Mag Nation is constantly faced with a dilemma. We try to be different and non-commercial in the way we do things, and yet, the reason other companies are commercial is….well…. it is commercial!
Our website is a prime example of this. Increasingly we are using it to engage with you, our audience. We think our website is fun and perhaps a little quirky (eg the magdentifier as seen below). Yet ultimately, it needs to sell lots of magazine subscriptions, books, t-shirts and stationery items if it is to help us to survive.
Mag subscriptions have been growing rapidly, and we have high hopes that the other products making up “the third floor” will prove popular. However, we know that we still turnover less than 0.5% of the volume that the large online players do, despite the better service that we think we offer.
We can’t afford the mass brochure drops or tv advertising that they do, and we don’t have a team of 20 people dedicated to search engine optimization, affiliate marketing and all the other stuff that we have had to rapidly educate ourselves on. All we have is our personality, and as much as Billy Joel loves us just the way we are (!?!?), personality doesn’t cut it in from a “hey we exist” perspective compared to a brochure hitting every physical mail box in Australia and New Zealand 3 times a year. Fewer than 1 in a 100 people in our home cities of Melbourne or Auckland have even heard of us, let alone the rest of Aus and NZ. So how do we build awareness of what we have to offer, without spending a fortune (that we don’t have) to “buy” awareness?
When we look at the other large online players, their sites are inundated with commercial offers. Buy a sub to magazine X and win a set of steak knives. Buy two subs at the same time and go into the running for a trip to the moon. You get the idea. As magazine purists, we tend not to care so much about the free gimmicks. That said, these other guys are probably a lot smarter than we are, and I’m pretty sure that they do it because it damn well works.
And so here we are back at our original dilemma (don’t you love it when the ramble of a blog post does a full circle?) Should we be more commercial to sell more subscriptions? We have given it a try… Currently if you subscribe to one of 6 different mags, you go into the running to win a free trip to Paris. Does this float your boat? If you are reading this blog, then you are obviously in the 1% who knows who we are. To generalise, you are more likely to be passionate about mags than the 99% who have never heard of us. Would this chance to go to Paris make you more likely to purchase something? Or does it stink of commercialism and turn you off?
Ok – too many damn questions. We have to walk a fine line and perhaps the trade-offs between commercial strategies that keep food on our table vs maintaining our personality and integrity don’t actually have to be trade-offs. Maybe the real answer is to keep doing what we have been doing – try lots of random, different things and those that work get put down to my genius while those that crash and burn were ideas that can be attributed to our Operations Manager!
Whatever keeps you guys around. Where will I get my mags otherwise?
You could always run competitions for us creative types (let it be illustrators, painters, designers or photographers) to come up with means of advertising MagNation, perhaps, in most guerilla style. Considering MagNation have a lovely identity to work with, and a great staff to communicate with, this kind of competition will be a blast.
We love to do something for a good cause, well, at least it is among my immediate circle of friend – we strive to have our work seen by new audience and don’t mind having little in return… such as an annual subscription to a select amount of magazine (perhaps, three… put a pricing limit to it, if neccessary).
That’s the end of my current two-cent spill.
Great blog and website. I’m wondering from Mag Nation’s perspective if it is better for the average punter (such as myself) to purchase a subscription to a magazine through your site or come in each month and buy it from your store?
Your landing page looks great, maybe good for the brand, but is it good for online sales?
?Tried split A/B testing on a landing page design that is A) current site B) more obvious sales oriented design (less flash, more text and less number of clicks to subscription link) and link the experiment to simple sales conversion metrics. Whether this will make people visit your store is another question all together.
I don’t have a particular allergy to gimmicky promotions. It will turn more people onto you than drive them away if its legitimate and aligned to your brand. (year’s worth of daily coffees in your store seems more appropriate than a trip to paris, and it will bring them back to your store.)
I’m not big on competitions as an enticement to subscribe, because I never win them! It’s a bonus if I already plan to subscribe to a magazine, but again nothing to get excited about unless I did win. Samples and freebies on the other hand, they do float my boat. I will buy the occasional trash rag for the free lipstick etc because the value of the freebie is more than the cover price of the magazine alone. Most of the time I won’t even read the mag because it’s not in my area of interest. The mags I do love to read are the hard-to-find-elsewhere titles that you specialise in anyway. They don’t need gimmicks to make me buy them.
Hi, just my two cents. Your best next step is to get about 6-12 of your existing subscribers and ask them why they went with you instead of the competitor. That would point to your strategy.
Be niche. Think small. Think local. Continue to spread love.
get the kiddies on board. they do love a street team.
Reading, reading, thinking “No, I don’t need you to be commercial; I like you because you shy away from the gimmicks etc”. Then I read free trip to Paris and decided in a nano second that I’d like you to be more commercial. I don’t want any of those titles but can think of someone that would like one and may be heading that way for a pressie subscription now. Trip to Paris suck me in? Hell yes.
I don’t think you need competitions, surely the people that actively seek you out, will do so, regardless,. hence you’ve got comments up here from people who love buying niche / specialist titles and part of the fun of that is browsing, discovering something new…
…however I’d absolutely “second” the genius idea of involving your creative admirers/readers/customers and run some comps that way, a gorilla-marketing-esque-campagin is a damned fine idea, kudos, to Ravi for that nugget…
….but erm, – dammit – dare I be so bold and suggest we all hold hands and share a little communal MagNation LOVE-IN – and by this, I mean why not a besoke MagNation-FanNationMag? Something small, intimate and *pretty* – cos I do like pretty
)
HELL, I’d work on it for gratis (though, I’m in the uk so not sure how helpful that’d be!?!) but yeah, why not a co-operative / collaborative / competition-based magazine
) – it seems almost a bit obvious when you think about it…
Ohhhhhhhh be good to have a “work station” section, whereby everyone who “enters’ comp / or participates in some way gets to include a shot of them either at work / at their creative space,. or – ho ho – better yet; in their favourite place to read their favourite magazine… yeah,. I think that could easily run to a couple of pages…
Can I do the layout – oh – please – oh please, – can I? – I have no shame, I don’t mind begging!!
)
IN fact, offer me a job working in your store, that’d be heavenly, seriously, I’d be on the next plane over!?!
Or, hey, come open a shop here,. (give Magma a run for their money!! haha – nah – I have nothing but love for Magma, really! but hey, do come, this is your *official* UK invite,. I’ll put the kettle on, help you scour the entire country for a good location and generally try be helpful…)
Aaahhhh poop,.I’m getting overly-excited, at the thought of a UK-MagNation,
)
Ah well,. genuinely heartfelt love and *schnuggles* to all you magazine-aficionados,. Long Live MagNation!! Long Live Print / Mags / all things papery & inky that I can purchase and lovingly fondle!
Kit
xx