The Springfield News-Leader sales team under Marty Goodnight doesn’t just sell advertising space.
“I have changed that,” says Goodnight, the advertising director for the News-Leader Media Group, in charge of all print, online and social media sales revenue. “My team has a fiduciary responsibility to our customers to make the right recommendations based on their customers’ needs. I have raised the professional expectation of our team to abandon the old way of transactional sales.”
The cultural change is just one of the ways Goodnight has influenced the advertising division he’s directed since the age of 32 – one of the youngest advertising directors among Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE: GCI) properties such as USA Today, some 80 newspapers and websites and more than 20 television stations. The Springfield group is the 15th largest newspaper in the Gannett chain, and other departments across the system have taken notice, particularly in training materials and curriculum developed by Goodnight.
“We dedicate one hour each Monday toward skill development, and I often write the training, facilitate it and role-play with the team,” he says. “Other Gannett sites have used my training classes for developing skills on their teams.”
Goodnight says the Springfield sales team exceeded the company’s 2012 budget, and he credits a coalition he formed with team members to perform an assessment of needed departmental changes. During the latter half of the year, he incorporated the feedback, and through an anonymous survey at year’s end, found that 100 percent of staff noticed improvement in motivation, recognition and celebration; 75 percent said improved marketing resources had positively impacted their business; and 87 percent felt a strong confidence about the team’s direction in 2013.
A high point in his career was earning a 2011 International Newspaper Marketing Association award for a diabetes awareness campaign for CoxHealth. The multimedia campaign included quizzes and personal risk ratings.
“In an addition to winning an international award, we were thrilled to impact the health of our community, help Cox achieve its marketing goals and demonstrate the positive difference we can make for our community,” he says.
Goodnight parlayed the CoxHealth campaign into a partnership with Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks to generate support and action through the News-Leader. The Pink for Life campaign, now in its third year, has tallied 67 days of advertising presence and 200 promotional mentions for BCFO and partners, 6,811 inches of space for breast cancer awareness, and some 60 tributes and stories published about breast cancer patients.
The graduate of Leadership Springfield Class 27 now serves on the group’s board of directors and as co-chairman of the communications committee. He also has helped organize Leadership Springfield Year 2 for the class, which decided to continue meeting and use its social capital to raise awareness about child abuse, a community red-flag issue.
Other community contributions include the United Way and Big Brothers Big Sisters.
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