How The Chronicle leveraged housing expertise to serve students and businesses — and drive revenue

This is a series on Better News to a) showcase innovative/experimental ideas that emerge from the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative and b) share replicable tactics that benefit the news industry as a whole.

This “win” comes from Chrissy Murray of The Chronicle (Duke University), who participated in the UNC Table Stakes program in 2019-20 and also served as a coach for the program.

Question: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was that problem strategically important to your organization?

Answer:  The Chronicle is an independent, nonprofit student newsroom at Duke University in Durham, N.C. We started nearDuke.com in 2008 as a way to add a digital component to our popular print housing guides. Since so much of our audience is transient – students, staff, hospital personnel — housing advertisers have always been a good fit for Chronicle products.

We had a year to prepare for an online housing source specifically aimed at competing with our long-standing nearDuke.com housing site, which generates 20% of our annual advertising revenue (we do not receive financial support from the university). But the national site had the backing of Duke University and national branding and technology. We knew we had to fight to keep our share of the local housing marketing dollars.

Q: How did you go about solving the problem?

A: We played to our strengths. We know the market better than anyone, and we have ready access to the marketing tools they needed to reach undergraduate and graduate students. And, though our budget is much smaller than our national competitor, we’re also nimble and able to move quickly to try new things. We asked Duke’s Housing department to continue to work with us on the virtual housing fair because we had ready access to the students and, frankly, it was a job they weren’t staffed to do on their own. The lift on this type of event was also way beyond the scope of the national vendor’s commitment to Duke.

The housing fair is virtual to accommodate international students who often never visit campus until their studies commence. It’s also an easier lift for apartment communities to attend. There’s no time away from the office or dragging swag boxes across campus.

The issue is making sure enough vendors and attendees show up, so we addressed both problems. First, we created an attractive package for vendors to help promote their community before the event, call outs in a video that appeared on our social channels and an emailed directory listing all participants were sent to all undergraduate and graduate students. Second, we added vital information for students: safety and transportation details, links to local housing options, neighborhood explainers and time for questions to be addressed.

After the general information portion of the event, students were able to visit any of the 31 virtual breakout rooms on Zoom staffed by local housing communities. To encourage vendor visits, we offered a $250 random drawing for any student who went to at least five rooms and completed our survey.

A promotional image for the housing fair published by The Chronicle on social media

Q: What worked?

A: Thirty-one apartment communities paid us $500 to attend and were generally pleased with the results. About 500 students signed up for the virtual event and at least 60% of attendees visited with five apartment communities in breakout rooms. Their surveys were overwhelmingly positive; they reported finding a place to live or having their questions answered. We certainly think the prize helped by encouraging participants to visit with more apartment complex representatives.

Though the revenue dollars only represent 10% of our overall housing revenue, 95% of the vendors are also regular advertisers on nearDuke.com and/or dukechronicle.com and this virtual fair is a valuable way for them to connect more directly with the Duke community. In other words, there are easier ways to make $15,000, but this way also builds a stronger relationship with regular advertisers.

Q: What didn’t work?

A: We had some big ideas that we couldn’t get off the ground — primarily due to money and time constraints! Next year, we could add a large attractive gift to encourage attendance — maybe one month of free rent. We would love to create “move in” packages branded with our site info that include cleaning products and other useful info for setting up a new home. Finally, refrigerator magnets with emergency contacts/helpful info would be a useful marketing giveaway.

Q: What happened that you didn’t expect?

A: More advertisers said yes than we dared hoped for — great news in a competitive market. It almost always appears more daunting before you go to battle with a new competitor, right? The primary advertisers were apartment complexes but it brought in realtors and realty groups that we haven’t had as advertisers in almost 15 years.

Historically, 20% of Duke’s student population are international students with a different set of needs. We helped them get guidance for their questions about the typical housing process (deposits, leases, payment, etc.) in the Durham area.

Q: What advice would you give to others who try to do this?

A: Practical Advice: Stay organized and have a marketing plan and goals, then sprint! Identify a team to work on the project; in our case, we had a team of four people (including two students) to support the housing fair.

Big Picture Advice: The true impact of news and information beyond college campus. If you are a newcomer to town, this news and information can be helpful to them. The Chronicle can connect them to advertisers and people whose services you need.

Q: What’s next for this work?

A: Bigger, better, more time to plan and execute next year! We’re also adding some evergreen resources to our websites and email newsletters for ongoing newcomer/insider content throughout the year.

Currently that info is available on nearDuke.com and in our print Visitor’s Guide. We overhauled the content in our print guide but need to find a better online presentation. Alternatively, we want to add some micro guides that might live in YouTube Shorts, i.e. How to Study off campus, How to Basketball like a true Blue Devil, How to Get into Duke.

Finally, this was a victory for “old school sales” – face-to-face relationship building. Obviously this doesn’t work for all clients or all sales, but we are trying to work it back into the sales mix. We found that a lot of questions naturally came out during our visits that we were able to answer or direct them to the right place to go for information. Clients will remember us as someone who was helpful and knowledgeable.

Read more about the The Chronicle’s revenue strategy: How the UNC-Duke rivalry helped two nonprofit student newspapers collaborate — and make revenue