Is it better to rely on an outsourced advertising sales team or sell ads in-house? If advertising sales are a part of your association’s non-dues revenue or your business strategy, the decision you make can have a significant impact on its financial future.

When associations and businesses approach AdBoom Advertising, they typically ask these three questions in one form or another:

• Will outsourcing earn us more than it will cost us?
• Will an outsourced advertising sales team understand our business the way we do?
• Is there additional value in working with a provider?

Here is how we address them…

Will Outsourcing Earn Us More Than It Will Cost Us?

Part of the reason to hire an outsourced advertising sales agency is to reduce your expenses. The other is to increase your revenue. Let’s look at each.

Reducing expenses: For the cost of hiring one person, you might be able to bring on a team with multiple sales reps, a staff for trafficking, production, marketing, accounting, and support staff.

The average advertising sales rep earns about $60,000 according to Glassdoor.com. If you include the bare minimum expenses of health insurance and taxes, that adds an additional 18%-26% to the cost of your one employee. This doesn’t yet address that employee’s travel expenses, equipment, life insurance, 401K, and support staff. Multiply this by each staff member, and you can begin to see how costs add up.

As an alternative, many outsourced advertising sales teams are paid on commission depending on the contract. This means that they are compensated based on what they produce. An in-house advertising sales manager can also be paid on commission, but there is still the cost of insurance, benefits, equipment, and so on.

Increasing revenue: An advertising sales agency like AdBoom specializes in this work and is properly motivated to grow your bottom line. Its proficiency lies in understanding the nuances and evolving nature of selling advertising.

In our case, we have already invested in:

• Relationships with advertisers and their agencies, which we can leverage.
• Tracking and analytics tools.
• Trade memberships, advertising databases, CRMs, and marketing automation software.

These resources allow us to target and acquire advertisers more effectively. We also have years of experience in this one function, while an internal sales staff may also be responsible for publishing, selling association memberships, and other concerns.

In addition, our team can likely scale more seamlessly than your own. When you launch a new publication or create a digital addition, we offer the ad sales team your organization needs. It’s typically faster than your having to go out, hire internally, and train someone for your own team, which means that we can generate revenue for you sooner.

Will an Outsourced Advertising Sales Team Understand Our Business the Way We Do?

Product knowledge makes for stronger sales team, which is why client immersion is important. AdBoom Advertising, for example, uses…

A Brand Boot Camp process to get to know the client and its target audience.

Competitive analysis. We research audiences, circulation, digital metrics, ad products, and conferences to understand the competitive landscape and the opportunities that are available.

Industry evaluation. Our experienced ad sales staff combines all of this information with our media research tools, databases, and relationship network to find the audience most likely to benefit from and buy the ad solutions you are offering.

Through this approach, our outsourced advertising sales team becomes an expert in your organization and develops a sales process suited to its needs.

Is There Additional Value in Working with a Provider?

Perhaps you have an existing ad sales program but need more staff, resources, and partners to grow your organization. An outsourced ad sales agency like AdBoom can support you in ways beyond just selling. In our case…

Our tools are your tools. We save you money by providing access to our online subscriptions, media research tools, and databases.

We help you explore new platforms and media. We are up-to-date on the latest in print and digital advertising. Our agency shows clients the best option to choose between revenue models like CPM and CPC, helps them with digital migration, and solves other challenges.

We support ad sales with marketing tactics. Our work can improve sales within your organization and for our own staff. We use methods such as display advertising, social media, email marketing, and SEM to grow awareness of your opportunities.

An outsourced advertising sales agency can handle creative, invoicing, and billing. Production, marketing, and invoicing support save your organization time and allow your staff to focus on individual projects and specialties.

We offer a fresh perspective. In the event your organization does begin to have problems with selling ads, we bring years of experience and potential solutions to you.

If you are considering an outsourced ad sales provider, we invite you to contact AdBoom Advertising to learn more about our work.