14 Ways to Enhance the Marketing Power of Printed Magazines

Published In : Publishing Exceutive  http://www.pubexec.com/
Author :D Eadward Tree 
Follow D.Eadward Tree On Twitter https://twitter.com/DeadTreeEdition
http://www.pubexec.com/article/14-ways-enhance-marketing-power-printed-magazines

At first glance, a printed magazine seems simple -- too simple to be worth discussing in an issue focused on publishing technologies. After all, a magazine is just a bunch of static pages that can't be updated, tweeted, pinned, interstitialed, linked, liked, clicked, popped up, dissolved, cookied, tracked, hacked, or search-engine optimized.

But print has its own, often subtle, possibilities -- possibilities that are often overlooked by advertisers, 22-year-old ad-agency media buyers, and even publishers. There are so many ways to take print-based marketing beyond just static pages in ways that enhance print media's strengths in engaging and influencing people.

This is not about whether print advertising is better than digital advertising. They both have their strengths and their uses. Just as we publishers have learned to move beyond standard banner ads to various custom units, we need to help advertisers envision how their print campaigns can stand out and be more engaging.

Here are 14 features of printed magazines -- call them technologies if you will -- that can help you sell more ads and more copies:

1. Permanence: Digital media's dynamism can accomplish wonderful things, but there's also power in something that can be held, handed out, or hung on a wall. It's amazing sometimes how impressed advertisers are when you offer to give them some extra copies of the issue or a framed copy of their ad.
2. Targeted Circulation: You can't know whether a particular person will go to your web site or download your app, but you can guarantee that you will send that person a copy of your magazine. Think about the people who are important to your advertisers, such as CEOs, chief procurement officers, journalists, opinion leaders, and conference attendees. Include them on your magazine's mailing list and tout them to your advertisers.
3. Public-Place Circulation: Perhaps the biggest challenge with magazines these days is getting them into the hands of consumers. Retailers are devoting less space to magazines (though for many it's their most profitable category-go figure), and it seems harder than ever to get people to buy subscriptions. Free copies sent to the right public places-think fashion magazines in hair salons, fitness titles at gyms, and the million-plus copies WebMD magazine sends to doctors' offices each month-can deliver the additional audience you and your advertisers need, along with exposure to potential subscribers. Some publishers turn their noses up at free distribution, but a combination of targeted and public-place distribution often results in a better audience for advertisers than does yet another gimmicky, bargain-basement subscription offer.
4. Sponsored Copies: Here's where those free copies can get really interesting for an advertiser and for a publisher's bottom line. Match up the right advertiser with the right list or location and you can get paid (in some cases, a lot) for copies that the recipients receive for free. But in addition to a sponsor and a targeted audience, you need one more ingredient: a vehicle for the sponsor's message. And that means finding a suitable way to customize the copies. Print "technologies" 5 through 11 below show some of those customization options.
5. Wrap It: Many publishers use cover wraps for circulation promotions, such as to renew expiring subscribers or to offer subscription deals on sister publications. But they rarely present them to advertisers. Think about a wrap specifically for those chief procurement officers, or maybe a promotion for a new heart drug placed on copies going to cardiologists' waiting rooms.
6. Band It: Belly bands (no, not the kind used in weight-loss surgery) are an effective means of delivering a targeted message at events and other venues that don't rely on the Postal Service or the newsstand system for delivery. The typical belly band is several inches tall and wraps around the magazine so that the reader has to remove or pop open the belly band to read the magazine.
7. Stick It: Cover tip-ons and stickers are simple ways to put a message in front of a targeted audience. They can be especially useful for someone wanting to call attention to a particular ad or article inside the magazine. This is one form of customization that clients can, and often do, handle themselves; just be sure you make it easy for them to obtain multiple copies of your magazine.
8. Bag It: Polybagging enables publishers to include with a magazine everything from brochures to product samples. Meredith recently used polybagging to create a two-for-the-price-of-one newsstand promotion for titles having a similar audience. Polybags and envelopes are a great way to deliver targeted content to a valuable segment of your subscribers, such as a boating magazine creating a special section specifically for boat dealers.
9. Personalize It: Copies delivered via the mail are already personalized with the name and address of the recipient. Why not inkjet an additional message about a subscription expiring or about content inside that is particularly relevant to the recipient's company or interests? Ad agencies can get copies saying "This copy is sent to you compliments of Mary Gonzalez, your Central Publishing advertising representative." Some of the big auto companies take personalization to amazing levels for their owners' magazines, with coupons geared to each recipient's model, year, and nearest dealer.
10. Inserts: "Insert" is a fairly broad word involving anything placed into a magazine that is printed separately from the normal body pages. With the use of alternative shapes and substrates, scratch-and-sniff technology, and sound chips, inserts can literally have a distinctive look, feel, smell, and sound.
11. Gatefolds: Inserts having pages that unfold (because they are attached to other pages, not to the magazine's spine) can highlight special content for your readers and provide "high-impact units" for advertisers. Gatefolds come in such configurations as Z-gates, butterfly, French door, roll-fold, partial (AKA bookmark), and double. (Warnings: Some configurations have different names. And some don't work well in electronic magazine editions.) Check with your printer about its capabilities and specifications, such as page widths and the minimum basis weight of the paper. A lesson I learned the hard way: To avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding, create a diagram or physical mock-up of a gatefold for advertisers, editors, and printers, showing how it will fold, where it will bind into the magazine, and the width and content of each page.
12. Regional Versioning: Many consumer publishers create distinct versions for subscribers in different parts of the country to provide targeted advertising opportunities or content more relevant to the reader. In most cases, the vast majority of the magazine is the same, but additional pages or preprinted inserts are added in select regions.
13. Demographic Versioning: It's not unusual for two neighbors to get slightly different versions of the same magazine. Perhaps one receives a renewal cover wrap because his subscription is about to expire. Or someone might get a special advertising section because she is a business owner or has a high income. Through the magic of selective binding, the printer can create these distinct versions and yet keep the copies in the proper mail sequence. (Demographic versioning is more challenging for publishers that use co-mail to minimize postage costs, so talk to your production director or printer before jumping into this with both feet.)
14. The Numbers: Some publishers waste time and money on processes that actually undermine print quality, such as providing proofs and going on press checks. Many publishers, even those with high-end publications, have found they get the best results when they focus on creating page files to industry standards and then ask the printer to "run to the numbers." That means relying on the press's technology and experienced press operators to match the colors as presented in the page files without publisher intervention or the use of imperfect printed proofs. 

Why Should We Bother With Magazines ?

Author : Ankur Ashta | Marketing professional, and author of the book, Heart, Mind & Wallet: Decoding the consumers’ needs to create winning stories. The book is about consumer insights and how human beings interact with brands and marketing."

 https://www.facebook.com/heartmindwallet

If you are a marketer, it is highly unlikely that you haven’t heard about digital media being the next big thing. As unlikely as this ‘fact’, is that you haven’t seen a digital media presentation where one-third of the slides draw comparison between digital and other traditional media, such as TV, newspapers and magazines, and very comfortably declare the dominance (existing or imminent) of digital over these media.

Now, the boring bit of these presentations is the indispensability that is administered to digital as a medium. None of us, after all, can debate that. What is interesting is how digital is pegged against traditional media to make the latter look trivial.

While TV is hit for its lack of control on duplication of audience and the limitation of people meters (to measure/monitor the reach), print is hit by quoting ‘lack of time’ people have for the printed word. Magazines are the most tortured victims of this comparison, for they are usually announced dead or dying. And it is not done without data – India can boast of 90 million smart phones today and the figure is projected to touch 520 million by 2020.

Now the question is: With the increasing influx of these ‘internet savvy’ devices, which are capable of affecting the health of magazines (if not just kill them), why should we bother with magazines? 

Over and above the regular advantages of magazines being captive and targeted media (there are hundreds of specialist titles available) and the fact that they offer high quality production (versus newspapers), we also need to acknowledge the credibility magazines offer to the content they represent. Search for ‘credibility of internet as a source’ and you would be inundated with suggestions on how you should evaluate the ‘internet-information’ before you quote it anywhere. Magazines, on the other hand, come with a guarantee of sorts – the information given is verified and reliable. 

We also need to understand that electronic media, primarily, caters to the need for large quantities of rapidly available information. Newspapers, because of their periodicity, are constrained on quantity but information pretty much is rapid. Magazines, on the other hand, satisfy the need for long-term-high-quality information, at a decelerated yet sustainable pace.

 

From an advertiser’s standpoint, it is the high-quality and decelerated pace that make magazines an almost-perfect medium of communication. Cosmetics and watch industry would swear by this statement for these two industries are benefiting from magazines since ages now. And full credit to them for the way they are milking magazine, the medium, to cater to each stage of purchase funnel – from brand awareness to brand advocacy.

So, while these categories use covers (front jackets or outside back covers) for months together to drive brand awareness, they – at the same time – utilize the editorial content to push the opinion and consideration scores for the brands. The fact that advertisers can personalize magazine copies, makes the medium a ‘must-have-in-your-plan’ for the premium brands to facilitate relationship-building. Imagine a top-end watch company sending you a personalized copy of a premium lifestyle magazine with a small note of thanks.

 

 

The cosmetics brands have an added advantage of pushing free samples for the consumers to try. Consider the example given below:

Garnier encouraged the trial for its brand of shampoo, Fructis, through this die-cut, push-out sachet. This, to my mind, is a brilliant way of engaging with the consumers and helping them in their decision-making.

Given the high credibility of magazine content, ‘expert speak’ is another way cosmetics brands can lure consumers into trying their products. If you are a reasonably gullible person, it shouldn’t take a lip balm (the low cost item, for many, that it is) much to attract you towards a purchase. 

While these are examples of highly personalized goods, products which are family-buys and involve somewhat evolved decision-making can also try out things to establish themselves with the consumers. An automobile that stands out for its style can associate with style magazines and can be a part of the content, insouciantly. If you are a niche brand of tyres, imagine the awareness scores you can drive by dedicated presence in one section of automobile magazines – issue after issue. If memory serves me right, I have not seen Yokohama, the Japanese brand of tyres, advertising anywhere but in automobile (or related) magazines. 

Similarly, a brand of gas stoves can crack into the consideration set of home-makers, just by persistently holding to a relevant section in household magazines.

While the options are limitless, the key to success with magazines is patience and clarity of objectives. IPC/Nielsen Ad Value Research 2012 suggests that every pound spent on magazine advertising delivers an average return on investment of 1.4 pounds. This said, there is also enough evidence to show that magazines are capable tantalizing all our senses which make them even more effective to send messages across.

So, while you enjoy your copy of magazine as a consumer, it is time you understand its efficacy as a medium and start utilizing the long-term, high quality medium to establish your brand – at a sustainable pace.

References:

•  ‘Why are magazines important?’ Available on the website of IPC Advertising: http://www.ipcadvertising.com/resource/c7smxnkbj2e8rjxw3fsmwpc5.pdf

• ‘The Strengths of Print for brand and corporate communication,’ 2008. Published by The Print Media Academy of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG and Faculty of Advertising and Marketing Communication of Stuttgart Media University.

Image Credits: IPC Advertising, www.yourcover.com, www.cybelesays.com