How to prospect heads of marketing / media / communication
enhance brand reputation, drive up conversions, that's their goals...
5/25/20269 min read
Media, branding, communications, marketing… They all belong to roughly the same professional family (essentially, marketing), but they involve very different priorities and ways of working.
The tricky thing about these target audiences is that their responsibilities often overlap. The same job title doesn't necessarily mean the person handles the same topics across different companies.
If your product spans multiple functions, you'll sometimes need to do quite a bit of stakeholder mapping.
Most of these professionals are heavily prospected, but you can sometimes find lower-level decision-makers who are more specialized in your specific area of interest, potentially generating better results.
In any case, it's often possible to book between 1 and 4 meetings per day through cold calling these personas. Because yes, cold calling still works.
Pure Media
The media industry doesn't tend to be particularly budget-conscious. These professionals are used to managing hundreds of thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of euros per campaign, without necessarily having to prove short-term ROI.
This is the world of TV, branding, luxury, entertainment, artists, and so on.
When the goal is to make a product part of popular culture or embed it into national consumer habits for decades, budgets aren't necessarily a major concern. After all, these things can't be measured in the short term.
As you can imagine, we're not talking about small businesses here. This is the world of B2C enterprise accounts: mass retail, specialized retail, luxury, banking, insurance, entertainment, travel, and more.
We're talking about a maximum of around 2,000 to 3,000 corporate groups, mid-sized companies and large SMEs in France.
Direct prospecting in this sector isn't the easiest, particularly when targeting large enterprise accounts. However, it will generally still be possible to book between 1 and 4 meetings per day through cold calling.
See here how to become more effective at cold calling.
These decision-makers aren't particularly unpleasant, but the sheer number of different job titles and the complexity of enterprise-level organizational structures can make the sales process considerably longer.
For products specifically related to media and activation, such as media analytics, offline activation, media buying, and so on, you'll need to contact:
Media Directors.
Communications Directors.
Activation Directors.
Sometimes even Heads of Brand.
Generally speaking, Media Directors will be your primary point of contact. However, you'll need to identify the right one for your product, as large companies often have several.
Once you've identified and contacted them, some will be happy to meet with you directly. However, many will redirect you to their media agency, which will make the process even longer.
Indeed, in this industry, media buying and sometimes even most of the media strategy are entirely outsourced to large media agencies.
You'll then have to prospect their account managers, provided you've managed to identify them, within one of the major media agencies: Havas, Publicis, Dentsu, and so on. Smaller independent agencies are also worth considering.
Budgets are substantial, getting your foot in the door takes time and effort, but once you secure a partnership, it can often be very lucrative.
The decision-maker is often external, but internal stakeholders are involved too. In other words, it's quite complicated. You'll need to multi-thread your prospecting strategy, as they say.
Communications & Branding
Communications is a much broader field than media buying, as it covers everything from employer branding and internal communications to corporate image, crisis communications, and more.
You'll find these roles in large corporations, but also in many SMEs and even startups across different industries.
There are between 15,000 and 70,000 Communications Directors and Senior Communications Managers in France!
This makes them a very interesting audience for multichannel prospecting. The larger the market, the more interesting it becomes. And yes, email prospecting still works.
For products related to branding, communications, or public relations, this is the persona you'll want to target.
Communications Directors receive a huge number of sales approaches, so you may sometimes get better results by targeting Senior Communications Managers instead.
For example, if you're prospecting on behalf of a communications agency or a company specializing in video branding, experiential marketing, motion design, and so on.
See here for more information about prospecting for agencies.
Large companies often work with one or several branding agencies to produce their corporate content. However, unlike media operations, not everything is outsourced.
The decision-maker is generally in-house, so contacting their external agencies is often completely pointless.
Branding is much more focused on external communications and product marketing, often without programmatic media buying, and generally with smaller budgets.
There are between 8,000 and 20,000 Heads of Brand in France.
For products related to influencer marketing, branding, analytics, or events, they can sometimes be the right point of contact.
Marketing Departments
Marketing departments are almost the complete opposite of the media and branding world, but I've included them in this article anyway.
Here, there's no room for vague benefits or abstract brand value. The focus is on short-term ROI and maximizing ROI/ROAS. Every euro spent is expected to generate at least two euros in return.
This is the world of digital advertising, SEO, web analytics, growth marketing, and so on.
It's also much less focused on enterprise accounts. You'll find a Marketing Director in virtually every startup and SME across France.
Between 20,000 and 60,000 people in France hold Marketing Director positions.
This also makes them an interesting audience for multichannel prospecting through personalized sequences.
See here how to write effective cold emails.
In smaller organizations, the Marketing Director will often be responsible for everything, from communications and digital marketing to the website, SEO, and more.
Marketing Directors are heavily targeted by salespeople and can be difficult to reach and engage, just like other enterprise-level personas.
If your product is related to paid search (SEA), you could target Acquisition Managers, Traffic Managers, or, in some cases, Marketing Managers. They're sometimes easier to reach.
If you're selling something related to SEO, you'll obviously want to look for SEO Managers.
Growth marketing is generally closer to the sales world, involving email sequences and sometimes paid advertising as well.
Conclusion
There are many different job titles across these professional categories, and their responsibilities often overlap.
Generally speaking, the more generalist a persona is, the more heavily targeted they'll be by salespeople and the harder they'll be to reach.
That's why it's often worth targeting more specialized personas who are closer to your particular area of expertise.
In reality, once a company reaches a certain size, every organization has its own internal structure, making prospecting a longer process.
You first need to identify the right person responsible for the topics your product addresses, and then actually get in touch with them.
If you have a product or agency in marketing, branding, media, or growth marketing, and you're interested in outsourcing your sales prospecting to an experienced professional, feel free to contact me for a free discovery call on louis@outbound-machine.com