The holidays are just around the corner. Organizations gear up for increased sales and customer interactions. Studies show that holiday retail sales in the U.S. have more than doubled over the last two decades. Big retail and eCommerce organizations realize that after a two-year slump, courtesy of COVID-19, consumers are finally ready to go all out and spend this year. They know people want to scratch the itch for getting something fancy and are waiting for those big discounts that come with holiday sales.
We know that the top media companies will play a significant role in helping these organizations succeed. Statistics show that retailers in the U.S. have continued to increase their ad spend into H2 2022. Most large corporations have already started purchasing TV and radio spots to advertise their upcoming pre-holiday sales. The best TV broadcasting and radio advertising companies have already booked multi-million dollar deals with these enterprises.
However, there is still a massive room to explore. Organizations that still need to fully embrace digital, TV, and radio marketing efforts to advertise their next holiday sale are looking for great options. Media businesses can double down and tap into the needs of these businesses. Here are five ways they can leverage digital payments to increase their advertising revenue and better serve their customers.
Create an Online Customer Payment Experience
The payments processing industry trends show a significant uptick in the need and adoption of online payment solutions. The three core benefits of an online payments hub include:
-
Easy Maintenance: Online virtual terminal solutions that work with hosted payment portals create a digital trail of transactions that is easy to monitor and control. Such virtual terminals track customer payments, help the business manage and process vendor payments, and automate reconciliation digitally.
-
Self-Serve Sales Engine: The need for advertisements is only going to keep rising as the holiday shopping season approaches us at lightning speed. Online payments help business owners serve their customers without hiring additional part-time employees. Hiring new staff on full payroll just to let them go when the demand reduces is not the ideal way of conducting business. Studies show that online digital sales will grow by at least 6.1% in 2022. B2B payments trends suggests that the rise of digital technologies will better handle the higher holiday sales volumes without undergoing a massive attrition and hiring spree.
-
Contactless Payments: We can say that the world has returned to normalcy, but there is nothing normal about the world anymore. It is hard to imagine a world where people would be as carefree with their health as they were before. Businesses recognize this and also understand the risk of losing potential business if they do not adapt. They know that adopting contactless payment technologies during holiday sales will offers customers a level of comfort that is not as readily available with conventional cash or check transactions. As businesses prepare for the holiday, they need contactless payment technologies like NFC-enabled cards, online ACH payments, SMS payments, and hosted payment portals to better serve their customers. Business owners know they can minimize the risk of exposure to harmful viruses during the cold flu season by adopting these modern mobile payment methods.
Add a Frictionless Checkout for Smaller Product Sales
The iCG team recently attended the AFP 2022 conference and was not surprised to find that “alternative and frictionless payments” was the talk of the town. Most large banks and enterprises are exclusively dedicating millions of dollars to developing/adopting frictionless payment technologies. They understand the implications of the ever-reducing attention span of the average consumer and want to streamline the shopping experience by reducing friction.
The holiday payment experience across all major shopping days like Christmas, Black Friday, Memorial Day, and more is undoubtedly powered by these frictionless technologies.
Sell More with BNPL Schemes
Large banks and financial service providers know that people have been preparing for the holiday sales for the last few months. They are waiting for the best deals and are willing to spend extravagantly. They also know that people will likely go overboard and want to spend more than they have to secure a good deal. This is where the Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) schemes come into the picture.
Large organizations will want to increase and spend their advertising budget on advertisement spots and radio ads to push more people to their stores. The large digital marketing, media, and radio companies that support a BNPL scheme will have the upper hand over the ones that want to secure a finite contract that requires upfront payment. A well-established BNPL scheme gives the organization enough funds to sustain operations while still helping them build long-term relationships with key clients. These media companies do not fret about small one-time payments and instead focus on developing relationships that give them long-term business.
Accept Payments Via Multiple Payment Methods on a Single Platform
Media and digital marketing companies that serve SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) need payment options that satisfy the needs of their small-ticket client base. These clients do not sign multi-million dollar deals with media companies. Instead, they need small pay-to-advertise spots or want to only spend a few thousand dollars strategically placing their ads on radio/tv/internet. Although their individual sales ticket sizes are smaller, they contribute to sizeable overall advertising revenue due to their sheer volume.
Handling higher volumes of such B2B buyers during the holiday shopping season often takes a toll on the employees who need to work extra shifts. Instead of asking employees to work on a holiday to handle such a high volume of last-minute B2B buyers, modern media companies adopt a robust tech-friendly payments strategy. They partner with payment processors like iCG that have experience working with the top national broadcasting stations.
iCG accelerates payments by developing customized hosted payment portals and helps the organization adopt email invoicing, IVR payments, and recurring payments to handle the excessive workload. We also develop virtual terminal solutions that help these large media companies track and assess their payments on a single online terminal. These terminals allow the company to accept and track ACH, credit cards, mobile payments, and other alternative payments with one login interface. Our Nacha-preferred partner status for automation helps us develop PCI-compliant solutions for our media clients.
Attract Gen Z Customers with Alternative Digital Payments
Gen Z customers understandably dominate the market today. Modern entrepreneurs and business owners understand the importance of digital media marketing, and they know how social media referrals influence their buyers’ minds. Studies show that social referrals have the potential to generate an additional 30% traffic to eCommerce sites. So, the new-age CEOs and CMOs will leverage the holiday time to run more social media, TV, radio, and digital publication ads than ever before.
The media companies should prepare for the influx of more leads and payments. Adopting alternative digital payments, such as low-cost bank transfers via online ACH, QR codes, and mobile payments will help these media companies serve customers better. A simple, secure, and reliable payment partner will help these organizations set up systems that handle more traffic easily.
Digital Payments with iCheckGateway.com
The iCG team works with some of the biggest broadcasting stations in the country. And we have extensive experience helping these large organizations handle high-payment workloads during the holiday season. Some of the top benefits for media companies partnering with iCG include:
- No additional burden of going to the bank with the adoption of digital payment solutions
- Smaller processing fees with online ACH
- Easier management of multiple payment methods through a robust virtual terminal interface
- Simpler digital reconciliation to handle high-volume small-ticket sales
- Excellent customer support to get a near-perfect uptime
iCG works with all types and sizes of media companies to help them adopt digital payments. Our team develops customized payment portals to serve the needs of large and small companies across various industries. Speak with our relationship managers today to create your own customized payment portal.
