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Top 5 things a publisher should do to retain current advertisers

Landing advertisers for your website can be challenging, but it is certainly something that can be achieved by just about anyone with a little bit of drive and determination. An equally important task here is making sure that your existing advertisers decide to stay for the long haul. If you cannot convince advertisers to stay beyond their first run of ads, you will end up caught in an unpredictable cycle of constantly needing to fill the ad spaces you have on your site. Keeping those advertisers need not be that difficult, and you can pull it off if you follow these 5 tips:

Effective communication

Perhaps the easiest way to ensure that advertisers stay with you for the long term is to always deliver great customer service. This begins with answering all correspondence in a timely fashion, even if it means answering questions that you have answered countless times to other clients before. You should prepare a FAQ. Also be prepared to be on call around the clock, and to remain professional and courteous at all times.

Smooth ad insertion

You need to ensure that the ad is set up exactly the way in which the advertiser requested. If you are using an ad server, you need to pay attention to the trafficking details. You also need to make sure that the ads appear in the agreed upon location on your site. Certain pages and locations are going to be more valuable than others, so it’s important that the advertiser gets the correct location that they paid for. There are few things more frustrating to a paying customer than feeling that they have been duped or mishandled.

Delivering results

Some publishers will reason that the results of ads have nothing to do with them or they have no control over what the viewers do. However, that is not the case. You need to be aware of where the ads appear on your site. While you want them to look as though they are an organic part of the layout, you also need to make sure that they are very visible to site visitors. You should also only choose ads that are relevant to your site, as those are the ones that will deliver leads and clicks to the advertisers.

Flexible payment options

Advertisers all work on a limited budget, and chances are that they are not going to have all their eggs in one basket. That means that they are likely going to be dealing with several different publishers, all of whom will want to be paid in a timely fashion. Having flexible payment options available means that advertisers can spread their ads over more sites. It also means that they may continually choose you over publishers who want all the money up front or offer no flexibility.

Establishing a good relationship

Agreeing upon a price and inserting the ad should not be the end of your contact with the advertisers. It is good business to routinely check in with them to see how things are going, and also to see if there is anything you can do to improve their experience. Building a solid relationship enhances trust and commitment, which will almost always create a repeat customer.

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