20 Revenue Ideas in 20 Minutes

Shweiki Media Printing Company is excited to announce that they’ve once again teamed up with Ryan Dohrn—founder of Brain Swell Media, Publisher of Sales Training World, and creator of the 360 Ad Sales Training system taught to over 4,000 sales people around the globe —to present a webinar on 20 great ideas to increase revenue.

1. Using External CMS 

The first revenue idea is using external content management systems (CMS) such as wix.com or squarespace.com to build micro sites. Micro sites are great for lead generation and easy to launch for clients because it is simple and straightforward. It will cost less than $10-$15. Advertisers will love it.

2. Advertiser Exclusive Day

An advertiser exclusive day occurs when one allows one advertiser on a specific day to control all the ad spots on every page of the website. For example, the advertiser can be in control of all the banner ad positions on the website for a day. One can make this opportunity of control for a day available to each advertiser at different points.

3. Product Pavilions

The third revenue idea is using a CMS to create product pages. This allows the advertising chaos to drive sales. Whether one uses a closed or open CMS source, he or she will be creating individual articles for product advertisers that will all fall within the same product categories. For B2C companies, these product pages are great for restaurants and different types of guides. B2B companies can use this to put several products together in one category.

4. Outsource Simple Sales Tasks

Sales teams are incredibly busy, and they should not be bogged down with selling small items such as guides or classifieds. Instead, the work should be outsourced. It’s wise to consider using a telemarketing firm, an intern or a virtual assistant to do these simple sales tasks.

5. Incentive Plan

One should create a unique incentive plan for the sales team that provides a bonus for selling digital offerings. No matter what the media business is, it is important to understand that salespeople will typically gravitate toward the media that will make them the most money. Digital is not going to pay them the best, therefore, there should be some type of incentive to spur them on like better commission, days off, free lunch, etc. Creating special incentives to encourage salespeople to sell more digital will bring better success in the long run.

6. Digital Supplements

Another great idea for increasing a company’s revenue is creating digital supplements. Digital supplements could consist of things like holiday gift and summer camp guides to technology issues. A company takes ideas and turns them into a special digital publication. For example, if a company wanted a 24-page ad on predictive technology, but they did not want to run it in the magazine, they could digitally deliver it on their site. These are great for promotions.

7. Special Topic Centers

Another idea is to use CMS to create special topic areas or categories on the website. These areas are centered around a certain topic and then sponsored. For example, a company in the motor coach business can create a special topic center for technical advice about motor coaches. They can also create topic centers around tires, batteries, electrical systems, etc. This motor coach company can create articles and niches around those categories and then sell around them. Special topic centers help increase SEO, and sponsors love it because all the information is in one spot.

8. Sell Precise Data

It is important to get precise detail on what a reader wants and learn their online habits in order to target emails to a select few who actually want the information. This allows one to charge a higher ad rate. Readers’ habits, such as what ads they are clicking on, how many times they click on those ads, and their subject matter, can be tracked. Once a company knows which people have been clicking on what, they can specifically target them in the future, allowing them to send out fewer emails in total and charge more money for their targeted service.

9. Using Short Videos

Another great idea to increase revenue is using short videos to explain common advertiser questions. Every month, salespeople receive emails from advertisers asking questions about banner ads, circulation, an audience’s demographics and psychographics, paid content, etc.  It would be beneficial to explain these common questions in short videos so when these questions are asked, advertisers can be referred to them. Having a FAQ page with the videos on it will save a lot of time.

10. Don’t Publish All At Once

One should not publish all of the magazine content online at the beginning of the month. Instead, it’s better to try staggering the content throughout the month to keep the audience coming back for more. One could use the data stamping tool of your CMS to load data at one time, but publish live over a period of time. This way a company can load all of their content at the same time, but set different times and days for when it will be published. Then, it will be easier to promote the content on various social media sites.

11. Strategic Alliances

It’s a good idea to create strategic alliances with providers in the community or industry to offer advertisers expanded revenue services. It is important to create networks with contractors who are better than one at delivering a certain service. There are two paths for creating these alliances:

  1. White Label Services: This is paying contractor a reduced fee and charging for it personally.
  2. Pointing people in the direction of those contractors.

12. Registering the Domain and Expand Video Offerings

It is important to register the .tv for the main domain of the company and expand video offerings.

13. Create an Advertiser Advisory Board

Advertisers love to be involved in the process. Therefore, one should sell it backwards and start with the advertiser. People are more passionate when they are asked to participate in the process. One should start with the advertiser by pitching them products based on their needs, wants and desires.

14. Boost Sold Social Posts

Simply seeing a social media post is not enough. Companies have to boost their sold social posts to increase advertiser ROI. On Facebook, only 1-2% of the audience will see a post. Therefore, it is important to budget in order to boost the percentage of people who will view that post.

15. Create eBooks from Magazine Content

A company has years of content so one should put it to good use by creating eBooks around a certain topic. For example, a tech company has 20 articles on hard drive storage. They can take those articles and compile them to create an eBook. The company can either offer it for free in exchange for emails or they can sell it.

16. Video Tip of the Day

Using a video tip of the day is a great way to drive traffic. For example, in a B2C business, if someone owns a greenhouse, he or she could release tips about how to grow flowers in the spring. In the B2B environment, a lawyer could release tax tips. This is a great opportunity to use video to drive engagement.

17. Self-Service Media Kit

Another successful way to drive revenue is creating a self-service media kit that is more than just a standard pdf file. Successful media kits have many different elements such as videos on demographics or power points regarding media trends. It should be interactive.

18. Junior Sales Path for Success

It’s a good strategy to grow the next sales representative by starting with an intern and creating a four-year plan for sales successes. Most of the time when hiring a salesperson, one has to start from scratch. Instead it’s better to try raising them from the ground up.

19. Press Releases to Cash

One should urn press releases into cash by sending all of the ones dumped in your inbox to those junior sales reps. Have them follow up with the PR companies that sent them. This is a great way to build positive relationships with PR companies.

20. Topic Specific eBlasts

This last idea has generated over $4 million for Dohrn’s clients since 2001: Create a topic and send it in a massive email blast.

Where Does One Go From Here?

To get started, pick 3-5 ideas and build an action plan around them. It’s advisable not to launch them all or ignore these ideas completely. Each of these ideas will take initiative and planning.

The presentation is from the Niche Digital conference. Dohrn will be presenting a new and updated version of the 20 ideas in Austin in 2016.

Niche Media Conference

Austin • 4-6, 2016

Conference Program http://nicheconference.com/program/session-schedule

Conference Registration http://nicheconference.com/register

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Ryan Dohrn

Ryan Dohrn, CEO of Brain Swell Media LLC

Ryan Dohrn is an Emmy award winning TV producer, has overseen over 3,000 Web site builds, is a nationally acclaimed speaker, has been featured in USA Today, on ABC, CBS and FOX TV stations, on Forbes.com and has personally impacted millions of dollars in online and related media revenues for media companies large and small.

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