Mittmedia — from challenges to success in digital advertising thanks to the Reacher marketing tool and the Mittmedia e-learning competence platform
Tech giants like Facebook and Google are placing heavy pressure on traditional media companies when it comes to digital advertising. But in spite of dark times, the media industry can turn problems and challenges into success. The case of Swedish media company Mittmedias shows it can be done.
Mittmedia has been launching a successful digital advertising strategy for the last years. Mittmedia is now best in class in Sweden, with exceptional growth figures (two digits) in digital advertising. Two key factors behind the Mittmedia success is the Reacher platform and tool for digital marketing and a focused transformation of the sales force competence and mindset into digital by using Mittmedia competence platform for e-learning.
First, let’s take a look at the structural changes that drive the need for renewal of the digital ad business for media companies all over the world.
The last five to ten years have seen a fundamental shift in digital advertising. The main reason for this was and still is the growing market share taken by Google and Facebook. The duopoly is placing a brutal pressure on traditional media companies by mass and by offering a business model that gives advertisers access to highly effective target audiences. Advertisers get more perceived value from this model than from the traditional one offered by the media companies. Revenue streams are more and more going into the pockets of the duopoly.
The effects on the media industry are more or less devastating.
US companies like CNN, Buzzfeed and Vox are taking a beating, being forced to cut costs and postponing IPO:s. American local media companies are cutting down.
Downward pressure on a negligent media industry
The downward pressure is as evident in Sweden as anywhere else.
Margins are decreasing forcing companies to take harsh measures.
No one is spared, whether we operate on a national or local market.
The media industry has not taken the necessary steps to compete with the duopoly.
Instead, they’ve been for too long operating with an outdated business model, using old tools and tech and maintaining sales forces with outdated digital competence and mindset.
This devastating pressure will not get any easier in the years to come. On the contrary, it’ll grow.
The digital subscription business won’t save the day alone
Many media companies are already giving up the fight on digital advertising, hoping that the newly found digital subscription/paid content business will save the day.
But the probability of that is slim.
Media companies that want to continue to stay alive and relevant and contribute to local and national democracy must launch and stabilize a dual strategy where increasing and sustainable revenues in digital advertising are crucial for success.
There will be winners and losers in the great shift of business
As before in the history of business and industry, large shifts are not the end of the world. Even in the towering shadow of the tech giants, traditional media companies can set in place a strategy and execution of digital advertising that will turn losers into winners.
The winners will be companies that dare to take inconvenient decisions and work hard. And it can be done. The case of Swedish media company Mittmedia is a proof of that.
Mittmedia — from challenges to success in digital advertising
In 2016 Mittmedia had exactly the same problems as everyone else.
The company had entered digital with the anonymous and blunt display advertising model in the first decade of the 2000s. For some years, we thought that that model would carry us into the future. But then in 2016, like many other media companies, we saw that the traditional display business started to stagnate and decline.
The external pressure was there alright.
Our old business model for digital advertising was suddenly competing with the new and effective target audience model by Google and Facebook.
But Mittmedia also had a number of internal weaknesses that stopped us from moving forward.
The digital competence among the Mittmedia sales force lagged behind.
A diminishing number of the staff sold digitally.
Customers were leaving us because we couldn’t offer all the marketing channels demanded.
The technical systems and tools were outdated and prevented us from developing modern productions flows.
We were simply unable to change on a strategic level, to adapt to a new reality.
The creation of a full scope strategy to renew digital advertising
We also realized that the newly found digital subscription business wouldn’t be enough to compensate. We needed to renew our digital advertising business. So in 2016, we sat down to put together a new strategy.
This strategy needed to be a full scope one, composed of a spectrum of measures addressed to counter the different weaknesses we had. We formed the strategy and started off putting words into action, and during 2016 and 2017 we set the different pieces of the puzzle into place.
After the first strategy iteration — reaping the first fruits of success
Since December 2018, Mittmedia has had the first full iteration of the puzzle in production, and now actually seeing the results we planned and hoped for.
Above are some of the key figures. They speak for themselves. Mittmedia is seeing very strong increases in revenue, delivering the best growth of all of the Swedish local media companies in all aspects of digital advertising.
When it comes to total digital revenues and display revenues we’re beating the Swedish media average index with two-digit margins. We’re doubling up on prices in terms of CPM levels.
Two key factors behind the successful strategy
And if these are some of the results of the Mittmedia advertising strategy, let’s have a look at the two key factors behind the success.
First off is Reacher, the Mittmedia proprietary tool and system for digital sales and marketing.
The Reacher marketing tool is built to serve all of the functions of a modern production chain of digital marketing. By using Reacher on a full-scale level, Mittmedia has been able to step into a new business logic, a partnership with customers and a modern chain of production. Let’s have a quick look at the main features that make Reacher such a valuable piece of the puzzle for Mittmedia. The main features crucial for launching and scaling a rejuvenated and successful digital ad business.
First off is how Reachers works for the sales force in their daily work.
Reacher is a web-based tool being used by every sales rep in Mittmedia. Reacher is used on a tablet or a laptop and marketing campaigns are created, sold and booked together with customers during the actual sales visit.
This collaborative aspect of Reacher is a way for customer and sales rep to step into digital and do digital marketing together, easily and creatively. This way, the Reacher tool contributes to a strengthened relationship between customer and sales rep.
Reacher offers all marketing channel in one interface
Another crucial thing for that relationship and Mittmedias role as a local partner for marketing is the next main Reacher feature.
Reacher is a tool that offers all the channels needed for marketing in a digital environment. Sales staff and customer can easily sell and book ad campaigns in any channels needed. Display, native, search, social media or video.
In short, using the Reacher Campaign Recommendation Engine, customer and sales rep define the purpose of the ad campaign. Based on the given information, the recommendation engine automatically generates a suggestion of digital channels for the campaign and also a suggestion on the distribution of budget over the different channels.
With Reacher, the Mittmedia sales force can now offer everything a customer needs. The customer can rest safe knowing that they need one marketing partner only, which of course is MittMedia.
The aim is to regain customers trust and a position as a one-stop shop for all marketing.
Reacher creates a new and effective business logic by targeting
The next important aspect of Reacher is the fact that it turns the table on our old business model and logic for digital sales.
If we realize that a weakness in relation to Facebook and Google is the fact that we´ve been competing with an old business logic against their audience targeting, we need to do something about it.
The old model for digital ad sales is based on the anonymous distribution of display ads, not giving the customer much real value. What Reacher does is to enable the same audience targeting logic as Facebook och Google.
”Where the ad is displayed” is changed to ”who the ad is displayed for”.
First step: Choose interest groups for the campaign
In Reacher, sales rep and customer work can together in targeting actual identified groups of people. This is done in two pretty straightforward ways.
The first one is selecting one or more of the interest target groups that Reacher offers.
At the moment, Mittmedia is working with a selection of standard IAB audiences which we create from two main sources: First, the online data that we collect from our sites and apps and second, the even more valuable data from our expanding paid content business. This way we make the paid content business drive value into the ad business.
Reacher can create effective target audiences from any data source
Since the underlying tech that supports Reacher is very flexible, we can easily modify target audiences to more efficient ones for the sales force to offer to their customers.
In this aspect, Reacher is simply an interface for all kind of valuable data, enabling different new and valuable targets audiences to be created and sold through the tool. For instance, Mittmedia now looking into the value of demographic data, like sex or age. Also, Mittmedia is looking at offline data sources such as car ownership.
Easy to use geographical targeting in Reacher
The next step for a sales rep and customer to create targeting is the geographical one.
In Reacher, we offer our customers geo audiences in all of Sweden, either by way of writing down the geographical areas in a text box or by using a simple map interface. These two ways, interest and geography, we can offer our customers a new and efficient advertising logic, being able to reach actual people.
Reacher’s high-class interface drives scaling of the business
But it´s not enough just to launch this new way of target advertising. We also need to scale the model to every sales rep, every customer visit and every campaign being sold.
For Mittmedia, an important way of that scaling has been working hard on the Reacher interface and user experience.
We need to create an interface and a workflow that is easy enough to learn and use for the entire sales force to enter digital swiftly together with their customers.
That way, we can scale campaign volumes and revenues fast enough.
The bonus is that we’ve created a stress-free work environment, contrary to the fragmented environment we had when we were working in a number of different tools and systems.
As you can see to the right in the image above, the campaign volumes are growing fast and steady since implementation.
Pushing up prices on every campaign being sold
And if this is about scaling, another important aspect is, of course, pushing up the ad prices on all of the campaigns being sold. This is where we come into the next main part of Reacher.
Over the years, our sales force has been offering their customers larger and larger discounts when selling digital. In practice, by doing so, we´ve been creating a self-inflicted downward pressure on our own price levels.
Pretty stupid, right? In Reacher, we’re now eliminating the ability to offer discounts.
When having set a target audience and a campaign period, sales rep and customer decides on a budget. This budget automatically generates the exact number of ad impressions. If the budget is changed, the number of impressions are too.
There is simply no way for sales staff to offer a discount to their customers. The number of discounted campaigns in Mittmedia are now down to almost zero.
Also, before Mittmedia implemented Reacher, we used to sell digital on the basis of offering CPM levels directly to our customers. Now, instead, we focus on the marketing budget.
This, in turn, makes us able to obtain higher CPM levels on all campaigns sold. As you can see to the right, in the average CPM levels in Reacher have doubled since implementing Reacher in Mittmedia.
Reachers main features to put the customer need front and center
Two more important Reacher features that drives a strong relationship between customer and sales rep is the Reacher Customer Assessment and the Reacher Campaign Recommendation Engine.
In short, these two main features are used in the collaborative work between customer and sales rep to put the focus completely on the needs of the unique customers place in the respective markets and the customers need to find the optimal marketing strategy. With the help of these features, the Mittmedia sales rep becomes a valuable advisor on all things marketing.
Reacher contains functions for digital and automated needs analyses enabling the sales staff and customer to decide together the mode of marketing that is the best choice. First, the sales staff and customer enter basic information into the interface regarding the customer and the general marketing needs.
The Reacher tool gives power to really use all of the possibilities of digital marketing, easily and fast.
The Reacher tool for the rest of the roles in digital advertising
And so, if these are the main features in the Reacher version for the Mittmedia sales force, Reacher isn´t just a tool for sales staff and customers.
Reacher also works within the other roles and functions that make up a modern production chain for digital advertising.
The next part of Reacher is the tool for the designer/ad producer.
The Reacher tool for ad designer/producer
All of the people working with digital ad design and production in Mittmedia are doing it in their own interface version of the Reacher tool.
When a campaign has been sold and booked, it is transferred to a list of campaigns for the design and production unit to go through and pick from. An individual designer or producer looks through the list, chooses a prioritized campaign, checks in on it and starts working. The rest of the ad producers can now see that the campaign is being taken care of.
If the customer is producing the ads themselves, the Mittmedia producer just picks it up and checks the quality and correctness of the ad. If production is included in the sales, the Mittmedia producer starts working on the design of the ad. When finished, the producer uploads the ads into the Reacher interface and approves of the campaign, which is then being sent to the next step in the chain, the units and people work with traffic and campaign management. These are the basic features found in their interface version of the Reacher tool.
After a campaign has been approved of by the designer or producer, it turns up in the campaign managers version of Reacher, in a list over campaigns to be taken care of.
Campaign manager — overview and optimization in Reacher
The manager checks in on the campaign. letting everyone else know that it´s being taken. The manager then looks over every aspect of the campaign, including settings and material. If everything looks good, the manager makes an approval, and the ad campaign is delivered to for distribution. An invoice is automatically being sent out from the CRM systems.
All of the ongoing campaigns in the manager list is color-coded to show which campaigns are delivering impressions as expected and which ones are not. If a campaign isn´t delivering as planned, the manager will optimize it in the Reacher interface or in the DSP system.
There are of course many more features in the Reacher tool for campaign management, but these are the main ones.
Reacher visualization tableau for the advertiser
Now for the last step in the chain of production. The advertising customers version of Reacher.
Reacher holds an easy-to-understand and detailed visualization tableau för the advertising customer.
The simple Reacher customer interface is showing campaign stats during and after the campaign. It also shows exactly on what sites the ad has been shown. To make sure we can deliver as planned on all our campaigns, we´re distributing ads not only on Mittmedia sites but also on a number of qualitative sites from partner media companies. The view also shows the ads as shown on the sites. Also, in this view, the customer has a full historical overview of all the campaigns having been booked.
Rational production flows — everything is done in Reacher
To conclude, as seen on the image below (showing the production flow of a display campaign), Reacher is the only tool needed within a modern production chain, allowing us to create, sell/book, initiate, monitor, optimize, produce, deliver and visualize digital marketing.
Using Reacher, manual work processes can be automated and more time can be spent serving the customer. The number of handled ad campaigns can be increased significantly without adding staff. Costs and maintenance chores associated with operating multiple systems is eliminated.
The flexibility of Reacher in relation to adjoining tech
As said before, Reachers relation to underlying and adjoining tech and systems is very flexible, allowing for the DSP/SSP, CRM systems of choice to be connected.
Among other things, this enables different new and valuable targets audiences to be created and sold through the interface.
And that concludes the quick look at Reacher. There are a lot of other aspects and features of the tool, but these are the most important ones when it comes to launching and scaling a new business model.
Mittmedia e-learning platform for a digital sales competence
Now let’s have a quick look at the other key factor in the Mittmedia success in digital advertising, the Mittmedia e-learning platform for a new competence and mindset among the sales force.
Parallel to developing, launching and scaling the Reacher tool, Mittmedia has also developed and launched our e-learning platform. These are some of the basics of the platform.
Just as Reacher is used in the everyday work of the sales force, the e-learning platform is an integrated part of the daily process at all of the sales offices in Mittmedia.
The platform itself is a web-based tool and we´ve bought a licensed interface framework from a third party company.
The important thing is that we’re filling up the platform with a hundred percent original educational content that we create ourselves. This way, we can create learning content within the platform which is tailor-made and agile to our needs.
Driving forces for the need of competence transformation
In 2016. Mittmedia sat down to define the driving forces behind what sales reps actually need to learn within the platform we came up with the ones you see in the image below, pretty well known for all who work in digital sales.
But after all, these words could fit easily into any sales force competence presentation or layout. It’s the actual way we turn these words into execution to build real competence that will make all the difference. First, we need to rethink the basics of what competence really is and how it is established beyond superficial learning.
Redefining the entire model of working with competence
This is why we, when starting to form the idea of our e-learning platform, we sat down and tried to redefine the Mittmedia model of competence.
The old way of working with sales learning is to send sales staff into a two-day education, cramming in as much information as possible.
Then get them back into exactly the same sales environment from which they left. An environment in which the goal isn’t to convert knowledge into new ways of working but to continue maximizing sales. That way, real change is hampered.
What we need to do is to move the staff down a path where they convert the superficial information learned in the first steps of the process into an actual changed real-life behavior.
The first passing on of knowledge in our e-learning platform is therefore followed by continuous training in real life situations, active coaching by colleagues and managers and then into new work methods together with customers. The steps down this path of competence are made up of a gradual set of practical courses within the platform.
Courses and certification — steps towards a new behavior
The platform offers a various number of separate courses, totally about 50, sorted into educational themes and areas.
To be able to proceed to the next step, sales staff will be required to go through the course in the interface, then train and convert knowledge into changed behavior, and last but not least apply it in a new way of working with customers. When an individual has gone through the complete education and proven that knowledge has been converted into actual change she or he will be a Certified Mittmedia Sales Representative.
The certification becomes a solid insurance that we actually move the entire sales force into a new competence and an updated relationship with customers. It’s also a chance for the individual coworker to be too into a more rewarding way of doing sales.
Last but not least, local management is crucial for the process. The local sales manager must make sure that the coworker is taking time each day and week to go through courses, train in situations and updated works processes.
The e-learning platform is built for the local sales manager to be able to follow individual progress. The Mittmedias centralized learning division is also constantly keeping an eye on the stats and progress, actively coaching local management on a monthly basis.
The sales staff is re-certified every second year. The education is also a very effective way of introducing new coworkers. Also, we´ve not only scaled this e-learning platform throughout Mittmedia but is also partnering up in it with a growing number of other Swedish local media companies.
That´s it for now on the two key factors behind the Mittmedia success and some of the features in the Reacher tool and the Mittmedia e-learning competence platform. We´ll be getting back to you more on this in the near future.
Thomas Sundgren, head of platforms and strategic partnerships (thomas.sundgren@mittmedia.se)
