Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Determine who your target market is and identify what magazines and websites they are most likely to read and/or visit. Most magazines will provide you a profile of their subscribers. For some magazines and websites it may be easier to tell who their readers are, based on the content.

By finding out the interests, desires, pain points, problems, and wants of those people most closely aligned with the benefits you're offering. Think: like message to like audience. The closer the fit, the neater the knit.

Basically, when a company chooses how to market their products, they figure out who they want to reach first, and then how to reach them. Advertising in magazines and on web sites are one route. If you go this route, find the sites that reach the people you want to reach. Keep in mind, the better the site reaches only the people you want (and not people you don't), the more it will likely cost per person.

A car company could advertise in Time Magazine, and reach a lot of people throughout the world. But if that car company was a local dealership, they would want to advertise in media that only reaches the local market (like a local newspaper), as most of the readers in Time Magazine don't live near the car dealer.

There is, as ever, another way.

What you need to do is use the Google (read Bing or whomsoever) Display Network. There are advantages to this. Firstly it is relatively cheap, and you don't even need a website.

The point is that you can target articles, not magazines. If one of your keywords happens to be in an article your ad will show just as long as your bid is high enough. These articles could be in blogs, newspapers, emails or online magazines.

You can also choose where you advertise. You could advertise in Germiston in South Africa or a suburb of Chicago. The entire of South America if you choose. You can limit the amount you spend - and Google will tell you how much you are missing out on. This may (or may not) worry you.

When you have done this for a while, you can begin to use the data that has been supplied by Google. That is when you can choose which paper magazines and newspapers to advertise in - because it already works. You won't waste any money! The great thing about the internet is its interactiveness. You get direct responses from an online magazine. With that you will know if the printed version will work - or not.

To your success, Moriarty xx

First advertise in what your buyer is reading. Be lazar sharp in this. The target audience in Family Circle is very different that Vanity Fair-- though both talk fashion and family. Even if a product is placed in both, an ad for toothpaste will look very different in VF vs FC. Learn from the pros in being lazar sharp.

If you say "my product can be used by everyone" the answer may be correct but from marketing is wrong. Drill deeper.

Make sure you mag has circulation and your ad will be seen by people who's demographics match your product. Compute readership divided by cost-- its like a PE ration of stock to advertising in print. And just as it is in stocks, it's not the only factor.

Sell Well and Prosper tm

As far as magazines go, most work off an editorial calendar; that is, they produce issues based on various themes; check that out to help select those issues that fit your target market readership.