How To Make Even MORE Money Selling Digital

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Our series of interviews on the topic of how to make money selling digital continues today with Angie May-Yarusso, SVP of Digital & Partnerships at Emmis Digital. After a run as a music specialist at Yahoo!, Yarusso joined WTMX-FM in Chicago as an AE before signing on to lead the Emmis Digital team in 2010.

Yarusso leads the Digital Initiative for all of Emmis’ radio stations and Marketing Partnerships for Where Hip Hop Lives, Emmis’ Cross Platform Hip Hop Audience. Her digital leadership team is charged with developing products and training that guides Emmis’ brands to convert a traditional single channel media into a multi-platform media brand.

She’s the perfect mind to tap to get all the answers our readers have been asking with regard to monetizing digital.

Here are the tough questions you asked, and Angie’s answers.

Radio Ink: What Digital services are having the most success for radio stations/companies?
Angie May-Yarusso: Emmis’ most profitable digital products are digital display and social media. Digital display includes both our owned and operated sites as well as our programmatic offering. Social media includes using our influence for branded content and posts as well as live event coverage.

Radio Ink: Must a GM hire a digital/social director, and what should their resume look like?
Angie May-Yarusso: You should only hire a digital or social director if you are committed to implement a digital strategy and changing traditional thinking across your organization. If you are committed to doing so, yes, you must hire a digital director with DIGITAL EXPERIENCE. The director resume should first include a dynamic individual who is willing to connect with the leaders in your organization to drive change. The second most important item on a resume is experience using digital and social platforms to create content and build a digital audience. Social is inherently a part of digital content as well as understanding of analytics to measure success.

Radio Ink: How should radio stations compensate them and who manages them? Anglei May-Yarusso: Compensation should be aligned with specific audience, revenue, and change initiative goals you are setting. The General Manager or highest leader of your organization should manage them.

Radio Ink: What is the best way to train AEs and managers?
Angie May-Yarusso: I think this is the most difficult part of growing digital inside of radio organizations, and likely any organization today. I believe the best way to train all employees on digital has two components: 1) Define the digital elements or products: What are they, What do they do, and What are the definitions you should know? 2) Dive into specific opportunities to ideas and show how the digital assets apply to a real situation. Repeat this process as much as possible with the people invested and engaged in learning.

Radio Ink: Can the existing sales department be depended on to monetize this, or is yet another hire to sell only digital products needed?
Angie May-Yarusso: A small percentage of your sales team can be depended upon to sell digital if they have the right products, training, management oversight, and execution support. Simply hiring a digital-only seller will not produce revenue results. Selling your digital assets requires a new business sales strategy from proposals building, effective execution, recapping results, and discovering what works for your clients. This is not just one additional hire, it’s a new workflow and several resources to make it go.

Radio Ink: Are stations actually making profit on the services or is it more to keep the client in the tent?
Angie May-Yarusso: At Emmis we have moved away from low-margin digital solutions and focused on what we are good at, creating content and influence and delivering superior media products. All of Emmis’ digital products are making a profit, and the better we get at delivering client solutions, the more profitable we become.

Radio Ink: What is the best way to sell digital..on its own, or bundled with our traditional menu?
Angie May-Yarusso: I believe our value at Emmis and in radio overall is in a bundled approach. Our unique difference is we can deliver audio, digital, social, and event in a single campaign for an advertiser. We can see how these products work in each silo and drive deeper engagement promoting across platforms. Selling single-tactic solutions is a commodity business in which the lowest price usually wins. Selling bundles solutions allows you to create price efficiency for clients and optimize their campaigns for results.

Radio Ink: Am I just moving dollars around, or am I creating REAL digital revenue?
Angie May-Yarusso: Emmis stopped moving dollars around years ago. We are in this to make money and expect digital to be a key growth area of our company.

Radio Ink: What’s the best way to use Twitter to drive listenership. Do people act upon a tweet saying, “Join us in 10 minutes as we talk with Warriors MVP Steph Curry.” 
Angie May-Yarusso: This depends on your audience. If your station has a large network of followers you regularly engage who also are excited about one of the biggest stars in basketball, you will get engagement. That said, Twitter is real-time just like radio stations. Expecting your audience to come back to you in 10 minutes is likely setting you up for failure. You will have more success driving listenership with something like “MVP Steph Curry is talking about the 2017 season game plan; tune in NOW (link to listen and dial position),” you will have a better chance of capturing listening. Your team can then follow up with comments or additional tweets about the conversation or get your audience to ask Steph their own questions. Traditional radio has been successful at one-directional messaging. Effective social and digital messaging requires two-direction dialog and follow-up. It sounds simple but it is an entirely new skill set for our content teams to learn.

Radio Ink: What does the millennial want from a radio station on Twitter or Facebook?
Angie May-Yarusso: From what I see, millenials want new music, our influencers’ opinions and position about what’s happening in the world, and a peak inside the radio and music business. We get the most engagement when we release new music content, offer great interviews in video with their favorite artists, and give them a peak into what happens in the studio. They also want to be involved, engage them in the content you are creating.

Reach out to Angie to congratulate her on her success with Emmis and her fabulous insights on digital [email protected]

Westwood One’s Kelli Hurley on How to Sell More Digital

1 COMMENT

  1. And quality of insights can be increased by predictive and prescriptive analytics where data tells you the next best action and / or what to improve next time. This enables increased digital ad efficiency, better targeting and create deeper engagement – placing even better native ads.

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