If you downloaded our free e-book, How to Manage Phone Book Advertising for Efficiency & Productivity or if you’ve been reading the Kirkpatrick Creative blog for the last several weeks, you’ve seen that we are giving away all of our phone book advertising secrets.
We have covered Negotiation Tactics, Advertising Design Tips and so much more! You’re probably thinking,
“Why should I hire these guys (or anybody else) I can just negotiate my own rates using all the professional tactics they’re giving away for free!”
And you would be right…. (mostly). Despite knowing our tactics, as well as when and how to use them, you don’t have the years of negotiation experience that we do. Secondly — this isn’t even your job! Even with all of our tools, you’re time should be spent in the courtroom or talking to new clients — not on the phone with phone book advertising sales reps. And finally, you don’t have one of the strongest tools an advertising agency can bring to the table:
The leverage of multiple clients! Here is a quick example…
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How to Manage Phone Book Advertising – for Efficiency and Productivity!
Kirkpatrick Creative represented the biggest car dealership in the region. Meanwhile, a large law firm was considering bringing us on as advertisers. As a test, we offered to negotiate their current media buy. They agreed.
We had recently completed a successful media buy for the car dealership throughout the state. Media outlets were happy to offer us discounted rates on the car ads, because the dealership was the number one volume across the board, and had been for years. Those meetings were very enjoyable for everyone.
So we came back for the law firm, and much to the media outlets’ dismay, we negotiated the same discounted rates on the new client’s ads. We did this even though the firm’s media spend wasn’t close to the dealership’s volume. The media outlets were fierce negotiators, but eventually agreed to the lower rates.
You might think that was a risky gamble, especially putting two large clients’ advertising on the line, but we knew it wasn’t, because:
- We understood that even though we were negotiating for the law firm, we still held control of the car dealer’s business. We knew the media outlets needed that business.
- We also knew what we wanted: much lower rates for a prospective new client. And we weren’t afraid to ask for it.
- And finally — it simply didn’t add up for one of our clients to pay one rate, and another to pay something much higher. That math doesn’t make sense. There was elbow room in the numbers for negotiation.
The happy ending of this testing phase story is that we saved the law firm 17% of their current advertising budget. We did this through analytics based on experience. The law firm simply didn’t have the data, and were in no position to negotiate. We effectively made it impossible for them not to hire us at our 15% rate, because it was cheaper than their current advertising spend strategy.
We’re not saying every negotiation will be this fruitful, but if your advertising agency has multiple clients in the same region, they are already familiar with the media outlets — they have already developed relationships. And good business is all about maintaining relationships.
The best part about this agency benefit is that it applies to all media, not just phone books. Radio, TV, newspaper, billboards, online — you name it! If an agency already has a presence in your region, they will likely have an easier time getting you better rates across the board.
Why give yourself the headache of negotiating rates, when an agency can make things so much easier?