5 Ways Magazines Can Boost Your Local Business

Living in the digital age has pushed consumers towards their handheld devices and online resources for their information. With a quick query to Siri or Alexa, you can discover the answers to a myriad of questions, including finding the closest services to your current location.

As a result, marketers have grown dependent on digital marketing to build brand awareness and increase revenues. Meanwhile, the print world is being ignored by many smaller businesses who have moved away from traditional means of advertising.

However, the print world continues to thrive even in the digital age. This means you have opportunities in print that your competitors are ignoring, including magazines. Here are five ways direct mail magazines can be used to boost your local business.

1. Find Specific Interests

You can find many local magazines focused on the same target as you. You can also find niche magazines targeted on a specific interest. Depending on who your target personas are, you can advertise in a magazine that makes sense to your business with precision. You can find your dream targets in many magazines and reach a broader audience. Advertising through local magazines can be very affordable. You will reach who you need to reach without investing in the higher costs of large, well-known magazines.

2. Regional Focus

If you want to leverage your readership and have the budget, you can go with the big guns. Major players can provide you with targeted ads through distribution channels. If you run a hair salon, fashion boutique or beauty shop, hang your red wagon on Cosmo or Seventeen. Family-focused? Give Reader’s Digest a try. Home décor? The options are endless.

It’s easy to target customers in your region using either a local magazine or using local targeting with national publications.

3. Virus-Free

Today, people have become paranoid about digital marketing, thanks to the threat of viruses. More and more people are using ad blockers to not only reduce all the noise of online advertising but also out of paranoia they’ll expose themselves to viruses, phishing or other hacking attacks. They also fear to click on emails even when they’ve subscribed to newsletters or agreed to receive offers from you.

People are very suspicious of digital, while a magazine is harmless. Direct mail magazines are viewed as legitimate sources of communication that people trust automatically. That means your ads will be regarded with trust and you will have a better image for your brand.

Magazine ads get noticed with people reading and engaging with them right away. It works even better if you do it as an inserted or nested direct mail flyer or postcard. It offers a tactile element not experienced with digital, which is another reason people are more trusting of print. People are happy to hold something in their hands and have something they can save for when they need a certain product or service.

4. Longevity and Impact

Other forms of advertising today are fleeting. People see it for a moment and then it is gone. Even if you are using retargeting ads online, if people are using ad blockers, or if they get annoyed, they can remove them. Magazines can be in homes for months or even years, which means your ads are seen over and over again. It also gets passed around with more people seeing it.

Magazines and catalogues also make an impact. You can present a very impressive layout and design quite affordably with access to so many online royalty-free images. You can create a very intriguing ad with very little effort. As well, you don’t have to print the ad in the magazine. It can also be a large-format direct mail piece that is inserted.

You can also combine your marketing efforts between digital and print. There are many opportunities, including:

• QR codes on mailed materials directing customers to your website
• Unique URLs to measure the impact of direct mail marketing
• Mail-only and digital-only offers so you can compare effectiveness while also providing the communication method preferred by your customers

As you can see, there are many ways to improve the longevity and impact of your magazine printing and mailing campaigns.

5. Multiple Budget Options

Magazines are not just used for printed ads in the magazine itself. These can get quite costly. Instead, you are better off looking at direct mail service options. Using larger format ads will optimize your potential for people remembering you.

If you’re not convinced here are some compelling statistics:

• 62% of people who responded to the mail ad in the past 3 months made a purchase
• 56% of people visited online stores or physical stores based on mail advertising

For more information about how magazine printing and mailing can help your local business, call Troi Mailing Services in Canada at 1-866-486-9350 or contact us here.