Baltimore Alternative Weekly Shifts Web Strategy to Win Near Term Dollars and Sets Strategy for Long term Success!
The Opportunity
"Added Value" and "Bundled" Classifieds, resulting in marginal revenues, is what the Web meant to the Baltimore City Paper. That is until they recently contacted The Blinder Group. After seeing the major success The Blinder Group performed for their sister daily newspaper in Scranton, PA, Don Farley, Publisher of this major-market Alternative Weekly was willing to take a chance to see if similar gains could be made in the Alternative Weekly space.
Program Overview
Mike Blinder of the Blinder Group traveled to spend two days at the Baltimore City Paper to explore their market and existing resources. It became instantly apparent that CityPaper.com was a huge asset to the newspaper due its large audience and favorable demographics. Researching the latest "Media Audit" study recently conducted by the newspaper, Blinder discovered the following, highly desirable information, that could be leveraged for huge returns. Firstly, CityPaper.com enjoyed a highly affluent, educated and younger reader than the traditional product. Moreover over 75% referenced the Web site at work. And finally even though the adult Web audience was less than one-quarter the size of the traditional newspaper readership, over two-thirds of the online readers were exclusive to the Web site, never actually picking up a copy of the City Paper, referring to read it only online.
During strategic planning sessions, two programs were consequently developed to be "taken to market" with Blinder Group assistance. The first centered on the development of classified offerings, allowing advertisers to place their auto, recruitment rental, and real estate listings outside of the classified section of the Web site for a single weekly "up sold" rate. The second was geared to display advertisers, with an innovative offering allowing them to have graphic elements of their weekly print ad re-produced for Web display and rotated on all pages of CityPaper.com. The online ad's content changed each time an advertiser's print ad changed, and actually linked to an online version of their current print ad. Links were also provided to the advertiser's Web site or e-mail address. A limited number of advertising positions were offered, each with a guaranteed number of impressions provided.
Sales Strategy
The online manager of CityPaper.com created mock-ups of the concept, with the Blinder Group creating in-depth sales support collateral for each program. The Blinder Group spent 4-days at The City Paper performing motivational training for the "inside" sales reps; as well as, performing a limited number of "4-legged" assisted sales training/closing calls with the outside sales people.
Results
Directly after the initial "inside" staff training, ten advertisers were instantly sold the classified, online up sells. Plus, the staff expressed confidence that this was "just the beginning" of much more to come. As far as the "outside" sales training calls scheduled, out of the eight scheduled with qualified "decision makers," seven advertisers agreed to full year commitments resulting in tens of thousands of new online revenues for The Baltimore City Paper. One of those advertisers sold, agreed to over ten thousand dollars of additional yearly traditional newspaper spending, to be eligible for the online program. "The Blinder Group guided us on the best methods to leverage our Web site for new revenue growth, trained us on how to take it to market; and finally worked with us on sales calls to close sizable new business for the newspaper, stated Don Farley Publisher of the City Paper and Group Publisher for the Times-Shamrock Alternative News Weekly Group. "In looking forward to the future - 2005, I am excited about the potential revenue flow we will see from our web site. In the past we forced line classified sales on to the web and used our banners as 'value added.' I now see actual revenue from the use of the Blinder program. I feel confident that we are now in a position to grow our Web revenues substantially thanks to their help."
The Baltimore (MD) City Paper is an "Alternative News Weekly" product with more than 400,000 readers each week. For more local information on the local sales strategy of this program, contact:
Don Farley, Publisher Baltimore (MD) City Paper & Group Publisher - Times-Shamrock Alternative News Weekly Group
410 523 2300 x229
dfarley@citypaper.com
Lead consultant for The Blinder Group:
Mike Blinder
(917) 865-4827
mike@blindergroup.com
The Blinder Group
Tampa Offices: 6139 Fjord Way
New Port Richey, FL 34652 USA
(727) 847-2464 ~ (727) 847-5959 (fax)
profit@blindergroup.com
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