The Baltimore Times, a long-standing advocate for the city’s Black community, recently launched a successful new initiative that drove substantial revenue and audience engagement for the media company. This reader-driven campaign, The Best of Black Baltimore, aimed to spotlight and celebrate the thriving Black-owned businesses contributing to the city’s cultural and economic landscape.
The campaign faced initial logistical challenges, like choosing the right promotion platform for nominations and voting. However, after receiving technical consulting from the Knight x LMA BloomLab, The Baltimore Times found the right tech partner to help team members achieve and surpass their goals for the contest.
“When launching a new company initiative, it is essential to find the right technology platform that can provide human expertise to guide you through best practices and avoid pitfalls,” said Apryl Pilolli, technology and innovation director for the Knight x LMA BloomLab. “Audience.io’s user-friendly platform and amazing customer service proved the perfect partner.”
The Knight x LMA BloomLab program aims to support the sustainability of Black-owned media by identifying and implementing technologies to accelerate publishers’ digital business transformations, grow audience and revenue, and improve operations.
Once past the technical hurdles, The Times formed strategic partnerships with sponsors who shared their values of supporting Black businesses. Additionally, they leveraged eye-catching billboards strategically placed throughout the city to help boost awareness and further amplify the campaign’s reach and impact.
The Best of Black Baltimore campaign went beyond recognizing the best businesses. It fostered a deep sense of pride and ownership within the Black community. This collective spirit fueled the enthusiastic promotion of the campaign, with local businesses creating their own materials to champion the nominations.
“What we didn’t realize is that people saw this as such a prestigious award coming from The Baltimore Times,” said Paris Brown, the associate publisher for the company. “They saw this award as unapologetically Black, celebrating Black arts and culture.”
The Best of Black Baltimore campaign will culminate in a grand celebration in February, coinciding with Black History Month. Brown says this event will be “the largest celebration of Black businesses in Baltimore.”
Lessons learned and future plans
The campaign was a resounding success, garnering more than 12,000 votes and $55,000 in revenue. The Times exceeded its engagement goal of 5,000 votes, and while it didn’t have a revenue goal for this first year, it plans to generate more than six figures next year.
According to Brown, valuable lessons were learned along the way, including:
- Promoting the nomination process early.
- Adding dedicated personnel to focus on the initiative.
- Building strategic media partnerships with local TV and radio stations.
She plans to incorporate these insights into future iterations of the campaign to ensure its continued growth and impact.
With plans to secure more sponsorships earlier and explore additional digital engagement initiatives, The Best of Black Baltimore campaign has the potential to become a signature event for The Baltimore Times. It can generate significant digital revenue while continuing to shine a spotlight on the city’s vibrant Black business community.