Digital salespeople need to be more like marketers says Mashable executive
(l-r): Stacy Martinet, Mashable; Jnathan Hunt, Vox Media; Patrick Yee, Refinery 29; Michael Sebastian, AdAge
Salespeople for digital media have to become “more like marketers” in their skillsets in order to sell the more complex ad offerings available now, according to a panel of new media executives.
Speaking at SXSW on a panel featuring Mashable and Vox Media, Patrick Yee, head of marketing and content for fashion and lifestyle brand Refinery 29, said the market had changed “more than any other” in the last two years.
“It’s really really hard to sell a product in a marketplace as complex and competitive and is changing all the time,” he said.
“Everyone in the company is focussed on making things people want to buy rather than developing products that need to be sold. We don’t get caught up in the sales process but we’re connecting with our readers in an organic way.”
Stacy Martinet, chief marketing officer for Mashable, added:g “Sales talent now is more like marketers, it’s not just getting a call sheet and going out to clients, they have to be more creative and entrepreneurial. There’s a certain type of people who like that, it’s a very dynamic world now.”
On the topic of native advertising Jonathan Hunt, chief marketing officer of Vox Media said they were still having “uncomfortable conversations when you create a new relationship with advertisers because you’re in the room with their agencies”.
He added: “The creative agency has done something with this advertiser for so long that coming in no-one understands what the scope of your remit will be, and you have to explain that as a publisher I’m not here to take your business I’m here to translate what you do into creative product in our ecosystem.
“Once they understand that it’s a much easier conversation to have.”
Stacy Martinet, chief marketing officer for Mashable, told the panel there are now more opportunities for writers because of native advertising.
“There were always advertorial writers in print, mostly freelance, but volume is so great now there’s room for more,” she said. “There’s a different generation of readers now and there’s a different generation of writers, and their hopes and dreams are different from a decade ago. It’s just different.”
Asked how their new media businesses were different from traditional media in terms of their business models, they pointed to the lack of hard production costs associated with print products. Yee admitted they were superficially similar and it was a “shitstorm”.
But he said their business was different from traditional mastheads because they are are focussed in what they write about, giving advertisers more targeted readers.
“Old media lunch is tasty, but new media lunch is tastier,” he said.
Martinet pointed to the Velocity product Mashable has created for its content team to find stories which were set to go viral so they could write them, as something they now licensed to media agencies such as MEC.
Alex Hayes in Austin
