Magazines Should Start Segmenting Readers by Location

Now, before you say "I don't produce enough content to target my readers by location," consider this: there are hundreds, if not thousands of local businesses that would kill to have direct access to your readers.

Here's an example: Let's say you publish a fishing magazine. If I'm the owner of the local bait shop, I'd love to know who's nearby and reading your content. Better yet, I'd like to reach directly out to those people whenever I want to advertise a special deal or promotion. So I go to you, the publisher of the Fishing Magazine app, and I say 'Hey, can you send a notification to all of your readers in a 30 mile radius, letting them know that I'm having a 20% off sale today?'

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's say Joe is one of your readers, and he tends to read more articles about fly fishing. Bob, on the other hand, reads more about rock fishing. So instead of sending out one blast notification on my behalf, you can send one notification to Joe that advertises deals on fly rods and another notification to Bob that advertises umbrella rigs.

There are many more possibilities, but here's the key takeaway: the more niche your audience, the better. Local businesses don't have huge marketing budgets or the ability to sponsor content that will drive consumers to their storefronts or websites in droves. What they do have is the desire to directly target the high-value, niche consumers that your magazine has access to. With an app, you can help them do just that.

This sort of advertising relationship represents a potentially new paradigm in the way we monetize digital magazines. So the next time you're wondering how you can increase your ROI, you might want to think about segmenting your readers by location.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!

Shakeup Your Digital Magazine Publishing in the New Year

Are you looking to reinvigorate the way you deliver content to your readers this year? Here are a few suggestions you can use to take your digital magazine publishing to the next level.

1. Take advantage of micropayments

A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. Tablets and smartphones now come equipped with numerous mechanisms that allow readers to securely make micropayments, meaning you can target consumers where they spend the majority of their time: on handheld devices. The PixelEdge app platform allows you to tap into PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and similar services to make payment submission as seamless and convenient as possible for your readers. This means that you can deliver monetized a la carte content to your readers. A few novel ideas are to charge readers based on the amount of time they'll spend accessing your content, solicit donations from your readers after they've enjoyed an article, and sell products or related content.

2. Reward loyal readers and those who promote your content

If you're looking for novel ways to increase cpm or improve content promotion, you might consider rewarding readers for viewing ads or sharing content. You can even allow them to choose which types of ads they would like to see and interact with. There are numerous ways to reward them, such as giving them access to premium content, providing coupons, or paying them actual money. All of this is made very simple with a digital magazine app.

3. Personalize content for specific readers

One of the critical advantages of using an app in digital magazine publishing is that you can personalize the experience for your readers. Allow your readers to choose which types of content they'd like to see, and deliver this content to them regularly. Politico, for example, delivers two pieces of personalized content to its member readers each day. When crafting a brand universe, it is important to give readers reasons to continually engage with your content. A digital app can be an important piece to this strategy, allowing you to deliver highly targeted, personalized content to your loyal readers on a frequent basis.

4. Create a reading experience that transcends the written word

Digital magazine publishing is not the same as print magazine publishing. Your digital content shouldn't be the same as your print content either. Spice things up by adding interactive charts, graphs, images, video and audio. Connect with readers on social media, allow them to interact with your brand through forums, blogs, and comments sections. User-generated content is on the rise, and if you effectively allow readers to interact with your brand they will feel a stronger connection to your content, which increases the value of your brand overall.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!

It's Time to Get a Grip on Digital Magazine Publishing

This headline, from Advertising Age last week, says all that needs to be said about the current state of digital magazine publishing: "Major Ad Buyer Tells Magazines It Won't Buy Tablet Circ Like It's Print Any More". For those who think this is just a hollow negotiating tactic on the part of ad buyers, think again. This tactic's got teeth: it works because digital magazine publishing, as it is currently being done, doesn't.

Should we even be surprised? An industry expert recently told me that "at this point, many publishers view digital versions as a non-strategic platform. The bias is toward easy, fast and cheap." Does that sound like a compelling value proposition for advertisers?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Guys, listen: the experiment has run its course. We gave it a shot, but the results are in: digital replica 'flipbooks' do not work. We're going to have to try a little harder if we want to compete with the other digital media that are threatening to run us out of business. Honestly, who wants to thumb through one of these flipbooks on their smartphone? They are cumbersome, poorly laid-out, and unengaging. It's time the industry gets serious about digital magazine publishing. Announcements like the one above are just the tip of the iceberg. If we continue to regard new, expensive, and powerful digital devices as glorified .pdf viewers, our readers are going to take their eyeballs elsewhere. If we continue to indiscriminately replicate our print content on electronic devices and insist on calling it a 'digital edition', we will soon find ourselves on the wrong side of a large-scale advertising exodus. And, if we continue to disregard the predominance of smartphones in the consumer market, the media industry will leave us behind.

These things are all different sides of the same coin, and we've been talking about them for a while. Perhaps it will take more major announcements like the one above before we start getting taken seriously. But that time will come, and when it does, you'll want to be ahead of the curve.

PixelEdge is your turnkey solution for digital magazine publishing. Our digital apps come with full support, maintenance, guidance, and content-delivery. To you, this means that you don't have to devote any of your own resources and at a fraction of what it would cost elsewhere. Find us on the web at www.pixeledge.io, or email us at info@pixeledge.io today!