Contests Case Study: GateHouse Media – Rebecca Capparelli, Director of Sales Training Development
By Nancy Lane, President, Local Media Association
Contests Case Study: GateHouse Media – Rebecca Capparelli, Director of Sales Training Development
Contests produce well into the seven figures for GateHouse Media and this category continues to grow. They realized early on that even very small properties could bring in $25 K with a football contest.
Contest strategy: to create chain-wide contests that can be run at every property with ease and simple implementation.
Planning is essential when it comes to contests. When they launch without enough lead-time, it doesn’t produce the best results.
Sales rollout philosophy – make it easy to execute so leadership and sales time can be spent SELLING. For example, they are having a call in 2 weeks in preparation for their cutest baby contest (Q1 2013). During this call they provide sales benchmarks (what a small, medium and large market should produce for this contest based on actuals from prior year).
They solicit a lot of help from Second Street and this has been very helpful. From Matt Coen at Second Street: they also can provide templates to their partners.
Contests & sweepstakes: most of them are $100 prizes, not a lot of money but it helps to grow the email database.
GateHouse Media Plan for 2013:
7 required companywide contests:
- Cutest baby
- Super Bowl
- March Madness
- Salute to Nurses
- Pro Football challenge & high school
- Cutest pets (markets choose their own dates)
- Reader’s choice (markets choose their own dates)
Optional contests:
- Mother’s Day
- College football
They will also put a greater emphasis on packaging and pre-selling. Contests will continue to be a main focus at GateHouse Media and they expect to see nice gains in this area in 2013.