Print magazines can be an unusual opportunity for niche marketers.
Digital advertising dominates e-commerce for good reason. Ads are measurable, easy to update, and often produce immediate results. Place an ad and get dirty the same day.
In contrast, print advertising usually produces immediate results and is not easy to measure. Still, the medium has unique values that introduce marketers.
Take Amazon’s October 2024 print toy catalog, for example.
“We don’t prevail when Amazon leans into their toy catalog,” said Polly Wong, president of Belardi Wong, a New Jersey-based marketing firm, in a correspondence with Practical E-Commerce.
“Hundreds of brands have added direct mail and catalogs to their mix over the past five years because print offers the unique advantages of digital marketing – more real estate to show your product and fix consumers to buy, 100% reach, high life from print-responsive and highly effective a way to stand out to new customers. “
In gasoline, print promotions – for example Gold Magazine catalog ads – are complemented by digital advertising.
Brand advertising
Magazines and print catalogs can provide valuable brand advertising, an often overlooked approach by e-commerce merchants.
Brand ads in a trending magazine to stick around and get lots of ‘impressions’.
“A print ad will sit in someone’s house or near someone’s desk for months upon months, sometimes years,” Troy Klongerbo, CEO of Homestead Living magazine, wrote in an email interview.
Klongerbo’s Point, most magazine subscribers go through the publication several times and bounce back on articles and ads repeatedly. His publications often include recipes and reference matter material, so from “accessories” in the kitchen or shed.
Print magazines like HomeStead Living can last on the coffee table or desk for months as subscribers rev them up.
Print ads can also build trust. The print ad company appears to be established and trusted.
“There is depeper implicit trust with words and images placed in print.” Once printed, the words and messages cannot be changed, ensuring a kind of permanence. Digital ads, even the best of them, are ephemeral to some extent,” Klongerbo wrote.
Indication
While short-term digital ads provide solid data that print does not. Advertising needs to be smart about collecting and analyzing print performance and willingness to receive indications.
Many print advertisers use a combination of several performance indicators.
- Brand surveys. Changes in sending brand awareness, consideration and promobility after exposure to brand advertising campaigns.
- Social Media Commitment. Monitor mentions, shares and sentiment related to the brand, especially if the result is published for the first time.
- Website operation. Pay attention to website traffic and metrics. An increase in direct or branded search traffic often indicates that print advertising is working.
- Share of voice. It compares a brand’s advertising or marketing presence to competitors in a specific market or industry.
- Straight answer. Finally, with coupon codes, subdomains and QR codes, magazines and catalogs may capture some direct response data, but this is also indicative. Ten scanned QR code visits can be used by 100 consumers.
QR codes and coupons allow print ads to capture direct liability data, as in this example from Homestead Living.
Affiliated Entities
Some print publications use this last form of measurement – direct accountability – to run affiliate ads for e-commerce brands.
These affiliate relationships are relatively new in print magazines, perhaps due to influence marketing. Modern advertisers are often content to leverage relationships that combine display and affiliate payments.
For example, a direct-to-consumer brand could pay an influencer a nominal fee to produce an Instagram reel, and then pay affiliate commissions on the dirty influencer created with their discount code.
Similar arrangements are now found in printing. The advertiser pays a low flat rate to help offset the costs of printing and distributing the ad and shares the revenue tracked via the QR code.
If the typical affiliate share of a brand is 15%, the publication may receive 30% to 50%, which recognizes that some shoppers will search for the brand or type in their URL rather than using the QR code.
Complete
Branded print advertising can positively influence digital. Countless published reports confirm that Branding increases the performance of ads, driving relatively more clicks, engagements and conversions.
In short, print and online ads are complementary approaches to achieving a marketing goal.