Define your target audience
This is the first step before any planning, writing, design takes place. Who are you talking to? What service or product are you selling? Once you’ve determined this, then you must meticulously chose the best possible magazine in which to advertise, that is within your budget because the bigger the magazine circulation the more you pay per square inch.
Grab the reader’s attention
With all the electronic distractions we have in our modern daily lives, it is extremely difficult as a marketer to get this valuable attention from a reader browsing through a periodical.
In a perfect world everyone would buy a full page ad eliminating any competition for attention on that page. But if you budget only permits a quarter page ad, then you must work that much harder to get the reader to stop on and look at your ad.
Use strong copywriting. Using short powerful headlines, clear concise descriptions, benefits and advantages will succeed keeping the readers interested. But remember to keep it short, because a long exhaustive copy block will discourage them and they will turn the page.
Be creative with graphic design. This is where you want to create a memorability factor and you achieved this through innovative design, quality photography, solid use of typography, negative space and colour.
Convey believability in your message
If you are a Fortune 500 company chances are your believability factor and reputation is established. If you are not, the magazine advertisement must be credible in its product or service offering and must transmit a trustworthy and honest message.
Organize your information
In North America the simple fact that we read from left to right determines how to layout your page. Some readers scan a page diagonally, others scan in the form a the letter “Z”. Keeping this in mind your important information such as your brand, titles, product offerings should be at the top or bottom quarter of the page and details or secondary information closer towards the middle.
Introduce a “call to action” in your ad
You are spending time and money to develop a magazine campaign to launch a product or service. Right? You want to generate as many sales leads as possible with every marketing effort. Right?
In order to achieve this, you must make it easy for your potential customer to get in touch with you. Make sure your phone number, email and website address are clearly visible on the page and not hidden within some obscure design feature.
You can go even further by creating “call to action” on the ad. The readers enter a web address that will take them to a specific landing page with an online form on your website. Ideally, there must be an incentive (a what’s in it for me) such as a cutting edge case study or technical information guide.
Now you print advertising is not only text and colourful ink on paper, but also a potential lead generating machine!
