You are the new marketing manager for the Midland Daily Courier, ...

[neverstopbelieb]

You are the new marketing manager for the Midland Daily Courier, a weekly newspaper that publishes local news, high school sports results, and feature stories about local businesses and political issues. The paper also publishes several regular columns written by local experts on gardening, home repair, and crafts. Like many small weeklies, the Courier has seen its subscriber base shrink gradually over the past 10 years. The newspaper has a Web site on which it posts all of the display ads that run in the print edition, its free classified ads, and all of the news content from the print edition. Your job is to work with the publisher and the editorial staff to revive interest in the paper and devise marketing plans that will either increase subscriptions directly or generate increased interest and awareness of the newspapers value to potential subscribers. In about 400 words, provide a viral marketing plan that uses blogs and social media tools to generate interest in the Courier. Be specific about how you would promote each element of the newspapers offerings, including which tool you would use for which element.

Question 2

Marti Baron operates The Cannonball, an online store that sells parts, repair kits, books, and accessories to hobbyists who restore antique model trains. Many model train hobbyists and collectors have created Web sites on which they share photos and other information about model trains. Marti is interested in creating an affiliate marketing program that would allow those hobbyists to place links on their sites to The Cannonball and be rewarded with commissions on sales that result from visitors following those links. Examine the services offered by Commission Junction, Rakuten LinkShare, or any other affiliate program brokers you can find on the Web.
  Recommend at least one affiliate program broker that would be a good fit for Martis business. In about 500 words, explain your recommendation. Be sure to consider the characteristics of Martis business in your analysis.

[jjorrostieta]

Answer to Question 1

Some may suggest:

• Sharing links to featured stories with bloggers (politics, gardening, sports, etc.) to encourage discussion.


• Using Twitter to tweet headline news, sports results, etc.


• Creating a Facebook Page that encourages photographers, reporters, and editors to post story developments before the story appears in the paper.


• Soliciting advertisers to sponsor contests for readers and publishing the contest rules/guidelines in the paper.


• Encouraging students to submit essays and publishing them on random days.


• Getting involved in the local community by sponsoring events, adopting a high school team, etc.

Answer to Question 2

You
may recommend Commission Junction for the following reasons:

• They offer three service levels that range from do it yourself to fully outsourced program management.


• Affiliate marketing is based on cost per action (CPA), a performance based pricing model.


• Revenue-share and flat rate commissions


• Account setup and launch support


• Real time conversion tracking


• Publisher payment processing

Rakuten LinkShare specializes in service and subscription advertisers, not products