Publicity

In most cases it will be important for you to publicise your magazine so that people get to know about it. If you are producing it for a very small group of people, then little publicity will be needed, but in most other circumstances you will need to consider the best ways to communicate what you are doing.

There are two main stages of publicity:Pre-launch publicity will alert people to what you are offering and post-launch publicity will keep your presence visible.This chapter covers the reasons for doing publicity and the methods of generating publicity.

Reasons For Publicity

There are many reasons for attending to publicity:

To inform people. Publicity helps people become aware of your existence, your aims, your scope and style, your cost, your frequency, your progress, and so forth.
To generate an image. Publicity helps people become aware of how you wish to be perceived – and to link this perception with a desire to read, advertise in or otherwise be associated with you.
To generate anticipation. Publicity helps generate a keenness to see and read the magazine. By letting people know what is coming, they can be geared up to buying the magazine and reading it.
To generate enthusiasm. Publicity can produce initial, and long-lasting, enthusiasm for your magazine.
To attract contributions. Publicity can bring your magazine to the attention of potential contributors, either directly or through third parties who mention it to others.
To attract advertising. Publicity can bring your magazine to the attention of potential advertisers – again either directly or through intermediaries/agencies.
To attract readers/subscribers. Publicity can attract readers/subscribers through the points mentioned above and also directly, through specific invitations to purchase individual copies or subscriptions.
To maintain a presence. Publicity can keep you in people’s minds over a period of time.
To communicate changes. Publicity can help your ‘stakeholders’ (readers, advertisers, contributors, suppliers, etc.) understand what you are doing and how and why you are doing it.

Methods Of Generating Publicity

Here are some methods of generating publicity:

Word of mouth. Talking to people spreads the word. It is said that anyone in the world can be accessed via a chain of only five or six contacts – i.e. you speak to someone, they tell someone else and so on. And word of mouth tends to be good because you can communicate your enthusiasm directly and this enthusiasm can easily be spread.
Paid advertising. You can advertise your magazine in this way, which can be useful but may be costly. There are various ways in which you can advertise – for example in newspapers, other magazines, on the radio or television, on the Internet, on posters and so forth.
Free, or low-cost, advertising. Cards in local shops or supermarkets, flyers in leisure centres or garages, leaflets through letterboxes or on car windscreens – there are a range of ways of advertising without high costs. However, some of these methods are not permitted in particular countries, so check any local restrictions before you use these techniques.
Direct mail. Mailing people directly (mailshots) about your magazine is good, but will incur the cost of printing the information, buying envelopes and stamps and possibly purchasing a mailing list. If you are going to use direct mail, you need to be certain that you have access to a relevant, and up-to-date, list of potential purchasers, subscribers or advertisers. There are many organisations that sell mailing lists, or you can generate your own by using published directories, available from local libraries or from organisations in the field you serve – for example professional bodies if your magazine is for practitioners of a particular discipline, trade associations if you are going out to businesses, local authorities if you are aiming at community groups, and so forth. You can also download lists from certain Internet sources.
Do check that there is no restriction on direct mailing to people on lists you source yourself, as some organisations – professional bodies for example – state that their lists are for members’ use only and are not to be used for unauthorised mailings.
Direct mail can produce very limited results – often only l%-2% response rates although, if you make sure your lists contain people who have already been in the market for similar or complementary products, responses could be higher. There are direct mail specialists who can handle this process for you, but you will need to have an appropriate budget to fund this if you are using commercial services.
You should also be aware of the existence of mailing preference services, which keep lists of people who do not want to receive unsolicited mail, faxes or emails and you should also be aware of the fact that certain unsolicited approaches are, or are becoming, illegal in certain countries. In the UK, new legislation has made ‘spamming’ – sending unsolicited electronic messages to people, illegal (although this only applies to private individuals, not businesses).
Public relations/media contacts/press releases. Public relations is the process of keeping your existence and activities in the ‘public eye’. In practice, it means maintaining good relationships with your audiences’ and ‘stakeholders’ – which may be the general public, a small segment of the community or specific people and organisations. Making contacts with local media representatives is a good way of publicising your magazine. You should make sure you know who your local newspaper and radio journalists are and keep them informed of your activities. Send out press releases too to keep them alerted to what you are doing (see Appendix 10 for an example of a press release).
One good way to improve your public relations is to produce a good story about your magazine, perhaps something amusing that happened when it was being produced, or news of a feature on – or by – a local personality. You can also run a competition or make a special offer that is newsworthy. And keep the news coming – don’t rely on one single approach to do the whole job.
Contributors. Anyone who contributes to your magazine probably has useful contacts and their own publicity network, so tap into these wherever possible. There are many ways in which contributors can help promote your magazine – for example you can give them spare copies of their own printed contributions to pass on to others, you can ask them if they will give one or two spare copies of the entire magazine to their own friends or colleagues, you can ask them to mention the magazine or give out copies when they are doing talks, and so forth. This is a very useful method of publicity as your contributors are likely to be willing ambassadors for you – partly because in promoting your magazine they are giving their own input to it more exposure.
Exhibitions. Having a stand or table at exhibitions or conferences, or even in a local supermarket, will get your magazine noticed. Take some free samples, or some flyers showing sample covers or pages and listing the benefits of readership/subscription. Talk to people who visit your stand and find ways of getting them to publicise the magazine for you. Offer reduced rate subscriptions to anyone signing up there and then.
Sponsorship. Sponsoring events can be useful in publicising your magazine, as long as you can afford to be a sponsor. For example, a community magazine could sponsor a local person in a charity run, while a professional magazine could sponsor – or part sponsor – a conference, award a bursary for a student to attend a training course or give books to student who have limited funds (also see Chapter 9 on sponsorship).
The Internet. You can promote your magazine through the Internet – a rapidly growing form of publicity. This can be done by having your own website, where you can explain what you publish, give extracts from your magazine and include details of how to subscribe or receive a sample copy. You can also have links from other sites to your own site and you can arrange for your magazine to be mentioned on other relevant sites. If you do have a website, you should seek guidance on how to get it listed most effectively on search engines so it has maximum exposure to its desired audience (see also Appendix 8 on setting up a website).
Other promotional/incentive producing activities. There is a wide range of promotional techniques that can be used to promote magazines, as much as other types of product or service. Some techniques are: producing badges, T-shirts, mouse mats and marker pens with your name, logo and contact details ongetting skydivers to hold banners with your namehaving people walk up and down with placardsproducing calendars and Christmas cards with your details on . . . and so on.

The only limits are the imagination and your purse! If this interests you, the promotion ‘industry’ is a growing one and there are several magazines and trade fairs devoted to it (see Appendix 4 for more on this).

And finally. . . remember – it is important to keep your publicity going: the more people see you the more they will have you in mind.