Dropping the magazine for an all-digital sales model

When ActiveNorcal, a magazine for outdoor activities in Northern California, dropped its print edition to go all digital, is it one of the first publications to consider this track.

 It’s  first task was to ramp up social media views and traffic. The full story on the social media plan that built 20 million social views a month is here. 

But after social audiences and website traffic exploded, the next challenge was to create a new suite of advertising products that would replace and exceed print advertising sales. So how exactly should a publisher go about creating packages that combine a variety of all-digital elements? 

First, decide on what products will be offered. O’Brien and his team selected on a core suite: 

• Banner ads on the website
• Ads in the newsletter 
• Branded content
• Exclusive  newsletters
• Paid social media promotions and co-promotions
• Podcast advertising 

Second, create some pricing based on what the market will bear and competitive options.

Since this media is local, but has a unique audience, the CPM for web ads runs about $20 to $30, depending on the location of the ad; a little higher than, say, a straight newsmedia, but lower than a high end B2B.

Interstitial banner ads are sold at a premium of  $40 CPM, and monthly buys for any position range have a total price of  $300 to $500, still affordable to a local business.  Branded content is $500 if the advertiser uses  ActiveNorcal’s writers or $300 if submitted by the advertiser.

Finally, create bundles that are easy to buy. 

The sales team mainly sells three core bundles of these products. Options are sold monthly or annually, and any bundles can be customized to the customers’ needs. “Each business has its preferred model,” O’Brien said. 

The “Epic Package,” for example, sells for $1,500. The website shows that it includes:

• A leaderboard and 300×250 banner with 25k impressions each
• One website take-over 
• Two branded content articles
• Two social media promotions
• Four ads in NorCal Beat, the newsletter
• Pop-up interstitials

The slightly reduced Ultimate Active Package and  Content Partnership Package are $750 and $500, respectively. 

“We throw it all in,” O’Brien said. The value proposition is “To reach everyone, be everywhere.”  

So how it is going so far?

The company easily sells enough per month to make up for lost print sales, and with a small team, the time saved producing and distributing print magazines allowed the social presence to be built to 20 to 30 million total social media views. 

O’Brien has also secured a contract to run the social media for AIN and is building a LinkedIn Strategy for the B2B magazine. 

The caveat, however, O’Brien said is that  digital advertising is harder to explain to small business clients and more time-consuming to produce.

So he is considering publishing two magazines per year, to accommodate more traditional advertisers, who “just want to buy a page.”