Relaunch a Member Magazine with High-Quality Production Values and Increased Advertising Pages

Client: Massachusetts Association of REALTORS®

About Our Client: MAR is “The Voice for Real Estate™” in Massachusetts. For more than 80 years, MAR has been working diligently on behalf of property owners to advocate fair housing and home ownership for all. The association also administers educational training, professional standards services, and ethics cases to ensure its members not only understand but adhere to the state and federal laws and the strict national REALTOR® Code of Ethics.

The Challenge:

  • Relaunch Bay State REALTOR® magazine, a publication with low production values, to communicate more effectively with members, engage readers, and put a fresh face on the association in order to keep members better informed and to encourage them to utilize the association’s services to a greater degree.
  • Assist the association in its efforts to increase membership and membership benefits.
  • Increase advertising revenue and boost ad sales from only six pages of ads per issue.
  • Redesign an outdated media kit to aggressively target new advertisers.

The Project Demands:

  • Implementation of the project had to meet with unanimous approval from all of the association’s board members and the executive committee.
  • Strategic Communications had one month to roll out the media kit and prepare for the magazine’s relaunch.
  • With very few existing advertising contacts, Strategic Communications needed to be proactive in generating support for the magazine.

The Strategic Communications Solution:

  • By designing a targeted, comprehensive advertising program to support the struggling organization and creating new incentives for advertisers, ad revenues more than doubled in less than six months. The current publication supports just under 20 pages of ads and new business partner relationships have been created.
  • Since relaunching the magazine, membership has grown by 25%, advertising revenues have quadrupled, and the circulation continues to increase.