When your company’s debt to income ratio is abysmal, is it wise to take a pay cut for a better long-term opportunity? If you are a top radio seller, you basically start over to join a growing digital ad company and I would forfeit a big book of ad business. But if traditional radio becomes completely irrelevant, maybe it’s the smart play. Hard to give up good pay, but I want to sell digital campaigns in a company that better understands how to deliver results and doesnt push radio for every solution. Am I crazy to consider leaving a remote job with excellent comp? I keep thinking that if I can sell a lot of radio and digital without leads, imagine what I could do with leads.
As someone who’s in digital marketing, I have my doubts that digital ad sales is a more lucrative space. My company still spends 2x more in radio than digital and because digital is so easy to manage and the market is saturated with talent it’s fairly cheap to manage in-house. Also digital agencies run their employees ragged because there are always 22 year olds willing to do the job for cheap. There are a few big agencies, typically in bigger metros, that will eventually compensate you well and fairly once you have the experience. But I wouldn’t discount your traditional media experience. I work at a major local brand and nearly 85% of our budget is still traditional because digital is soooo cheap to buy and execute. We also always have trouble finding talent to fill traditional media buyer roles so they’re able to demand a higher salary. If I were you, I’d maybe look for opps that allow me to expand my skillset instead of switching over completely. Or if I were looking for a complete career start, I’d choose something with higher guaranteed salaries.
Those are helpful thoughts. It’s tedious when I earn many digital certifications and sell big digital solutions, but perception-wise a new client initially views me as a radio guy that doesn’t know as much as a kid at a digital agency because of my company’s radio reputation. It gets old having to earn respect over and over again. No one questions the guy at Yext or Amazon whether they know anything about what they sell.
Are you sure that isn’t just your perception? I’ve been in digital for ten years and currently work in house and we talk shit about digital vendors not knowing their stuff all the time. As a digital buyer / planner, anyone who has less than 5 years experience of actually executing digital is always judged as being unqualified for in depth convos. I’m working with BrightEdge, a digital only company, right now and constantly complain about how their so-called digital experts don’t know anything. We have radio vendors trying to sell us digital ad products and the reasons we don’t buy usually come down to their tech stack, targeting capabilities, or reporting being subpar to what we already have at play. Their experience usually isn’t a factor but idk maybe we think about things differently than the types of clients you’re working with. Even if we think it’s weird for a newspaper to suddenly start selling SEM services, we usually hear them out.