Testing, testing and more testing...

This past month I launched a few new marketing tests to generate additional revenue and stumbled on some great topics of interest for my clients and readers of the paper.

First initiative was the launching of a special “Hotels and Lodgings Directory” in the Ontario Construction Report. The idea was generated from a relationship with a great client last year that spent several thousand dollars of their marketing budget to promote a group of hotels. I was given a copy of the group of hotels that were all a part of the advertising efforts and made sure they got their free subscription to the paper as an advertiser each month, but not to solicit them.

The client did not renew their advertising contract this year as they had moved to a larger online focus, but I was left holding the list of names of the people who participated in the co-op advertising a year before. Through a series of discussions with Mark Buckshon, the publisher and owner of the paper, we launched the Hotel Directory online in April with three contract hotel advertisers and I started to target the list of co-op advertisers from last year and generated $1,500 without picking up the phone. I will be following up this month with the rest of the list of co-op advertisers from last year and then start researching additional leads. Some of the revenue lost from the client not renewing has been recouped with very little effort.

Next up for new editorial themes was the launch of “Young Leaders” and the “Roofing Industry” in the June issue. Both are being tested to see if we can add them to our 2011 media schedule and so far they have both generated response for guest columns, interviews and advertising.

As the summer progresses, I will be looking to test out a few new editorial themes and some specialized directory marketing for our “Service Provider Directories” in both the GTA and Ottawa papers based on the larger groups of companies per listing. Will these earn $1,000,000 in one month? The answer is no, but each dollar will contribute to the expansion of our publications.