on brand media planning and buying periods. They help reps stay ontop of upcoming RFPs. Instead of being alerted of an upcoming RFP only a few days ahead of time, reps will have sufficient time for forward thinking.

3. They give you context to perfect your pitch

When reps have data on past spending data, information on cross-channel spending, big picture industry insigts and a brand’s creative approach, they have what they need to put careful thought into their custom pitch.

Instead of having to jump around multiple tools or do hours of manual research, ad sales intelligence tools bring all the latest data into one platform. 

You can see a wide variety of useful data, including recent creative, investment in high CPM campaigns (OTT, Podcasts, YouTube and Facebook) and campaign durations. 

You’ll have all the information needed to research, plan and pitch your prospects.

4. They help you leverage existing relationships

Within this type of software, you can see who holds the purse strings—and sometimes their past history. With this feature, you can leverage your existing relationships to write a compelling cold email that’s more likely to get opened. 

5. They enable you to outperform competitors

You can only gain the advantage on your competition when you have accurate, trustworthy and recent data at your fingertips. 

Top performing sales reps don’t succeed by guessing. They use data to guide them as they pursue opportunities, build pitches and keep customers happy.

How to Choose the Right Ad Sales Intelligence Tool For Your Team

Your team has decided it’s time for an ad sales intelligence platform—or time to switch platforms. How do you ensure you’ll get the best results from a new tool? Start your research with five essential questions.

1. Can I trust the information provided?

Do you know how the information is sourced? And how recent it is or reliable?

When data is aggregated from outside sources, problems start showing up in the data, primarily with data accuracy and timeliness.

MediaRadar employs its own internal team, to research, compile and verify all of the data that comes into our system. We consistently ensure our data is of the highest quality by combining proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with an in-house human verification process.

2. Is it easy to use and understand?

You can have the most powerful tool on your hand, but if it isn’t intuitive and easy for your sales reps to use, it will be a wasted investment. 

The tools should be helpful for reps—not an additional headache to deal with in their stressful jobs. 

Not only should the user experience be great, but the data should be easy to understand. Ad sales intelligence software should give you context and insights about the data.

3. Do the software take data privacy seriously?

Industry standards are changing constantly—and you want to choose a platform that goes above and beyond the basics. 

Ask the vendor if they are a US Privacy Shield Program (US version of the EU’s GDPR) Participant. Are they also compliant with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)? This is critical, because any large company that buys contact information, is required to comply with CCPA law, California’s law governing individual user privacy.

The software must also be able to show how they obtain the names their sales reps call upon and that their sources are compliant as well.

MediaRadar goes even further, allowing users the option to correct, add or remove their name from our database. Furthermore, we also collect written consent from contacts in the database.  

4. Can I customize the platform to fit my needs?

Ad sales intelligence tools can be used across roles. With a tool that can be customized to different positions, you can run analyses that are tailored to your needs and goals. 

Sales reps can engage in personalized prospecting, using the tool to filter prospects on factors that matter to them.

Media planners can use the tool to research their competitors and industry trends to find the next biggest opportunity. 

The tool needs to be able to provide relevant information that will help you accomplish your unique goals.

5. Is the solution just software or does it act as a partner? 

Is this a software that is great at onboarding, but then disappears? Or are they truly invested in your success?

At MediaRadar, every client has a dedicated, personalized account management team. As your partner in success, MediaRadar shares best practice advice, industry articles and custom reports designed to help grow your business.

MediaRadar’s client services team is honored to have won the prestigious Stevie Award® for outstanding customer service 9 years in a row.

A reliable ad sales intelligence tool allows you to identify and pursue high priority opportunities. Make your perfect pitch with relevant data and a team supporting you all the way. 

Not every lead is bound to become a customer—so how do you determine which leads to focus your sales efforts on?

You engage in lead scoring. 

Now, we know lead scoring isn’t anything new—it was the big buzzword over a decade ago. 

But lead scoring has come a long way since tech companies started promoting this strategy. 

“A number of factors have changed to create a new iteration of lead scoring. The new iteration has been fueled by more advanced data technology, shifted consumer behavior, and improved data management practices,” explains Armando Biondi, CoFounder and CEO of Breadcrumbs.

Modern lead scoring is essential for reps who want to identify high-value leads and act fast to close deals.

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a way to assign a quantitative value to leads. 

A lead is a potential client that has expressed some form of interest in your company—someone that has made a move toward your company and interacted with your company in some (even minor) way.

Typically, a lead scoring model is set on a 0 to 100 scale, with 100 representing the most valuable, most qualified lead—someone that appears to be the most interested in your company, that also fits the mold of a typical customer.

Lead interactions can take place either online or offline. An online interaction could be a website visit, a blog subscription or a white paper download. An offline interaction could be a response to a direct mail campaign or an in-person interaction at an event or trade show.

While the definition of a lead may sound an awful lot like that of a prospect, the difference is very important.

Lead vs prospect

From a sales rep’s perspective, leads and prospects are very different. They’re at different stages in the sales cycle.

A prospect is simply a lead that has expressed further interest in continuing the conversation with your company beyond their first initial interaction. 

Leads become prospects.

From a sales rep’s perspective, prospects will always be pursued, whereas leads may not be. 

Leads need to be run through further nurturing before reps fully commit to pursuing them. A prospect’s value is much more defined than a lead’s. In fact, a lead may not have any value—which is what makes lead scoring an essential task for any sales team.

Why Lead Scoring is Important

Lead scoring allows sales representatives to understand who is expressing interest in their service, how the lead is behaving and what actions the sales rep should take. This allows reps to spend their time on leads that are more likely to convert. 

Three benefits of lead scoring include:

• Sales reps use time more efficiently: With the right tools, lead scoring helps sales reps assure that they’re reaching out to contacts that have a high potential of being turned into a revenue-generating client.
• A boost in marketing and sales alignment: By coming together to identify the lead scoring process, team members make sure everybody is on the same page about the ideal buyer.
• See sales numbers climb: When sales reps know who to reach out to, have information about lead behavior and know when to reach out to them, they can close bigger deals, faster. 

In B2B sales, analytics are table stakes. “From web-crawling to sentiment analysis, outperformers use specialized analytics to dig into individual deals, propensity to buy, and lifetime profitability with greater precision than the average B2B,” reports McKinsey. 

To outperform your competitors, it’s essential to invest in sales intelligence models to understand your ideal buyers and who is engaging with your business.

How to Score Your Leads

A lead scoring model essentially ranks a lead based on a combination of their characteristics and actions, as they relate to your company’s ideal target market. Those characteristics and actions are the most important part of a lead scoring model, as they are what actually make up the scores.

Sales teams can use less formal words for their scoring stages – for example, they could consider leads cold, warm or hot.

The scoring weight attached to specific characteristics and actions will vary from company to company, but there are a few different ways that all sales teams should score their leads.

4 Ways to Score Your Leads 

1. Demographic or Firmographic Data

Is the lead the type of buyer that your company typically looks for? 

Demographic factors could include age, gender, income, location, family, and so on.

If a lead fits the right personal makeup that your company typically sells to, they’ll start off with a higher score. Gender, age, and other factors will carry different weight, so these factors can be scored separately.

In most cases, personal demographic scoring will be more useful for B2C sellers. B2B brands, on the other hand, focus on firmographics. 

Firmographic data is essentially the demographic data of companies. Instead of describing individual characteristics of a person, they describe the features of a company. Firmographic data includes:

• Company size 
• Industry 
• Number of employees
• Annual revenue 
• Annual ad spend 
• Location
• Type of business (B2B or B2C, product-based or service-based, SaaS)

There are other company characteristics you may want to consider. For example, is your lead working with a competitor of yours? Does your product fill a void for them, or is it simply an improvement of something they already have?

By understanding the firmographic data of the company interacting with your business, you’ll have a better understanding if they are a good fit for nurturing.  

2. Offline Behavior

Even though it feels like everything operates online right now, we can’t forget that offline business behavior is real. 

Whether companies engage with your business at an event or a sales rep agrees to a phone conversation, these types of behaviors should be included in your lead scoring model. 

3. Online Behavior

Online behavior might include whether a lead has visited your site, downloaded resources (like a trend report or case study), or filled out a form.

Your sales team can base a scoring model on which of these actions a lead has taken and the time frame in which they’ve done so. 

Perhaps there is a lead that has moved very quickly, from the homepage of your website, to a trend report, and then they requested a demo. Chances are, they are highly engaged, and highly interested in your product or service.

Internet behavior can also include social media behavior. Has your lead interacted with your social media pages? Do they follow your pages? Do they frequently interact with your content? 

Furthermore, do they follow and interact with other companies that have similar products to yours? And do they interact with content that falls in line with the interests of your existing clients?

4. Email behavior

Scoring a lead’s email engagement is a great way to determine their value. You can score everything from open rates, to click rates, and especially replies.

Perhaps a lead has downloaded a white paper, so you decide to send them a follow-up email to further engage them. If they respond, they clearly hold high value as a lead, and potentially as a prospect.

With a sales intelligence tool that prides itself on customer service, you can create custom models for evaluating leads and prospects. 

Learn how MediaRadar has helped leading media companies like Internet Brands, Acast and The New Yorker equip their sales teams by reading our case studies. 

For more updates like this, stay tuned. Subscribe to our blog for sales tips and data from the latest advertising trends.

The subject line of your sales email is often what determines if your email gets opened or not. 

That’s why it matters that you put effort into making your subject lines gold.

We’ve been working with sales reps in the advertising industry for over 15 years—and here are some of the most effective subject lines we’ve seen and why prospects are more likely to open them.

But before we jump into five subject lines that will get your emails opened, here are some general guiding principles to follow.

What makes an effective email subject line?

Get to the point.

Subject lines are short—they leave you room for only 41 characters on an Apple iPhone (portrait view) or 70 characters in Gmail. According to Litmus, in 2021 41.6% of emails were opened on mobile devices. That being said, you need to make it easy for your prospects to see that your email could potentially be valuable to them. 

Make it unique, while relevant

A good subject line should capture your prospect’s interest in a non-gimmicky way. Make sure your subject is connected to the purpose of the email’s body content, gets at the pain points or goals of the prospect, or shows that you understand who they are in some way. 

You could:

• Share new and relevant research related to their industry, with data in the subject line
• Leverage preexisting relationships to stir up a personal connection
• Ask an interesting or personal question related to their business or competitors

Include the call-to-action (CTA) in the subject line

Do you want something specific from the recipient? Will it take just a moment of their time? Let them know right away.

As productivity and management focused Youtube creator Jeff Su explains to Harvard Business Review:  

“Most of us are familiar with a generic “action required” in subject lines, right? My recommendation is just to take it a step further and include exactly what you need the recipient to do and the estimated time it takes for them to do it.

For example, instead of writing “Action required, feedback for project X,” write “Five minutes — survey feedback for project X,” instead.”

When sending a cold sales email, you can tell the prospect how much time they can expect to devote to the CTA. If it’s five or ten minutes of their time, they might be more open to taking action.

Make your value clear

Have you helped similar clients achieve outstanding results recently? Have you noticed that your competitor’s clients are coming to you for a particular reason? Use these insights to woo over your prospects. 

You need as much information on your prospects as possible in order to know what will be uniquely valuable to them. MediaRadar lets you see into any advertiser’s spending profile, their contacts, relationships and more. Leverage this to perfect your pitch.

Write in a personal way

Include personal names of the recipient and, when appropriate, your name. People are more likely to open emails that are coming directly from other people. Even if the email is automated, it can feel personal. 

Top 5 Subject Lines to Get Your Sales Email Opened

1. “Introduction: [Your Personal Name]” or “Introduction: [Your Company] <> [Prospect’s Company]

This works because it’s personal. Sales professionals constantly need to be networking to do their jobs effectively. Introductions are typically something valuable they can use to achieve their goals in their current role or to build their own personal brand.

2. “Quick question about [prospect’s company]”

This type of “quick question” email subject line can be modified to fit your goals of the email. 

Other forms of this subject line could look like:

• “Quick request” 
• “Quick question about your [time period] goals”
• “Hi [prospect’s name], quick question”

Take time to experiment with different ways of framing the questions to your leads. When email subject lines are concise and direct, they feel more personal and like they are going to cost the prospect less energy for opening them. 

Remember that prospects often receive hundreds of emails a day. And on average for every 100 emails received, they only open two, according to research from GetResponse’s Email Marketing Benchmarks Report (2020).

It has to look like you took the time to research the prospect individually and that they are not part of a batch list (even if you are using automation.) A specific question related to the company can help overcome this. 

3. Congratulations, [Name] on your new role at [Company]

When individuals are promoted or start a new position at a different company, they are often jumping into a planning and decision-making period. This is the ideal time to reach out to them. 

With MediaRadar, you can receive alerts when there is a new decision maker at one of your accounts. 

You’ll also see when your accounts have new representation, key players have received a promotion or even when an agency contact has been added for a brand you care about. This is the perfect time to introduce yourself or nurture a lead.

When prospects are new to a position, consider asking them quick questions about their goals or biggest challenges—but choose only one question and make it easy for them to respond. 

4. “Hi, [name]. 10 mins this week?”

This subject is quick and to the point. The prospect will immediately know what the purpose of the email is—and it’s not a big ask. 

Prospects are asked for 30 minute or hour-long calls all the time. Working in a busy advertising environment, they might not have the space to block off for a sales demo or meeting. But 10 minutes? That’s not too big of an ask.

5. “Connect?”

This is as simple, to the point and as human as possible. It also has a very direct CTA that most professionals are willing to explore. They will want to know who you are and why you want to connect. 

Having a great subject line is just part of the process of building a great relationship with your leads. Don’t be surprised if you have to do significant research on your leads and prospects to build a solid email campaign. 

Learn how MediaRadar has helped media companies strategize more effectively by reading our case studies.

For more updates like this, stay tuned. Subscribe to our blog for sales tips and data from the latest advertising trends.

Hosting events provides a substantial revenue stream for trade media companies and a key means of engagement for advertisers. 

Statista reports that event sponsorships are expected to exceed $63 billion dollars this year. And, according to Bizzabo, 81 percent of marketers feel that live events are becoming more important to their company’s success. An even higher proportion of executive leaders believe that in-person events are a critical component of their company’s success.

Hosting an event can lead to better engagement, more revenue and even new relationships. But to get the most out of events, you have to ask the right questions. For any B2B publication, these include: 

• How do you get an effective event strategy in place?
• Where — and what — are event sponsors buying?
• How do you engage with sponsors?
• What is the ROI on creating a new trade publication event? 
• How do you follow up after an event? 
• Where is the most value in a B2B event? Booth sizes? Sponsorship packages? Lead engagement? 

The average retail event can bring in over $6 million in revenue for a trade publication. How can you meet that mark? 

On September 10, industry thought leaders Todd Krizelman (MediaRadar) and Alon Waks (Bizzabo) dove into the power of events from both host and marketer perspective.

They will show you how events can be leveraged to significantly impact your revenue — and answer all of your most pressing event marketing questions. 

Click the links above to download the webinar. You’ll learn:

• Where exhibitors and event sponsors are buying ads
• Key insights into the event advertising landscape for trade media
• What types of ads event sponsors are buying
• What media formats brands are utilizing in their ads
• How an effective event strategy can drive business goals
• How to increase event attendance and analyze ROI
• How the value of in-person connections translates into increasing revenue

There’s no question that advertising is going increasingly digital and getting more personal every day. Since B2B advertising is dependent on speaking to teams and groups, the challenge is keeping things both personalized and informative to capture customers’ attention.

Our report on B2B Advertising in 2018 found that advertisers need to find new, more digital ways to reach decision-makers with the personal touch they’re used to. Naturally, this means B2B publishers need to find ways to bridge that gap between advertisers and their target audience.

But more often than not, B2B publications continue to rely on a similar portfolio year after year, no matter how mobile, social and visual ads seem to be taking over.

How can B2B publications expand their ad portfolios — and see their market share follow?

Change Your Perspective: Other B2B Publications Are Not Your Only Competitors

As a B2B publication, your audience is not limited to a single persona. An architectural magazine, for example, will draw advertisers looking to reach architects, builders, home buyers, interior contractors and more.

On the other side of the coin, these personas are not consuming content solely from industry-specific publications.

Simply put, other B2B publications within your industry are not your only competitors. Digital publications with a nimble reach may actually be even bigger competitors; HuffPost, Forbes, and truly B2B sites like The Balance come to mind. They have the ability to reach millions but drill down into reader interest.

With native advertising, for example, B2B brands can effectively reach their audience on popular magazines and news sites. This is the kind of value you want to capture for them.

But you need to do your research. While it’s tempting to focus on a cross-platform portfolio, MediaRadar research shows that the majority of B2B advertisers are not likely to buy both print and digital ads. According to our 2018 report on B2B advertising, 56 percent of brands bought print only and just 11 percent bought both print and digital ads.

The lesson? Research where and how your prospects are advertising. If they really are focused on print ads, look at ways to update your print portfolio. But if they are spending on social, programmatic and video elsewhere, how can you make a shift?

Explore Ad Formats: Winning Ad Portfolios Offer a Wide Range

Start by looking at all the channels you aren’t currently taking advantage of. YouTube, social video, podcasts, events, and social media are all viable options these days.

Ask which of these would work best with your current ad buyers based on where the rest of their ad spend goes. Then look at how you can integrate these disparate channels and formats into your offerings.

And remember: ad formats don’t have to be new to be ‘new to you’ and fresh for B2B.

Podcasts

Podcasts, for example, have proven to be a valuable form of B2B advertising more recently. If you’ve ever listened to a podcast remotely related to money or business (or even some in clearly consumer-focused categories), you have most likely heard an ad from ZipRecruiter or Squarespace.

“While many B2B firms are still using traditional mechanisms to buy their digital media, some are increasingly investing in more novel ad channels, like podcasts,” writes Ross Benes at eMarketer. According to the report, eMarketer forecasts that over 80 million people will listen to at least one podcast each month in just a few years.

Native Advertising

Another B2B format on the rise for both B2B publications and popular sites: native ads. MediaRadar research from Q3 2018 showed that the number of sites selling native advertising nearly tripled from 2015 to last year. In just the first half of 2018, 473 new advertisers placed native ads.

Many of these advertisers are B2B: three of the top five product categories using native were B2B, including professional services, tech and finance. John Deere in Golfdom, HP in AdWeek and SAP in Forbes are all great examples.

Events

Events and trade shows are yet another advertising channel that can be overlooked by smaller B2B publications. For more detail on what a B2B event can offer and how to get started, head over to our other resources:

• Retail Trade Shows Deliver Value Beyond the Booth
• 5 Basic B2B Conference Planning Tips You Can’t Skip

Once you’re ready to ramp up your ad portfolio, you can start talking to your prospects about getting everyone out of their comfort zone with new ad formats. Look for our next post on exactly that.

Events remain valuable for publishers, bringing in new relationships and increasing revenue. But they also offer the opportunity to bring new value to your clients.

“Your event will be remembered by the connections and relationships it helped to create,” writes Catalina Guerra at event marketing software company Bizzabo. “Beyond key speakers and sponsors, networking opportunities should be a main offering powering your event. As an organizer, part of your event strategy is to facilitate networking between attendees in order for them to get the most value.”

One of the biggest things people want out of events, trade shows and conferences is networking opportunities. But in an increasingly digital world a lot of these face-to-face opportunities are lost. How can you rectify that?

Making the move to host an event is a start toward encouraging these face-to-face interactions, bringing value to your buyers. But how do you actually facilitate networking at these events?

#1: Do your homework

“Not many event creators think about the entire buyer’s journey — from motivation, to discovery, purchase, and even after the event,” writes Katie Sawyer at Eventbrite. “But knowing what your attendees think, feel, and do throughout that process is essential to turning potential fans into loyal ones.”

The same can be said for B2B events.

Getting event attendees to engage with both you and other attendees requires some strategic effort. Some of it will happen organically, but you should put in the work in the months leading up to the event to be sure know how everybody fits together.

With some upfront research, you can identify what people want to get out of your event, which companies are represented in your attendees, who could be matched together well in breakout sessions or one-on-one speed networking, and more.

If attendees find value in the connections they make at your event, they are likely to find more value in your offerings. Bringing that value starts by knowing who’s coming and what you (and other attendees) can offer.

#2: Make good use of your schedule

Once you’ve done your homework, it’s time to put that insight to good use with your event schedule.

Build in opportunities that are ripe for networking. You can create themed breakout sessions that address some of the critical areas attendees need addressed, or around specific factions, like one designed just for VPs of digital.

You can also make more typical aspects of conferences — like coffee breaks — more amenable to networking. Communication platform Sli.do, for example, recommends assigning questions to ask during a coffee break.

#3: Don’t be afraid of ice breakers

Some event organizers may be tempted to write ice breaks off as cheesy; but they work.

Ice breakers get attendees out of their comfort zone and interacting with people they don’t yet know — helping everybody avoid the feeling that they always ‘see the same people at these things.’

You can incorporate them into smaller sessions, and when kept short (with clear instructions) a longer main session could benefit from being broken up by an ice breaker.

#4: Use social media to its fullest potential

Social media connections aren’t just for after the event; they can also be used before and during. Many attendees will already be posting about the conference or trade show, so why not encourage further use of social channels?

“By incentivizing social media participation, attendees are more likely to engage with each other during the event and to encourage further online interactions sparked by follows, likes, shares, and repostings,” suggests Guerra in her Bizzabo post. “This allows event goers to familiarize themselves with fellow attendees.”

MozCon, for example, encourages attendees to join the Facebook Group ahead of the conference to meet fellow attendees leading up to the event.

Even designating a specific hashtag can help attendees find others in a format that is easier to follow up on later.

#5: Create a mix of opportunities

Networking doesn’t be either “five minutes squeezed in during a coffee break” or “stuffy one-on-one that feels unnatural.”

You can create a mix of different networking opportunities for your attendees to choose from — if they want to take you up on it, great.

SXSW, for example, uses everything from topic-focused Meet Ups to help people find each other in the crowded conference to informal parties to bring like-minded attendees together in an informal way.