Here are five key considerations you should take into account if you’re looking at producing a custom magazine for your company.
Do you sell a lifestyle?
If you sell products that fit within a certain lifestyle (and most companies do), then creating your own magazine allows you to paint the picture of your customer’s lifestyle and where your product fits in. The average reader spends 50 minutes with a lifestyle publication. This is far longer than is spent on one particular advertisement, even if seen more than once as reader’s flip back and forth. With a custom magazine, you are in control of delivering the entire lifestyle picture. Next time you’re in a hotel, check to see if they are producing their own magazine. Hotels often have excellent examples of bringing relevant lifestyle information to their patrons, who have often chosen their establishment based on an image they have of themselves.
Are you looking to expand your brand?
If you need to reach a new demographic or geographic area, a custom magazine is an excellent way to enter the market as a friend to your new potential customers. You arrive in a beautiful package of interesting information and your brand is immediately associated as one with their interests in mind. Magazines are an intimate, tangible experience for readers. They touch, feel and retain the information provided. It’s the ultimate branding experience.
Is information delivery a key part of your business?
If you are an association with a membership, then being a resource is a fundamental aspect of the business. By providing members with a magazine, you’re providing them with the relevant information they need in a format that looks good on the coffee table, easily stores on a shelf, has longevity and can be passed around to friends. In any instance where your business is a resource, careful attention should be paid to the package it’s delivered in. The ability to pass it around easily is a great way to grow a membership base.
Do you need to increase customer loyalty?
Of course you do. Everyone needs loyal customers. Sometimes you need to provide some incentive to keep them loyal. Often people are loyal to a business only until a new one comes in and appears to serve their needs better. The relationship between you and your customers needs to be strong enough that they feel personally attached and would experience guilt over doing too much business elsewhere. A custom magazine provides a little insurance by offering information your competitor might not be providing and keeping your brand front and centre in the form of a magazine, which is a medium proven to be effective at forming attachments with its readers. A magazine is a gift to your customer that says “we care enough about you to bring you the information you need to know and you can get while you’re curled up on the couch.”
Would you like to be positioned as the expert in your industry?
People want to do business with the experts, the best and most respected professionals in their field. This is because there is an inherent trust that the company or individual would not be held in such high esteem if they were not legitimately a credible source of valid information. Be the place your customers go when they want to talk to an expert. A magazine that delivers highly customized and relevant content to your customers that’s accurate and data driven makes you the trusted problem-solver.
Keep these questions in mind when you are deciding whether a custom magazine is right for you. They will help you define the objectives of your marketing effort and establish your measurable goals. Keep in mind, with the new technologies in printing available it might be more affordable than you think.
