For niche e-commerce players, print magazines can be an unusual opportunity.
There’s a reason digital advertising is dominating e-commerce. Advertising is measurable, easily updated, and often provides instant results. Once you post your ad, the sale will happen the same day.
In contrast, print advertising typically does not produce immediate results and is not easily measured. However, this medium has its own value that established marketers appreciate.
For example, take a look at Amazon’s October 2024 printed toy catalog.
“I’m not surprised that Amazon is focusing on its toy catalog,” Polly Wong, president of New Jersey-based marketing firm Berardi Wong, said in a correspondence with Practical E-Commerce.
‘Hundreds of brands added direct mail Over the past five years, print has offered unique advantages to digital marketing, giving you more space to display your products and encourage consumers to buy, 100% reach, and higher customer feedback in response to print. Lifetime value, and highly effective. It’s a way to stand out to new customers. ”
Basically, print promotions such as catalogs and magazine ads complement digital advertising.
brand advertising
Magazines and printed catalogs provide valuable information brand advertisingan approach often overlooked by e-commerce marketers.
Brand advertisements published in magazines tend to last longer and garner more “impressions.”
“Printed ads end up sitting near someone’s home or desk for months and months, sometimes even years,” Troy Krongarbo, general manager of Homestead Living Magazine, said in an email. I wrote this in an interview.
Krongarbo points out that most magazine subscribers flip through the publication multiple times, repeatedly referencing articles and advertisements. His publications often include recipes and reference materials, and are treated as “equipment” for the kitchen or storeroom.
Printed ads can also build trust. Companies with print ads appear established and trustworthy.
“There is a deeper implicit trust in words and pictures in print. Once a word or message is printed, it cannot be changed, giving it a kind of permanence. Even the best are to some extent short-lived,” Krongarbo writes.
Indications
Although digital advertising has a short shelf life, it provides hard data that print does not. Advertisers need to be smart about collecting and analyzing print performance and be willing to take pointers.
Many print advertisers have some performance indicators Combine.
- Brand lift survey. Measure changes in brand awareness, consideration, and favorability after exposure to a brand’s advertising campaign.
- Social media efforts. Monitor mentions, shares, and sentiment related to your brand, especially when an issue is first published.
- website traffic. Pay attention to your website traffic and engagement metrics. An increase in visits for direct and branded searches is often an indication that your print ads are working.
- Share your voice. Compare your brand’s advertising or marketing presence to competitors within a specific market or industry.
- Direct response. Finally, thanks to coupon codes, subdomains, and QR codes, magazines and catalogs can obtain direct response data, but this is also indicative and not definitive. A QR code visit scanned 10 times could represent 100 consumers.
Affiliate
Some print publications use this last form of measurement, direct response, to run affiliate advertising for e-commerce brands.
This affiliate relationship is relatively new in print magazines and is probably supported by the following reasons: influencer marketing. Modern advertisers are often satisfied with relationships with influencers that combine flat fees and affiliate payments.
For example, a direct-to-consumer brand might pay an influencer a nominal fee to create an Instagram Reel; affiliate commission To an influencer who uses her discount code to make sales.
Similar arrangements are currently in place for print. Advertisers pay a low flat fee to offset the cost of printing and distributing their ads, and share in the revenue tracked via QR codes.
If a brand’s typical affiliate share is 15%, publications can increase their share by 30% to 50%, considering that some shoppers don’t use QR codes to search for brands or enter URLs. % may be received.
complementary
Branded print advertising can have a positive impact digitally. Countless published reports confirm that branding Power performance ads and drive more clicks, engagement, and conversions.
In short, print advertising and online advertising are complementary approaches to achieving your marketing goals.