Wilmington (NC) more than doubles holiday gift guide revenue
The Challenge
The Challenge
From "Early Bird Gift Guides" to "Last Minute Gift Guides", newspaper sales teams spend a great deal of time pitching (and producing) holiday products that will increase that end-of-the-year revenue. During a planning session led by The Blinder Group, the staff of the Wilmington Star News decided to streamline their holiday sales efforts and still increase the sales of their holiday product.
Program Overview
The Holiday Gift Guide incorporated both a print and online component. The print portion, which ran on three separate days during the holiday season, was in the form of a full color broadhseet format with ad "boxes" each measuring as a tenth of the page. Each "box" featured on advertiser's gift item. The items the advertisers placed could be changed for each of the three publication dates. The front page of the section only had six advertisers, leaving room for a contest entry form offering readers the chance to win one of three drawings for a $500 gift certificate from an advertiser.
All ads sold into the print products also appeared online as part of a new "Holiday Gift Guide" Web site. The ads were linked from three separate text listings within predetermined online shopping categories on the site (i.e. "Gifts for Her", " Gifts for Him"). These listings featured the name of the advertiser as well as a compelling "value statement" as gleaned from the newspaper ad copy. These listings acted as links that opened up to an online version of the advertiser's newspaper ad, appearing in a separate "browser" window. These windows also featured links to the advertiser's Web site as well as a link for instant e-mail. Online items changed when the print items changed.
Readers entered the contest from the online section as well. User information that was collected was saved for future "permission marketing" programs.
Sales Strategy
Immediacy was a key selling factor with positions being locked in on a "first come/first serve" basis. The advertiser's position within each category was determined by time of commitment to the program. In the center of the online page, there were three large boxes with photos of merchandise. These boxes were available to the first three advertisers that bought four or more boxes in the print product. On the site's "right rail", there were five small boxes with photos of merchandise. These went to the first five advertisers that bought two boxes in print.
The Blinder Group created a one-page sales sheet for the program and returned to market to help close business. $100 was offered to the salesperson that sold the most boxes during The Blinder Group's return market visit.
Results
The Star-News generated $30,000 in holiday gift guide revenue this year--more than a 50% increase over last year's holiday number.
Contact Information
The Star-News is a 56,537 daily located in Wilmington, North Carolina.
For more information about the sales strategy of this program, contact:
Ken Warren, Advertising Directorr
(910) 343-2311
ken.warren@wilmingtonstar.comLead Consultant for The Blinder Group:
Mike Blinder
(917) 865-4827
mike@blindergroup.com
The Blinder Group
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New Port Richey, FL 34652 USA
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