Regan Murphy: MIN’s Sales Team Leader of the Year 2009

In June, the Media Industry Newsletter (MIN), a respected trade publication in the U.S., named The Parenting Group's Regan Murphy their Sales Team Leader of the Year for 2009. Here, Murphy shares with us some of the ideas that helped her go from digital leader newbie to star sales innovator for Parenting.com.

What are you most proud of this year?

I'm proud of the entire team for how far we've come on the sales side. In May, we'd already surpassed our 2008 revenue, and we're on track to overdeliver on our number in 2009. We have a phenomenal set of sellers, they are all incredibly talented, smart and strategic, but they lacked the confidence to understand how to sell digital. But there's absolutely nothing different about it than what they were familiar with from the print world.

For me, I could completely empathize with what everyone was going through because I lived the same experience. We all know how much we've had to learn and how much there is to keep up with, with the rapid evolution of digital and the technology behind the scenes. It's an immense undertaking, but it's really about getting back down to basics and realizing that the very same sales skills apply that have made them very successful print sellers. The numbers are phenomenal because we had a lot of growth opportunity and we still have a lot of growth opportunity; we have a tremendous market to go after, so we are all very lucky to be working for an organization and on a brand that's targeting moms because even in a bad economy, they're still spending.

How are you facing the challenges of the current economy?

It is challenging. I think the tricks of the trade are that we have so many talented A-list staffers both on the edit side, led by Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Jeff Lee's online marketing team in Winter Park, and our own dedicated integrated marketing team in NY. It's the collaboration of all of those players that enable us to put forth a unique proposition in a difficult economy. We've spent the last couple of months working with John Haskin and Bill Allman on the Corporate E-Media team and all of the players that I just mentioned collaborating, ideating and brainstorming on unique ideas to bring to market. Our platform has always been engaging moms on the site and providing unique tools for her once she's on the site, but I think we've really come leaps and bounds in making those packages sellable.

We targeted about eight categories that we thought still had upside potential despite the economy: food, endemic babycare, photo, financial planning, and we're even going after some women's health and pharma type accounts because those advertisers have deep pockets and are eager to snap up any content that they can find. So I think that it's been a little bit of ingenuity and innovation in reference to how we package content, and we've been incredibly successful with creating these custom destinations with content that we have on the site; but we're aggregating them to provide certain marketing partners with an ownership stake.

We recently sold a KinderCare deal that leveraged existing preschool and daycare content that we had on the site. The client was thrilled with the way that they received ownership, a presenting sponsorship stake in that content. So I think it's really just creating easy-to-digest packages for sponsors; even with a big ticket dollar value, we find that clients are still spending when we can get them to understand the value of engagement and the value of having a brand presence in a contextually relevant environment.

What's your advice for other sales teams in e-media on how to approach advertisers in this climate?

I've been really excited about the cross-collaboration that's been taking place across Bonnier, and I think a large part of that is due to John Haskin and the new Corporate E-Media team that's in place. It's been a very exciting opportunity to learn about the strengths of Popsci.com, The Outdoor Group Saveur and Working Mother. We've been working together to see where all of our successes are and where our challenges are.

My general advice is that we've also been very successful with packaging some small programs that are comparable to a print deal. A Cover-2/Page-1, or a Cover-4 in a magazine is very easy for a marketer to understand - they're getting a premium brand experience and they'll pay a premium for that brand exposure. We've taken our homepage inventory where we've actually packaged it as a homepage weekly buy out , and that's the only way we sell it. It's a really small, low out-of-pocket investment, but it provides a marketer with an easy way to understand, "Wow, I really am getting something, the homepage is a great location and it's great that I have ownership of it for a week." That was one of the easiest changes we made in our 2009 sales strategy, and it's already paid off in that we've surpassed our 2008 homepage revenue, and we have the potential to double it by year end. We're all working together to find that kind of roadblock or skinning opportunity, things that get a lot of attention in the marketing community but that are really easy for us to execute. If you have a few tactics like that in your arsenal, you can quickly pull the trigger, and if you've got a couple of these larger deals in the works too, you've covered all of your bases with a diverse portfolio of offerings.

Is the Bonnier name getting out there more in the U.S.?

Absolutely. There was a breakfast in Manhattan for the awards ceremony. There were industry leaders from Hearst, Conde Nast, Time Inc., Rodale, and Reader's Digest Association. The awards ceremony was hosted by MIN. They've been a longstanding trade publication in the industry, and they have been one of Bonnier's biggest fans recently. I think because of the rapid growth of all of our sites, people at the breakfast definitely recognized Bonnier. Another attendee from Bonnier was nominated, Patrick Notaro from PopSci. It felt really nice for Bonnier to have a significant presence there in a room with all the big players.