5 Ad Sales Tools Every Hyperlocal Publisher Should Think About Using

July 2, 2020

What to look for in the best ad sales tools, from Broadstreet Ads, to Streak, to Ad Sales Genius, and more.

Ad sales teams at hyperlocal publications typically work in a disconnected way. When sales reps rely on emails and spreadsheets to communicate and plan for upcoming projects, they slow down the workflow and miss unseen opportunities. It’s impossible to manually track the status of every client without dropping the ball. That’s why more and more hyperlocal sales teams are exploring ad sales tools designed specifically for the digital publishing industry.

Organization and productivity have always been important factors for sales teams. In the days of print-only publications, it wasn’t nearly as difficult to manage clients or track where prospects were within the sales pipeline. Now, it’s different. Today, hyperlocal news publishers are selling display advertising, along with native content, sponsored content, and a whole host of other advertising products, using specialized ad managers like Broadstreet. However, with so much variability, it’s still not uncommon for sales teams to struggle to stay organized. 

For publishers who rely on ad sales to drive revenue, ad fulfillment rates are the metric that matters most. Sales reps can’t afford to drop the ball. 

Where is your team struggling? Are you having trouble staying organized or communicating effectively? Do younger reps struggle with not knowing the best ways to engage prospects or successfully present upselling opportunities to clients? Selling to prospects, working as a team, and meeting the needs of demanding business advertisers isn’t easy. By combining the right sales tools with a specialized ad manager like Broadstreet, though, hyperlocal publishers can give their sales teams a greater chance for success.

To keep a sales team working cohesively, you should regularly review the platforms you’re using. Dig in to find the team’s biggest pain points, then use this guide to figure out which ad sales tools could help solve whatever challenges your team is facing.

Ad Sales Tools for Hyperlocal Publishers

1. Streak 

Streak is a CRM tool that works right in your Gmail inbox. While there are plenty of customer relationship management tools on the market, Streak takes a somewhat unique approach. Rather than requiring you to login to a separate platform, Streak works inside your Gmail inbox. Sales reps can track workflows, stay on top of leads, and manage clients from within Gmail. More importantly, they can handle all these tasks collaboratively. Depending on how your account is set up, you can read your colleagues’ full emails, even if you’re not included on the thread. You can also link together the communication of separate teams. 

2. Ad Sales Genius

Designed for magazines and digital publishers, Ad Sales Genius is a CRM and productivity platform that handles all aspects of ad sales, production, and delivery for publishers and media companies. Solo sales reps and larger teams can all benefit from using Ad Sales Genius. The platform includes tools for creating drag-and-drop visual pipelines to keep tabs on where opportunities are within the sales funnel, templated email campaigns, and integrated calendars. An activity feed provides a complete timeline view of every interaction or action related to a contact, including all calls, emails, proposals, contracts, and ad proofs.

3. Geckoboard

Could your sales team benefit from a little friendly competition? Geckoboard keeps sales reps on their toes with a live TV dashboard that displays core company metrics and key goals. Hyperlocal publishers with teams working in-house can use Geckoboard to keep everyone updated on how far they are from meeting daily targets and long-term goals. Geckoboard also monitors KPIs. You can build your dashboard and start visualizing key metrics without any coding involved, and without the need to download anything, since the platform lives in the cloud.

4. Adplorer

Adplorer is an invoicing system for ad sales reps. Rather than creating invoices manually each month, and keeping up with billing preferences for each client, Adplorer has developed an automated solution that can be setup to invoice a set number of days before or after a campaign runs. An accepted overdraw feature can also be set up to automatically pause campaigns when a certain amount is spent, so clients don’t end up with unexpectedly large advertising bills. Adplorer is fully integrated with most accounting software tools. 

5. Clari

Do your sales reps ever struggle to separate prospects who are just looking for information from prospects who are ready to sign on the dotted line? Clari is one of the top ad sales tools for generating insights into prospects’ readiness to buy. Clari uses artificial intelligence and data to assess when sales reps are close to closing a sale. Hyperlocal publishers can use Clari to identify which specific areas their ad sales reps should focus on to improve their sales skills and close more deals.