The Idea
Fort Campbell Families is a quarterly magazine dedicated to military families. It is owned by the Kentucky New Era, a 9,500 circulation daily newspaper in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
We started the Fort Campbell Families Cover Contest with the goals to encourage reader participation, increase online page views, and generate online revenue.
The Execution
We run our cover photo contest three times each year. Military families are encouraged to submit their family photos to the cover contest for a chance to be on the cover of the magazine. In addition to being featured on the cover, the winning family receives a recliner from one of our sponsors, Herb Hays Furniture. We have given away 16 recliners so far!
Here are a few of the past winners:
We secured 3 local sponsors – Old Chicago Pizza, Herb Hays Furniture, and a Chevrolet dealer – with different commitment levels. Each one received an online banner on the contest and all are featured in the print advertising for the contest – 6 newspaper ads and one magazine ad each month.
You can see some more sponsorship information on the rate card that we use to sell the contest sponsorships:
The Results
To date, we have generated more than $16,000 in revenue with the Fort Campbell Families Cover Contest, bringing in about $1,400 with each individual contest.
We receive between 8 and 20 entries for each issue, and the contest had generated thousands of votes and page views for our site.
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Mary Beth is the General Sales Manager of the Fort Campbell Courier and The Eagle Post, two weekly newspapers in Western Kentucky. She has more than 10 years of newspaper sales and management experience and focuses much of her time on the development of niche products, such as the Fort Campbell Families magazine.