€2 million profit from an event strategy – the success of a local French media group

More and more publishers across the globe are turning to event organisations to boost their revenue.

The French Group Actu – which owns around a hundred titles from daily newspapers, weeklies, free newspapers, and local pure-players – understood this well. Since 2022, it has been developing an event organisation strategy by focusing on organising job-dating events in a very local way.

In France, the concept of “job dating” is very popular; it is a recruitment event during which companies come to meet several potential candidates looking for a job.

In three years they tripled their revenue, generating around €2 million in organised events, which is now representing around 6% of their advertising revenue. In addition to boosting their revenue, it also allows them to attract new advertisers and strengthen their brand image.

The group is now planning to organise more than 100 events in 2025 and to continue to diversify the types of events.

The Fix spoke with Laurent Gouhier, president of the French Group Actu.

How did the idea come about?

When we were talking with businesses, we felt the need to provide a complementary service beyond what we could sell through advertising. So, we first organised a home fair event several decades ago, and then in recent years, we've started creating job-dating events.

The idea was to say we can organise it because our newspapers are located in small areas but are very powerful in those areas and very close to the local reality. So we were able to do a whole bunch of advertising around it and say that this event will have more value than a job-dating event organised by someone else.

How do job-dating events work?

We created the first job dating event with our daily newspaper, La Presse de la Manche, in 2022, and it works very well. So we duplicated the idea within the Actu group, in different regions.

We organise the event, and then we go to the companies that are buying booths. We create a website where visitors can submit their resumes and exhibitors can present the available positions they have. Depending on the size of the city, there are 10, 15, or 20 exhibitors.

Some visitors come to see large employers, but then they also see the booth next door, which they hadn't necessarily thought of, so it's good when we have a driving force.

Are you looking to diversify your events now?

This year we are planning to organise 110 events, mainly job dating, but we're also trying to diversify more and more because there's a little less need for employment-related events. We've imagined other types of events, always with the same mission of connecting people.

We organise, for example, business trophies in partnership with a city. We have our readers vote on their favourite businesses, and at the end, there's an awards ceremony. It's not easy for a city to organise this kind of competition itself and to determine which retailer is preferred over another. So we come in as a trusted third party to organize it. We also have the sports trophy or an inclusion trophy to reward associations working in this field.

What are the first results of this event strategy?

In three years, we've tripled our revenue, generating around €2 million in organised events. A job dating event can generate €10,000-15,000 in revenue. Today, events represent approximately 6% of our advertising revenue.

Did you have this idea of ​​making revenues by organising events since the beginning?

Yes, we had that in mind. Our newspapers are often small, so the economic balance is always fragile. When we have a project, it has to be in line with our mission, but we also have to imagine its economic potential; otherwise, we won't go ahead with it.

Does this strategy also allow you to seek out new advertisers?

Most of the time it’s already with our advertisers, but, for example, we had a case of a company that didn't have a local advertising budget, and we couldn't get through that door. But with the job-dating event, we were in touch with the HR department, so it's another entry point to sell our advertising space.

How do you see the future?

Even though print sales remain by far our primary resource, we know they're declining, so we need to reduce our dependence on them as much as possible. Events are additional resources in our overall strategy.

We believe it will keep growing because we have real added value to offer in this area, and at the same time, when we do this, we strengthen our brand. Someone who found a job through our event will have a slight attachment to us, so we prove our usefulness.

Source of the cover photo: John-Mark Smith via Pexels