If you were passing by a newsstand, what magazine cover would catch your eye? A magazine cover with a lot of literature on it or a magazine cover plastered with vibrant colors? You have probably selected the second option, and for nearly 80% of us the answer will be the same. That is because an attractive cover is exactly what traps your client and then slowly reels them in. Very few of us will actually open up the magazine at the newsstand and find out what’s inside, because at that moment buying something aesthetically pleasing is enough for us. When it comes to newsstand sales, impulse buying is all that matters.
Magazines are all about human feelings and emotions. And magazine covers are the gateways to these emotions, thus having an attractive cover is very important if you actually want your clients to give your magazine a chance. Colour is one of the most important factors that triggers that impulsive sense in buyers, put red on your cover and be rest assured that your magazine will sell almost double of what a beige cover will sell. Publishers and editors have long understood the fact that magazines are not only about the text placed inside, magazines are an entire experience that makes readers reflect, educate, inform and entertain various areas of their lives. And thus they come up with immensely attractive covers holding inside them articles and stories that have the potential to blow their readers away.
However where most newsstand magazine sales are represented by impulse buying, publishers cannot trust this buyer emotion as it can seriously be hindered by a lot of external factors such as the dwindling economic conditions and the internet. In the economic dark ages of today, who among us can really afford to buy lavish magazines let alone from newsstands, where they are let’s admit it a bit pricey. And thus, now when you walk by a newsstand even if a scarlet cover shouts out to your from the stand you just hesitate for a moment and then walk on by. The terrible economic conditions are not only deteriorating magazine sales in our country, the international market has also been hit hard. Moreover, the internet in many cases has singlehandedly murdered newsstand sales of magazines, when everything is available to the reader with a few clicks, why would anybody go to a newsstand to waste their time and their money?
In these tough times, publishers have understood the fact that their magazine needs a magic ingredient to sell and thus they are coming up with techniques which can help them increase their sales. The first and foremost thing for a publisher to do is reassess their target audience and come up with something that is extremely appealing to them. Other factors which need a lot of the publisher’s attention are a magazine’s covers visuals and cover mechanics. As I have mentioned before in the article as well, people simply adore something that appeals to their aesthetic sense. We are a visual society, and thus a cover literally needs to shout out to the reader if it has any chance of being picked up and brought to the register. As magazine sales are basically based on impulsive decisions so you essentially have only 2 and ½ seconds to sell your magazine to a buyer. Cover mechanics also play a very important role where magazine sales are concerned, a publisher must make sure that similar to the magazine’s cover picture the masthead is also striking and readable from a 3 foot distance. So, the magazine is easily able to target its buyer.
Publishers need to distribute their magazine to just the right venues, it doesn't matter if your magazine is not present on every newsstand. Place the magazine at strategic venues, its good if your magazine is not common because that’s what makes it special. Lastly, pricing should be given a long and hard look; the price you set for your magazine should correspond to the content that’s present inside it. Publishers of today understand this fact, as they know that they can’t overcharge their client in such tough economic times.
Basically pushing the envelope is what gets the job done these days. The July issue of “Runner’s World” magazine has SOLD tremendously. The issue essentially deals with the concept of “outrunning cancer”, the reason for the magazine’s stupendous sales is because when it decided to dramatize the fact that cancer transcends age, gender and race the magazine launched seven different newsstand covers. Each cover represents a different persona. The reader caught on to the novel concept pretty fast and appreciated it so much that the magazine almost became extinct at newsstands.
To boost magazine sales in this tough environment, publishers really need to need to think out of the box to attract their readers in such a way that putting down the magazine appears impossible to them.
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