Kannon’s client is a diverse media company with properties in broadcast television, cable, interactive media, and newspaper publishing. Operating daily newspapers in twenty markets with a combined daily circulation of almost 1.5 million, the client is one of the top 10 newspaper publishers in the country.
The client’s newspaper properties faced increasing pressures from competing advertising outlets, including weekly newspapers, television, cable, radio and the Internet. Management was concerned about the quality of sales efforts, advertiser satisfaction and revenues. Without more information, it was difficult to determine what advertising strategies and tactics were needed to regain momentum. The challenge for Kannon was to understand how the newspapers were viewed by advertisers – on a stand-alone basis, as well as compared to competitive media. Kannon’s goal was to find actionable insights into advertiser satisfaction for each newspaper and across the newspaper company.
Kannon began by partnering with a client team to develop, test, and refine an advertiser survey. Advertisers were recruited by the local Ad Sales representative according to guidelines set by the client. Integrating the local newspapers’ sales force into the effort helped to ensure buy-in from the sales representatives themselves. The short online questionnaire allowed advertisers to rate their local newspaper easily and compare it to other media the advertisers used. It also provided a forum for candid quantitative feedback, with the option of total confidentiality for advertisers’ responses.
The benefits of the study were threefold. First, it encouraged the sales force to have a real dialogue with advertisers and address very specific local issues in order to retain and grow advertising revenues. Second, the study uncovered potential best practices – from the customers’ view – that can be shared across the newspapers to improve sales operations. Third, the study created a process wherein managers will be held accountable for improvements, since it can be updated cost effectively to track performance.
“The Kannon Advertiser Study was the best advertiser satisfaction study we’ve seen. It allowed the newspapers to understand how our customers really view us – and what we need to do to keep and grow their business,” said the VP of Newspaper Operations. “The Kannon team helped us uncover actionable learnings we can take to the field. We found this study to be important enough that our internal research department will field the effort annually as one of the cornerstones of our sales planning and performance assessment process.”