A couple months ago, the Seattle Times dipped its toes in the paid content waters with the debut of a $2.99 iPhone app for University of Washington Huskies football fans. “We’re pleased with the progress,” said Heidi de Laubenfels, Deputy Managing Editor at the Times. “The app reached 20 percent of our total predicted sales in the first two days and continues to do quite well.”
So well, the Times is preparing to launch more paid apps. “Our plan is to build out a portfolio of compelling niche apps, starting with sports coverage,” she said. “Our next offering will be Husky Men’s Basketball 2010-11,” which will launch in November.
To market its new mobile efforts, the Times has turned to social media, both of the virtual and face-to-face variety. The Times has used Facebook ads targeting Husky fans (using “interest” targeting), as well as promoting the app on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. And the app has prominent sharing functionality for both Facebook and Twitter.
For fans attending a recent home game — including myself — the Times handed out free iPhone cases promoting the app. There were also ads in the official game program. And to reach Husky influencers, the Times’ PR team handed out 50 promotional codes to download the app. All these efforts play hand-in-hand with the strategy to generate social buzz for the app — with more to come.
“We see real potential in a combination of consumer and ad revenue associated with niche topics, particularly in the emerging mobile space,” de Laubenfels, who points out that the Husky app is sponsored by a local car dealer. Sounds like a much smarter approach than building pay walls around existing products and hoping the revenue follows.
(Full disclosure: The Seattle Times is an editorial partner of Next Door Media, a network of neighborhood blogs that I co-founded.)
