Why advertisers choose magazines

Sure, many consumers spend a ton of time online chronicling the latest minutiae of their daily lives on their Twitter accounts or uploading their newest selfie onto their Instagram accounts, but when it comes to engaging with websites, most readers only scan a website for 15 seconds before moving on.

People interact much differently with printed magazines. Magazine readers really take their time and linger when reading print. They also tend to fully interact with the content, including the ads inside. Who stands to sell more tacos and make more money: the taco truck parked downtown amidst a sea of food trucks, or the taco truck that is parked five miles outside of town on the side of the highway surrounded by nothing but hungry travelers?

So many advertisers have fallen for the myth that print is dead. Many have migrated their marketing budgets online where they vie for consumer attention is a sea of other digital ads.

This is great news because it means your local magazine ad has far less competition and will stand out from the crowd. Because of the proliferation of these malware viruses, web surfers have become very wary of clicking on banner ads, even if those ads are enticing.

But consumers have nothing to fear by reading your print ad, and this makes them more open to receiving your message. While digital ads come and go, print ads have staying power. When you advertise in a reputable local magazine, people instantly become familiar with your company. This recognition is then reinforced when they meet you in person, either at your place of business or at a local trade show or charity event.

This not only builds brand recognition but, in time, brand loyalty. Magazine advertising space costs significantly more than newspaper advertising space. You really need to have a good reason to justify this expenditure. If your business is upscale, it might be an appropriate choice. Also if you are starting a business in a small niche market you might find a magazine that provides an effective advertising opportunity.

A classy restaurant with a menu that puts mom to shame and caters to a trendy crowd might want to pay for magazine advertising, perhaps to show off a four-color photo of diners feasting on a sumptuous meal in their chic establishment.

You should also consider how closely a local magazine parallels your core market. Most local businesses find their trade in their home or immediately adjacent towns. Many local magazines are distributed over a wide region—say, from 50 to towns. Carefully calculate what, if any, return you will get from advertising to a geographic base that is much broader than your typical trade reaches.

Although the cost per thousand readers reached may be high for specialty magazines, they may offer the lowest cost per thousand qualified prospects. More readers of a specialty magazine are potential purchasers of your applicable specialized product or service than would be true of a general readership publication. Specialty magazines tend to be thoroughly read, not scanned, and smaller ads often work well in these vehicles. Mail-order products, especially in narrow fields in which products are not readily available at the retail level, tend to net good results from specialty magazine advertising.

But there is a much less expensive, sometimes even free, advertising alternative. Find an Internet or a mail-order company that is willing to purchase your product at discount and feature it on its website or in its catalog.

Some of the catalog companies especially may charge you for the advertising space, but they may allow you to pay for this space with free product at the wholesaler price instead of with cash. Related: 30 Tips to Improve Internet Advertising. Like specialty magazines, trade magazines allow you to zero in on your target audience. Trade magazines tend to have smaller circulations and even lower advertising rates than specialty magazines do. You should run full-page ads in trade publications, however.

Do this even if it means you need to reduce your ad frequency to meet your advertising budget, and even if you can only afford one full-page ad per year. No matter which magazine you decide to advertise in, readers expect magazine ads to be much slicker and more attractive than newspaper ads. And they expect the copy to read just as cleverly as a radio spot. Although you need to ensure that your ad is effective, it also must be visually appealing.

Develop more than one ad design idea or concept. Place mock-ups of these ad concepts in an old copy of the magazine you plan to advertise in.

What do you think? How do they compare as you flip through the publication? Which one really captures your attention? And, because you might not be the most impartial judge, it is important to ask other people for their opinions. Measure sales, not inquiries, generated by your magazine ads.

While you should follow up on these inquiries, my experience has been that very, very few of these inquiries add up to sales. They must sit and read the page, absorbing the information without distraction.

Sure, they can have the television on in the background, but niche market readers who subscribe to magazines will take the time to read, allowing you to stand out and get your message directly to them. Advertising in the digital space alone will make it difficult to compete, unless you pay the high price of being on the front page of a search engine. Advertising in a general newspaper or magazine may be effective, but only if you ensure you take up enough space on the page.

When posting your ad in a niche magazine, everyone who reads that magazine will already be interested in what you have to say. Studies have shown that print ads are trusted far more than digital ads. Why is this? Not only does print have a reputation for being more reliable, people are also skeptical of scams, viruses, and malware they could potentially download by clicking on a bad ad. This fear makes digital users less likely to trust popups or banner ads. Everyone who has ever used the Internet has experienced a popup ad on a blog, or a video-interrupting message.

Ads that arrive in email inboxes are labeled junk and thrown in the trash can. However, when people pick up a magazine, they spend time absorbing the images and copy. They find publications they like and subscribe to monthly mail so they can follow up with each issue.

Even magazines that are picked up for free or delivered by mail stick around the home on counters and tabletops. This staying power offers print ads an incredible return on investment. When you get your ad in a niche publication, your message will be sent to the right readers. Your brand will have instant credibility with your audience because it will relate to the copy in the magazine.

For example, if you post your ad about tennis clothing in a sports magazine—or even better, a tennis magazine—you will instantly be trusted by the readers. Access to distribution networks are important, which is another reason to consider getting your ad in a niche publication.