Customer Magazines

Media and marketing strategies are like a jigsaw puzzle – for the picture to be complete you need all the right pieces to fit together. But, for a lot of retail brands hoping to create customer loyalty and up-selling opportunities, there’s an important piece of the puzzle that’s missing.

They need a marketing vehicle that connects their e-commerce web sites, social media pages, blogs, premium clubs, and traditional advertising.

I am talking about a digital brand magazine packed with entertaining lifestyle content that attracts customer attention, associates the brand with the satisfaction of customer interests, and leads loyal customers to more purchases.

Here are three companies using variations on this concept to influence customers:

• A flip book from New Era Caps
• A microsite Sherwin Williams Paints
• A flip book from grocery chain Hannaford

Custom brand content can be packaged in digital magazines, custom apps, print magazines, microsites, and a variety of other formats. It’s all custom media and it helps your brand to become the best source of information on the lifestyle interests of your best customers and prospects.

With an abundance of sports coverage easily accessible across mainstream media, why do sports organizations develop their own custom content programs? There are several good answers to this question that Barry Janoff discusses in his article, Sports Custom Content: The Fans are the Stars, published in the latest issue of Content magazine.

This article talks about several sports teams but I pulled quotes below that relate to one of DCP’s major sports clients, the San Francisco Giants.

The main goal behind sports custom content is to keep loyal fans rooting for their teams. How is that accomplished?

1. Provide “more nuanced, more intimate” access to players and teams.

“Information is everywhere, and much of it is free,” says Mario Alioto, Giants senior vice president of corporate marketing. “We have access and information about our players that other media don’t have.”

2. Give fans an opportunity to share their stories.

“It’s one thing to have a magazine that interests fans, but the best kind of content marketing is when people feel they are part of it,” says Jeff Gire, senior editor at Diablo Custom Publishing. “The team wanted Giants Magazine to have stories that involved the fans.” As a result, we created a new section, “Our Fan Story”, which gives fans a place to share personal stories about the Giants.

Be sure to read the article to get the whole story.

Take a look at this very interesting whitepaper, Leveraging Loyalty to Transform Publishing, produced by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions. It addresses “The Impact of Relevance in Publishing and Advertising.”

I recommend downloading this 12-page whitepaper that includes the detailed findings about what people want from their magazines. It confirms what we all believe is most essential—relevance.

Here's some info pulled from the first page of the whitepaper.

“To get a clear picture of what opportunities might exist for publications transformation, the CMO Council asked consumers what they wanted from their magazine experience.

The audit revealed that consumers do not want to give up their cherished print publications, and further that their experiences within these preferred pages has shaped and molded their buying decisions.

In a world where the internet threatens to change the face of loyalty—offering new and exciting real-time connections—magazines seem to be the one constant that consumers are not ready to relinquish. According to our survey:

92 percent plan to stick to print when it comes to their magazine consumption

Only 24 percent intend to eventually switch over to some form of e-reader device

The real message consumers want to send to publishers is keep the content relevant, be it editorial, advertorial, or advertising. But, well placed, content rich and even personalized advertising will lead to new opportunities (and even renewed opportunities) for profitable customer engagements."

Click here to download the whitepaper and read the detailed findings of the online consumer survey.

According to a new survey from the Custom Content Council (CCC), U.S. corporations spent a record $47.2 billion on branded content last year. The 10th annual industry “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Content Marketing in America for 2010” includes the study of electronic and other forms of content marketing for the first time—which explains the significant increase in spending from 2008.

This year’s study reveals that 32% of the overall marketing, advertising and communications budget were dedicated to content marketing. This is the greatest-ever proportion of funds dedicated to content marketing in the 10-year history of this study.

What does this mean?

Marketing organizations recognize the need to communicate regularly with their audience and provide them with meaningful content. Marketing today is not as much about flashy marketing campaigns as it is about constant interaction and sharing of relevant information with a targeted audience. Since today’s consumers make highly educated decisions, marketing organizations need to play a key role in the transfer of knowledge and participate in their consumers’ decision-making process. The more valuable content an organization provides, the more likely they will build and grow a loyal customer base.

How are companies communicating with their audience today?

Custom Magazines/Newsletters Still Strong:

• In 2009, average circulation per issue increased to an all-time high of 48,162 copies per issue.
• The number of unique printed custom publication titles decreased from 1.9 in 2008 to 1.7 in 2009. That said, those titles published increased in both page count and circulation.

Other Forms of Branded Content:

• The most common other forms being used are website updates of articles, blog post and e-newsletters.
• The least common are mobile and e-zines such as flipbooks and interactive PDFs.

What marketing vehicles are companies expecting to add in the future?
While mobile content is not yet widely used, it does rank as the medium that most marketers believe they are likely to invest in next year. Beyond that, marketers plan to invest in video and audio.

Custom Content Council Executive Director Lori Rosen said, “As more and more companies explore custom content solutions across print and digital platforms, we will continue to see an increased financial investment. Things are changing rapidly—the data shows just how much change the industry has undergone in 12 months-and we haven’t even touched social media surface. Next year we will be measuring Twitter, Facebook and more. It’s an exciting time to be involved in content marketing in all its forms.”

What’s the Best Solution?

There are many options for presenting magazine-style content online. How do you know which approach is ideal for your publication? You can start by answering three simple questions.

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

First, what are the different solutions?

If we put online magazines on a continuum with print-centric solutions (PDF/Digital Magazine) on the left to web-centric solutions (full featured website) on the right, magazine microsites would fall in the middle. Below are explanations of each.

PDFs are the simplest online versions of a print magazine. You just post the PDF file of your magazine online and allow people to view it. But it’s not very compelling for readers because:

• Large files are often blocked by firewalls and slow to download
• Readers don’t want to download big files onto their computer
• Reader experience is cumbersome—you have to read pages sequentially
• No interactive content

This option is also limiting for publishers—you can’t add rich media or new content, you can’t track viewer activity, and search engine optimization (SEO) is limited. This solution is quickly becoming obsolete.

Digital Magazines (flip books) are high-quality online replicas of print publications that offer value-added functionality such as interactive media and live links. There’s no file downloading and it’s easier for readers to navigate with a flexible control strip and search functionality. Advertisers like this approach because they can replicate print advertisements online and embed active links to their website. However, people find these solutions hard to read because they’re based on PDFs that were designed for print viewing, not for the Web. Reading requires a lot of zooming in and zooming out. And publishers can’t add new content. Digital magazines are a lively way to view a static print magazine online.

Online Magazine Microsites are HTML-based solutions that take advantage of the design and interactive possibilities of the Web. Based on a print publication or an online-only magazine, it’s a dynamic gathering place where readers peruse your magazine content, view rich media (videos, podcasts, slideshows), and link to your social media sites. Online magazines replicate the magazine-reading experience with a flag treatment, Table of Contents, feature stories, and departments. By mixing custom designed feature articles with various article templates, you don’t have to design every page from scratch. Instead, you upload content as often as you want using a simple Content Management System (CMS). Readers prefer this solution because articles are easy to consume and graphically compelling, content is updated regularly, plus navigation is highly intuitive.

Websites can be used to house online magazine content for organizations’ whose primary business is magazine publishing. For these companies, the main website is an extension of the magazine. For organizations that do more than magazine publishing, articles posted on the primary site get lost unless they’re packaged in a magazine microsite.

What are the ideal scenarios for each solution?
Getting back to the original questions….

1. Is your online magazine an extension of a print publication?
2. Do you want to optimize your online magazine for web viewing?
3. Will you update your online magazine content regularly?

If your online magazine is based on a print publication you can consider all options. But if you’re creating a web-only magazine it makes sense to focus solely on web-centric solutions. Why create a print-centric publication to be viewed online? Why invest in designing each and every page of your publication from scratch when it’s never going to print? There are much more efficient ways to do this. If you plan to update your content regularly, PDF/Digital Magazines are not a viable solution—an online magazine or website is the way to go.

The ideal scenarios for each solution are:

PDF/Digital Magazines
You have a print issue and have already invested in the design of each page. Repurpose it. Don't want to add any extra content; just want to replicate your print piece. Great for magazines with ads—publishers can sell online ad space in addition to print.

Online Magazine Microsites
You want to extend your magazine's brand online and give your magazine lovers a solution optimized for the Web. Regularly post fresh content to keep your audience engaged. Make your magazine a two-way conversation with your audience through article commenting.

Websites
Your company is all about your online magazine. Readers don’t distinguish between your magazine’s brand and your organization’s brand.

John Muir Medical Center’s Women’s Health Clinic publishes a catalog of current classes, lectures, screenings and other events that it offers to women in communities served by its three clinics. New editions of this extensive, 16-page catalog are mailed twice per year to women throughout the community, and it has proved a successful means of reaching, impressing, and motivating those women who make decisions about healthcare for themselves and their family members. It inspires them to actively seek out the medical center’s programs. 

From a pure marketing point of view, these programs represent the place where the Medical Center is introduced to it customers.  Women find support groups, counseling, training and screenings related to heart health, cancer care, parenting, nutrition, weight loss, aging, and more. It’s in these “entry way” services that patients begin their relationships with the medical system, and where their loyalty to the system is cemented. Over their lifetimes, when high acuity services are called for, these patients are predisposed to favor John Muir’s services because they have an existing relationship with the system.

DCP has published the Women’s Health Catalog for several years. But in the issue just released this month, we worked with the staff of the Center to reorganize how the content is displayed. We strove to categorize the information in ways that are more consistent with how readers use the catalog. It wasn’t really a “redesign” so much as a “design tweak.” But the results have been excellent, and the Center reports a higher rate of consumer response already. This is a perfect example of how a minor modification can produce noticeable results.

Of course, John Muir Medical Center doesn’t offer these classes because they’re good for marketing. That’s just the lens I see them through because I’m in the marketing communications business. No, these classes are good for the community because they help people live healthy lives. That’s the real purpose.

A few weeks ago, Jim Offel reported on the encouraging findings from a recent study by Roper Public Affairs of consumer attitudes to custom media and the organizations that provide them. One of the study’s most interesting conclusions was that 68% of consumers who read custom publications say it helps them make better purchasing decisions. Then last week, Dennis Cook blogged on how this study revealed that custom publications influence consumers’ perceptions of hospitals in a very positive way.

Now you may wonder…do corporate and hospital marketing investments mirror this upbeat consumer response? According to another recent study from the Custom Publishing Council (CPC), in cooperation with ContentWise —“Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Custom Publications in America,” the answer is definitely yes.

This study finds that the custom publishing industry remains strong, amid the economic downturn and the challenges facing consumer media. The results reveal that circulation has skyrocketed, pages per issue have increased, and issue frequency has held steady.

Some of the key findings:

Circulation: The average circulation per issue increased from 30,044 in 2007 to 37,340 in 2008. The average circulation per title increased from 270,000 in 2007 to 336,060 in 2008. The total number of custom publication copies distributed increased 7.4 percent from 2007 to 2008.

Pages Per Issue: The average pages per issue for custom publications increased from 22.2 to 23.2. Since 1999, the number of pages per issue has grown 68.1%.

Frequency: The average annual frequency of custom publications remained steady at 9 times per year.

Online:  The use of online publications increased from 18 to 22 percent between 2007 and 2008.

Email us at info@dcpubs.com if you want to learn more about the findings of these studies and what they mean for your organization.

I’m not in sales but I was drawn to this article that appeared in my email inbox because the headline grabbed my attention--“12 Biggest Sales Presentation Mistakes Salespeople Make and How to Avoid Them”. As I read it, I realized that these valuable tips were not just relevant for sales people but for marketers, as well. Since an effective marketing communication emulates a face-to-face client presentation, the same rules apply.

Whether we’re presenting to a client in person or communicating in print or online, we’re not going to reach them if we make the mistakes outlined in this article by Patricia Fripp, executive speech and sales presentation coach. She talks about the necessity for clear structure, third-party endorsements, and developing an emotional connection. I found her explanation of the importance of telling memorable stories particularly insightful.

Fripp says, “People rarely remember your exact words. Instead, they remember the mental images your words inspire. Support your key points with vivid, relevant stories. Help them "make the movie" in their minds by using memorable characters, exciting situations, intriguing dialogue, suspense, and humor. Telling stories of satisfied clients and painting a picture of how this client’s condition will be improved with your product or service are appropriate.”

This article came to me from Go-To-Market Strategies, a resource center for sales and marketing professionals.