Boost your circulation: 6 questions to ask your audience

Blog post - 6 questions for your audienceHaving a continual dialogue with your audience is crucial – but how often do you ask poignant questions to boost your circulation?

Change is constant so it stands to reason that your readers’ habits, likes and dislikes are continually evolving too. That’s why regular surveys or focus groups are important.

Stagnation in a magazine can be dangerous – so keep talking to your audience. The more you find out the stronger your magazine will be.

Time to start working on an audience survey. First define your main objective, then decide on the priorities, but keep the survey short.Continue reading “Boost your circulation: 6 questions to ask your audience”

Get innovative to increase magazine sales – see your audience as consumers

Community - blog 7 imageAlthough technology has changed journalism, fundamentals remain the same – understand your audience. 

Know your reader was the best advice I was given as a young journalist. Audiences are now consumers – editors must understand this to boost their copy sales across platform.

How? Editors need to look at the way an audience consumes content as well as intricate details of their readers’ lives. Ask questions to build a complete demographic and your content build around the answers. Then create a community

Are your readers commuters consuming content en-route to work or just reading to chill out? Or perhaps they are busy professionals who need information while at work?

So how will they consume your content – reading a print copy, or on a tablet, phone, print or laptop?Continue reading “Get innovative to increase magazine sales – see your audience as consumers”

Native advertising – an acceptable way to boost magazine profits

Content marketing blog imageReaders accept the blurring of advertising and editorial these days giving native a new lease of life.

Whether its social media or a blog post, online content engages the reader who is able to respond instantly – thus it becomes a conversation.

It is that conversation that is crucial in maintaining audiences. Gone are the days when magazines produced a printed weekly, monthly or quarterly edition and nothing else. Today readers don’t like waiting – they want instant content that relates to them, which they can talk about.Continue reading “Native advertising – an acceptable way to boost magazine profits”

Publishers need more than a magazine to make money

BRANDING WORD ARTInitially most magazines followed a basic business model with the majority of income derived from advertising, subscriptions and newsstand sales.

A combination of developing technology plus a slump in advertising sales meant titles either had to evolve to secure additional revenue streams or close.

The result was the birth of the ‘brand’ followed by brand extensions.

Before an extension can be established the brand has to be defined. But what makes a magazine a brand? Mostly it’s about consistency and trust. It is a combination of a concept, promise or benefit, strong house-style and consistency across all its associated products. To gain, engage and keep an audience, readers not only have to like a product, but trust it too.Continue reading “Publishers need more than a magazine to make money”

Innovation at PPA Festival

A great line up of speakers captivated audiences at this year’s PPA Festival. Magazine editors past and present, accredited PPA course tutors, plus a few of their students were among those who turned out to hear a wealth of inspirational presentations.

Kate Readeon, editor of Tatler revealed what really happened behind the scenes on that documentary. While Good Housekeeping’s Lindsay Nicholson and Judith Secombe explained how they turned the brand into a revolutionary start-up business.

Lindsay and Judith demonstrated how, despite to slum in sales across the consumer lifestyle sector, innovation can inject new energy into a brand. Good Housekeeping is still a big household favourite with core brand values that are as strong today as they were at the start in 1922.Continue reading “Innovation at PPA Festival”

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