Dear Readers and Potential Advertisers,
Online marketing is absorbed by the notion of traffic, so let’s start with a proud review of The Bozeman Magpie’s performance. In the first year after our launch on 14 March 2010, we were open day-and-night to over 25,000 unique visitors who’ve come to the site more than 54,000 times. The Magpie has been seen in all fifty states and eighty-seven countries. Unsurprisingly, our analytics are strongest in Montana (64% overall with almost 90% of those within Gallatin County), but the sizable remainder stands testament to the area’s appeal and the power of online media.
We’ve grown steadily from the very first day, and if our current average of over 200 daily visits merely holds, we’ll improve the overall statistics in our second year by 73%. Naturally, we have no intention of merely holding.
Remember, we drive original content at the Magpie. With three new articles locally sourced every week – plus extras like Bozeman’s Best and the seasonal Travel Guides - we’ve surpassed 160 features in the first year. From artist profiles and sporty trip reports to political essays and restaurant reviews, our content stream and accessible archives offer vibrant material for virtually anyone old enough to drive a car.
Currently, we’ve streamlined advertising to three options, all of which include a link to a homepage, URL or online shopping cart of your choice. This illustrates an important deviation from the standard of impression-based advertising. “You are your own best advocate,” as the saying goes, and the link serves as a bonus, leading viewers directly to your advertising dollars already in place – your website. That’s particularly relevant in contemporary commerce; a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Family Project revealed that 93% of domestic internet users have purchased products or researched them online, from bumper stickers to the cars they decorate.
- Our “First Class” ad placements are alongside the Magpie homepage, our busiest zone. In addition to the current pricing, the size (180px by 150px) is demonstrated by diagram ‘A’ at right. The design of your ad, we recommend, should be completed by a professional (we can arrange for graphic design, if you like).
- As a second option, “Econ” ads are more prevalent around our website; they’re the same size as the item above and labeled ‘B’ in the adjacent example. Prominently located alongside our full-length features, they can’t be overlooked by our 24/7 internet readership.
- Only a few locations within the Magpie permit a larger ad, marked ‘C’ at right. Most notably, the Photo of the Week contest pairs a sponsor with an exciting race among our Facebook fans to identify the location of a depicted image. It’s our most dynamic option, and the feedback has been very encouraging, especially when the advertisers provide their own products as contest prizes like the local coffee house who gave away to winners a pound of their home-roasted beans.
- We also seek long-term sponsorship for our website sectional pages like Perspective, Spotlight, and The Big M-T. If interested, please contact me directly for further information on this or any of the marketing options available.
We feel very strongly about the Magpie mission and warmly invite the opportunity to begin a relationship with enterprises and people who appreciate our principles:
Alternative News Venue: A secondary news source is vital for its encouragement of public administration, mainstream media, corporate transparency, as well as the community and marketplace viability. While we don’t shy away from controversy, we do see ourselves as Bozeman’s partners in long-term success.
Sensible Industry: The Bozeman Magpie is not available in print. Thus, the resource expenditures associated with periodical printing, distribution and disposal have never presented any environmental dilemma. You’ll find no toxic ink, smog-spewing delivery trucks or landfill feeders here.
No Fluff: As an alternative newspaper, we feel duty-bound to offer formulated opinions on subjects from politics to pilsners. As a political science professor recently noted in The Yale Daily News, smaller “publications strengthen (community) caring even when they publish nasty debate or ribald satire. Why? Because the people who run them came together… to express some variant of the civic passion that goes with participating in a community, even with shaking it up.”
Locally-owned: The Magpie was born in Bozeman, and we aren’t the migratory type. We don’t have the deep pockets of Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal, but we’re here, somewhere between the Tobacco Roots and the Gallatins, with you. It’s win or lose on this ground, sharing the engaging stories from this valley; so let’s work together.
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