Are you wondering now how to increase your magazine’s income? This article is just for you. We will talk about the best kind of magazine sales out there, which is subscription. What to do in order to make customers more willingly choose subscriptions over single issues? How to reach them? What determines their decision? Read further to find the answers.
1. Determine who your model reader is
While you are completing your brand new issue of your Digital Magazine, you are sure to know who you’re speaking to, who is the recipient of the content included in it. It is worth to note this knowledge down and verify it periodically. It will help you with taking actions the effect of which will be the optimization of the sales funnel, which in turn will feed through to the number of your magazine’s subscriptions, thus the increase in income.
In order to determine your model reader, you should answer the following questions:
- Which gender dominates among the subscribers of your magazine? (Some subject areas are typically male or female)
- Readers of what age will be the most interested in your magazine? (You will choose the adequate language and promotion methods depending on the age group)
- Where do your best subscribers live? (It is important whether your periodical interests global readers or not) E.g. subject areas related to ways of fighting alligators will probably engage only residents of Florida.
- What can be the other related interests of your model reader? (You will determine an accurate and popular promotional hashtag)
What you’ll write down might turn out to be solely an assumption but that doesn’t matter, create at least one model character and give it an identity, e.g. Jonathan Doe. An example character might look like the following:
| Name: Jonathan Doe |
| Gender: male |
| Age: 35 |
| Location: USA, Florida |
| Interests: Web design, hunting alligators |
Having created a few of such model “customer characters”, you will be able to conduct consistent activities aiming to increase the “sales” of the magazine on numerous fields. After some time, you will see for yourself which character is the closest to your “most precious” reader.
2. Check the design elements that influence magazine sales
Now you know the model subscriber of your magazine, so check if the Magazine’s front elements, such as the cover and application’s name are appealing enough. In this case, the design sells by itself , as the cover is an element which is the visual factor that engages users the most, and influences their purchase decision. Paradoxically, a magazine with a high-quality cover can still successfully distinguish itself in the tangle of poor creations.
3. Verify the price
The knowledge of your model subscriber’s location allows for a strategic approach to the issue of valuating your magazine’s application which is to appear in App Store. iPad and other Apple devices users are loyal customers accustomed to micropayments. An interesting approach is setting a fractional price such as $0.99, $1.99 etc. Check whether this kind of solution works for your magazine.
If, however, you’re already done publishing your first magazine, move on to your PressPad publisher’s panel and generate a sales report. Keep the Pareto principle in mind, which in this case can be interpreted as the following:
80% of your income is generated by 20% of customers.
Basing on the report’s content, you will discover the countries from which you have received the highest number of subscriptions. Thanks to that, you can draw the right conclusions, whether or not and in which direction to modify the price.
4. Promote your magazine for free
Having clearly specified the model readers of your magazine, you can pretty accurately assume which social network to start your promotional activities in.
Inform your potential subscribers of upcoming issues where communities have already been formed. In order to do that, publish entries and answer questions in places like:
- Interest groups in the LinkedIn network.
- Open interest groups on Facebook.
- Slideshare. Publish samples of your magazine along with the links to App Store here.
- Quora. Write reviews, and while answering questions, try to weave such expressions as: “we have brought up/elaborated on this topic in our magazine…, here is a link for the interested” in.
- Twitter, Google plus, Facebook pages. Build the subscribers community here. Work out your own efficient method of communication, however, remember to use 1 constant hashtag, so that the reader can find you easily using it.
Remember to send a Push Notification to your current subscribers after publishing a new issue. Here at PressPad, we allow you to send up to 5 Push Notifications for free.
5. Check the sales effects periodically
The subject of increasing the number of subscribers is closely connected to promotion and marketing, as well as building a community of subscribers in Social Media, and also the tuning of each upcoming issue of your magazine. Because this is a complex activity , it is worth to approach as a process, and clearly describe each consecutive action to be taken after a new issue is published. Thanks to the formation of such promotional process, with each publishing cycle, you will be able to check the impact of introduced innovations and modifications on the number of magazine subscriptions sales.
Remember to make changes gradually, step by step. You will notice what works and what doesn’t. Check the sales results in set intervals of time and introduce changes periodically.
On PressPad, the publishers have access to detailed magazine sales data and their magazine downloads. Possession of such data allows for building funnels and optimising sales processes. Get your magazine to the App Store with PressPad.
If you want to discuss your approach towards going mobile with your magazine get in touch with us. Call +1 888 712-0331 to discuss digital publishing needs for your magazine.