I
recently sat in on two meetings we had with magazine publications, ‘Scoop’ and ‘Wedding
and Bride’. Lamont’s are looking to place advertisement pieces in print
publications to inform readers that Smiths Beach Lamont’s do offer weddings and
inform them of how much a wedding package would cost and the various things
included within that. ‘Wedding and Bride’ is a longstanding publication in
Victoria and has only very recently been transferred over to Perth. It is a
directory for brides to be and has everything from cakes to venues to dresses
to cars. Therefore it would be an ideal publication for Lamont’s to advertise their
wedding packages in. As this was the first ever meeting with an employee from a
magazine publication I was very surprised how they acted and how very similar
magazine executives are to sales representatives. They came out to the Swan
Valley and discussed the pricing of a quarter page, ½ page, single page and
double page in the magazine. I didn’t realise just how expensive it is for
businesses to pay for advertising and how much magazines rely on businesses to
want to appear in their magazines.
Magazine
executives are similar to sales executives are they are overall trying to
persuade you to purchase “space” in their magazine. They genuinely both seemed
very disappointed when we told them we needed to think about if and what amount
of space we would like to buy in their publication. Both of the sales
representatives from ‘Scoop’ and ‘Wedding and Bride’ knew their publications in
great depth and overall believed their publication was the best suit for us. Companies
need to think long and hard about whether their target market will read the
particular magazine and whether or not it will be worthwhile for them to
purchase space in the magazine. The magazines offer monthly payments, which
does make it easier for the business, however some don’t offer a readership
profile, where we can determine who has purchased the magazines and of what
demographic they are. It would be interesting to know who purchased the
magazine and who contacted Lamont’s after reading it (either via phone, email
or even viewed the website).
Online
advertising really is the way to go when a business is on a tight budget. By
advertising over multiple platforms, including print, online, radio and
television it broadens viewers chance of spotting the advertisement. However it
all comes down to what your advertising budget is and who your target audience
are (in terms of what they read, listen to and watch). What is going to gain
the most readership and by which group of people? There needs to be some way to
analyse this and I realised recently that when you create a business Facebook
page you are informed at the top of the page of how many of your Facebook
“friends” saw the post, how many of them liked it and how many commented. This
is incredibly handy, as it allows the business to understand who views the post
and whether they prefer photographs to text (and various other things).
Overall
it was incredibly interesting sitting in on the meetings with the magazine executives
as it allowed me to understand how magazines make the majority of their money
and how important it is for businesses to advertise over a range of platforms
in order to gain sales.
