Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Who are your current subscribers - and in each case, for each will be different - why would they choose to buy a magazine rather than check it out online?

You will probably find that in terms of advertising you've hit "the wall". It's where you're spending lots of money on advertising and it's not working well any more. That's because it works great to start with, and then as your advert gets seen time and time again, it loses its effect. Also the people who see it are limited to those you're targeting.

Usually this is the result of using advertising that targets "second-hand cars" (if that's your line) where if it's running out of steam you should be targeting "is your car costing you too much money" "hate repairs" and so on. That is to say, you need to look at WHY someone would want your product not the product itself. That means you have four different answers.

Hope this helps. M

Thank you for your answer lets just ask about the car magazine we had a good number of subscribers but lately with the new high tech we started to lose subscribers and we are trying to make it online but still we want to maintain the printed copy and run camping on the lowest cost.

Hang on a minute! If you're running things on the lowest cost - you have a problem. Either people genuinely don't want your product - OR (and this is the crunch) -

what would people pay good money for in a magazine?

What kind of things would they read that would make their purchase something they'd keep a small pile of them on their coffee tables - or on the breakfast bar? Because you can't do that with a digital product, and the coffee tastes nicer with a great magazine.

That's when paying 4x, 10x the current price becomes worth it to them.

The question is then, are there enough regular buyers across the country? How many subscribers could you get to a high-end product? How many would you need? After all, it's easy to undercut you on price - it's way harder to do when it's all about quailty.

well we are not doing everything at low cost just the subscription in brief we use to have 100-150 subscriber but now we lost to 50 max and sales wise it reduced to the minimum for the last few years.

we are encouraging people to subscribe with a good offers, and btw our magazines is the best motoring magazine in the country but for some reason we don't know why people not buying it.

any advise where we should start

Look: the times we are in are, in economic terms, extremely tough. Add modern technology on top of that and you have entire industries that have been laid waste.

I want you to look into this - and you need to ask as many of your subscribers, and more importantly those who unsubscribed - what they like about your magazines.

The work will be boring and it is demanding. It is demanding because you are not looking for the obvious. You will be looking for their motivations. Why they chose, and that comes before they see it on the news stand (as it were). They see a picture of a racy red car and think "I'd love to drive one of those (etc)" they don't think of the price, they enjoy the experience of driving it through the skill of your journalists. In other words, they get way more than they paid!

So take your customer list and just ask them "what do you like about our magazine" and hopefully you'll get a few responses that tell you what they'd like to see as well.

To be really honest, if you are serving India (I am presuming here) doubling your subscriber list should not be a big task. You do need to know what makes you special, and communicate that to the people who also think this is special. My guess is that getting 250 regular buyers (if not subscribers) could be done in an urban area like Delhi or Kolkata, let alone an entire nation. That changes the game entirely - you could practically deliver the magazines by taxi and still make a profit.

Do you see where I'm coming from? You could use the internet to generate leads, have a blog that deals with some of the things in your magazine that act as "teasers" to the bigger, more substantial articles they can sit down and enjoy on a Saturday morning.

What do you think?

thank you but we are in the middle east kingdom of Bahrain and i started to do some questioner to get some responses. once again thank you and if you have anymore advise please do.

Sorry for the misunderstanding of your country - there are a great many Muslims in India too!

If you are in Bahrain - what is the possibility to serve other countries - Oman, the UAE and so on? Are there legal restrictions on this, or just social, political (I'm asking - I have no idea! You're the local, not me!)

well you need to get permit from the minster of information from each countries to display them in their market and believe me its so hard to get that but we did get it and we are trying to establish our self there now.

Are you using any online campaigns to hone your approach to all this?

Reader's Digest used to slip a postcard in with their magazines. They'd ask a question on the postcard - which of the following items would you like to read?

Building: On The Spot Or Mass produced?
Factory Production Of Roofing Panels
The Use Of Cranes On Site

The returned cards would be checked through to find which was most popular, the most interesting in the eyes of their readers.

Because each of the above is a possible title for the same article. A little adjustment for the chosen title and Bingo! You've got a title that connects.

This is called "split testing" online. This was used by Reader's Digest in the 1930s. It's a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled marketer.

thank you its helpful we will try and do that.

Get those magazines out there! Most of all, make sure they get in font of the people who should see them.