It is important to cover all areas of media when promoting your product/brand. Everyday we dive deeper and deeper into what social media can do for your business. While it's important to stay ahead of the curve of technology, we can not forget the successful ways of the past.
News stands are still a very popular thing full of print magazines. Those print magazines partially stay in business based off the ad space they sell. Ad space in a magazine are split up into fractions of a page. For example: A whole page, half page (1/2), quarter page (1/4), eighth of a page (1/8), sixteenth of a page (1/16).
WHAT SHOULD A BRAND DO
At 36, I still remember ads from my childhood that were eye catching and hit the mark. Absolut Vodka had the back page of VIBE MAGAZINE on lock! You should have professional photo shoot pics or ad ready copy ready to go. If not, get on that ASAP and come back to this post. Your ad should include
A website link,
Social media "@'s" (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc)
The highest quality photos you can afford.
I saw afford because a budget is relative. FIVERR is a great service to pay someone to create your ads if you feel you can't do it yourself and do not want to break your pockets. For as little as $5, you can get just about anything you need done that doesn't require face to face interaction. I use CANVA to do my on designs.
Next you want to find a magazine in your field. Using myself as an exmple, I started out promoting rappers in the print pages of XXL Magazines FRESHMAN ISSUE. It was the magazines biggest issue of the year and would have the most circulation amongst new and old subscribers, over 200,000 of them.
PAID ADS vs WRITTEN ARTICLES
I always point out to artist that I do not work for the magazine that I'm placing them in. I make sure they understand that this is guaranteed paid promotion and not the same as an editor approved article written by someone on the magazine staff. A written feature is a different discussion and require pitching you/your brand/product directly to the magazine. Do research on what the written articles look like and mirror them as much as possible. Use the same "everything" that the magazine uses. By "everything" I mean things like brand colors, font, image and header placement to name a few. If they always have a yellow border on their articles, so should your ad. To the everyday reader, it all looks the same if you format it correctly.
HOW MUCH SHOULD PRINT ADS COST?
The bigger the magazine, the more you should expect to spend. The more competition in your field, the more you should expect to spend. But there is always that diamond in the rough with the low rates. Print ads prices should be at an all time low as most outlets focus on micro blogging and paid social media ads. You will get a better deal if you pay for the year in advance instead of per issue. It's all "who you know" meets "what you know". I spoke to one person who tried to charge me $20,000 for a full page ad, not knowing that I had been paying $2000 a page for years. They had just bought the magazine and honored my old rates. Magazine charging too much? Contact the competition.
HOW TO FIND POINT OF CONTACT
Open your target print media to the TABLE OF CONTENTS page. It is towards the front, after the editorial. Look for ADVERTISING. The name(s) you see is who you want to contact. If you are on the website, go to the CONTACT section and click on SALES or ADVERTISING.
For help putting together a magazine promo plan within your budget, click the button below and LET'S WORK.