Why magazine advertising will always be important

Before focusing on magazine advertising please consider three things advertising can do, that other marcomms activity cannot do so well:

1. Ads can change perceptions -  advertisements are brilliant at changing the way your existing audience thinks about you. A new logo, new colourways, the promotion of new products or services are all supported by good trade and consumer ads.
   
2.  Ads can educate - it's true you really don't know what you don't know. Ignorance is great. But once you know something and it's a game changer,  then you now know what you need to find out more about, and then you can start to research and inform yourself.
   
3. Ads build and maintain brand identity - there are numerous case studies of leading brands at the top of their game who decided to stop advertising. They all lost market share. Recently Pepsi cancelled most of its trade and consumer ads and moved marketing activity to social media. Yes they got a whole load more likes, but they moved from No2 in the the market to No3 and lost 5% of revenue. Ouch!

There are other reasons to reflect on but just sticking with these 3 should be enough to convince you that advertising has a place in your marketing tool box.

And specifically magazine advertising, because magazines have a number of qualities that are very useful, these include:

• Magazines usually have a well defined readership. It's easy to work out the best "persona profile" for your ideal client and then find the type of publications they read
  
• Magazines are usually paid for, so the reader is investing in something- it's an active relationship not a passive one and this makes what's in the magazine valuable, interesting and credible
  
• Within a magazine there are opportunities to sponsor pages, and include articles the month before the ad comes out or immediately afterwards. Subtle editorial items all help. Linking the ad with a code that drives traffic to your website for product sales or special information documents is another possibility -  the list is endless
  
• Magazines have a very long shelf life, so your ad can have an impact over many weeks
  
• Magazines are usually printed on high quality paper - so whatever your promoting looks great
  
• Within a sector magazine there will be a theme or set of themes for each issue - you can find out in advance what these are and participate if it fits into your marketing plan
  
• Magazines are not a one time read - on average they are looked at 2.5 times by each reader

These are just a fraction of good solid reasons to get a suite of great ads ready. 

Tomorrow I'll give you an insight into how you can cut your advertising costs without risking your or your company's image.