Inflation is running at 8.5% for the 12 months ended August 2022.  If you aren’t asking for a rate increase when ad contracts renew your out of home company’s margins will shrink.  Listen to Lamar Advertising CEO Sean Reilly on last week’s earning call:

“We’re coming off of decades of very very low inflation…our team was out there getting increases in the 2’s and 3 percents, sort of reflective of GDP.  As we turned the corner into the back half of last year and into this year that all changed.  Everybody had an inflation expectation…”

It is tempting to slip the increase into an ad renewal contract without telling a client.  Jim Lyke, who just retired after a 16 year sales career at Lamar tells Billboard Insider this is a mistake:

“Don’t try to hide a rate increase.  There were people in my company that thought when somebody is up for renewal just send them the contract without comment.  “I won’t even talk to them.  I’ll just have my assistant send the renewal contract to be signed.”  Some clients don’t care.  They just sign and move one.  I had one client that signs but let me know in no uncertain terms that we should have had a conversation about it.  And he was right.  That was something that I never did again. “

For 140+ pages of actionable ideas on how to sell out of home advertising purchase the Ultimate OOH Sales Guide, now available in digital format.

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