Digital magazines are widely considered by marketing experts as the next frontier in advertising. With the ability to use a wide range of multimedia within an online magazine maker – text, pictures, audio, video, etc – and the massive possible reach, it’s easy to see why more and more companies are turning to them as a massive part of their marketing strategy.
Publish your magazines online!
When you consider that, according to research presented by Mequoda, Americans spend $1.3 billion on digital magazines, it’s easy to see why it is becoming such a phenomena. The fact that we now have access to the Internet twenty four seven, no matter where we are thanks to mobile phones and tablet devices, there is always an opportunity to gain a new customer and generate a new sale. Another study showed that mobile users spend 23% reading digital magazines, and tablet users a whopping 75% of their time! With 19% doing that every single day, and reading the majority of the content included to, it is slowly becoming a market that simply cannot be ignored.
You can very easily create your online magazine on your computer using an online magazine maker that you’re familiar with, then upload it to the Internet easily using flipbook technology. By using a free website for magazine publishing, such as Yumpu, you can not only quickly create your flipbook with the difficult technological aspects being done in the background by the experts; you can also make any edits that you require once the magazine is uploaded. This means that the end result will look exactly as you want it to.
But what other benefits will you receive with a digital magazine?
- Global Reach – with print advertising, your reach is only a specific area and a certain target audience, whereas when you’re using the Internet your reach is worldwide – especially when you use a site that transfers your magazine into a number of different languages. You will be able to communicate with people that you hadn’t before, creating customer bases where you hadn’t even realised that there could be one.
- Instantaneous – when you publish your magazine it is instantly available, so your message is getting across right away. This can be particularly useful when you’re running special offers and exclusive discounts. Waiting for print versions to be organised is very time consuming, and it also costs a lot of money. With the right publishing software, all of that cost can be better spent elsewhere.
- Feedback – you can find out how people are reacting to your magazine tight away because Google Analytics will give you a detailed report. This can help you to make better advertising choices in the future, saving you time, money, and a whole lot of effort. You will also be able to learn a lot about your customer base, without the expense of market research.
- Flexibility – your digital magazine can be much more interactive than digital pdf prints, with video, audio, and links to name just a few. This can give your readers a much more exciting experience, attracting them to your brand and products. It’s been proven many times that the more fun someone has looking at your message, the more likely they will be to remember it.
- Easy Sharing – once you have created your online magazine, it’s really simple to share it by either embedding it into your website, or sharing it via your social media accounts. If you find that something is particularly popular, you can even take advantage of a paid boost to reach even more people – which can become even more useful when you know more about your target audience.
So what should you include to get the most out of your magazine using an online magazine maker?
- Images – you absolutely need to use an eye catching image to attract the attention of potential readers, and you need to keep them hooked throughout. But the most important pictures that you need to include are that of the products – always remember that the end result of your magazine is to make a sale. People are much more likely to buy something if they can see a picture of it because that gives them a much better idea of what they’re buying. You just need to be really careful that your pictures are presenting your company and products in the best light – it might be worth hiring an expert for your design to take care of that worry for you.
- Captions – with flipbooks, you can include expandable captions with your images to give people more information about the products that they’re actually interested in. That way, you aren’t bombarding them with written information, which leaves them much more likely to actually read the parts that they need to know.
- Links – people have a very small attention span online – commonly thought of as four seconds. If you do not grab their focus in that time, you will lose them. This means that you need to make things very simple for them, and including links to your online store saves them from having to look things up afterwards.
- Buy buttons – you can even go one step further and include a direct PayPal buy link within the pages of your online magazine. This extra effort will save the reader even more time, and could land you those precious sales.
- Sign up form – gaining email addresses is a long and arduous process, but it’s essential for your email marketing, so including a sign up form on your online magazine will help you with that, and may lead to gaining some lifelong customers.
- Multimedia – it may even be worth using video clips and audio to create even more of an experience. Remember, the more people are looking at your content, the more they will remember your brand.
Once you have created your free online magazine, including all of the features from your choosen online magazine maker listed above, it is time to hit ‘Start Upload’. It really is that simple, and since it’s free to upload, why not give it a try to see what online magazines can do for you.