Producing a page-turner HOW TO CREATE A CAPTIVATING CUSTOMER MAGAZINE
Successful marketing depends on your ability to build a good relationship with your customers. Creating a customer magazine is an excellent way to keep your customers up to date, add authority to your organisation and, most important, strengthen customer loyalty. So how do you create a magazine that your customers will look forward to reading? What essential points must you consider? And what’s the best way to get the most for your publishing money? This guide tells you how to create a lively and informative magazine, one that your customers will enjoy reading, and will simultaneously reward your business. In brief, a good customer magazine must be:
• interesting and informative • visually exciting with well shot, high resolution images
• credible – a customer magazine must offer more than a sales brochure
• well-planned, with engaging content and a theme for each issue
• well-written in a warm, conversational style
• interactive, inviting the reader to get involved in some way
a friend to your customers and a reflection of how much you value them
Key points to consider: Confirm your objectives
As an integrated part of your marketing programme, decide what you want your magazine to achieve. What is its purpose? Do you want to build customer loyalty? Or keep your customers up to date with breaking news? What you decide determines everything about the magazine.
Define your audience
Who are you talking to? As with any publication, you need to identify your target readership so that you can create relevant content, in a style your readers will appreciate.
Plan a realistic frequency
Consider the content
Above all, the content must be interesting, and offer variety. It has to reflect your readers’ interests, as well as your own communication objectives. Keep the content honest, informative and focussed. Try to involve readers as much as possible – ask them to contribute to the magazine, and invite their feedback. Direct them to a forum on your website where they can post comments or articles and discuss issues with others. A balanced mix of content should include:
• feature articles • news stories
How often do you want to publish your magazine? Monthly? Quarterly? Perhaps bi-annually is sufficient?
• competitions
Be realistic in evaluating the timeframe and cost of writing and producing a magazine. How often will you have new and interesting information?
• handy tips
Does the subject matter lend itself to a seasonal emphasis? All these factors determine the frequency.
• case studies
• reader contributions (letters, experiences, photographs)
• discussion panels on important topics • interviews with experts or company managers
Create an exciting look and feel Achieving the right balance of interesting content and attractive imagery is crucial to the success of your magazine. Sacrifice information for a glossy look, and you’ll quickly lose your readers’ attention. Conversely, a poorly-designed magazine is unlikely to impress your customers, no matter how good the content.
Inspiring imagery
Your magazine will be competing with commercial magazines and needs to deliver the same quality look and feel, and response from your customers. Good quality photographs and illustrations are essential. If your budget allows, commission a photographer or illustrator to provide original material. Alternatively, source pictures from an online picture library. Consider the paper on which your magazine is printed. Recycled paper speaks volumes about your company. So, too, does a magazine printed on heavyweight glossy stock.
Compelling copy
Quality writing is essential. An experienced editor and contributors will raise the standard of your magazine, and bring your magazine to life. Within a consistent structure and tone, try to utilise the talents of different writers – a variety of voices can add authority, and make for a more interesting read. Front and back covers are ideal places to provide ‘hooks’ to grab readers’ attention. Catchy headlines are a must. Help your readers to follow up on information in an article by providing relevant website addresses.
Useful magazine terminology Advertorial: An advertisement that has the appearance of a news article or editorial in a print publication.
Reverse out: To reproduce as a white image out of a solid background.
Bleed: Layout, type or pictures that extend beyond the edge of a page and are trimmed off. Illustrations that spread to the edge of the paper without margins are referred to as ‘bled off’.
Runaround: The ability to run text around a graphic image within a document, without the need to adjust each line manually.
Call-outs: An explanatory label for an illustration, often drawn with a leader line - especially useful when you want to single out, but not obscure, a particular area of a document. Double page spread: Commonly abbreviated to DPS - two facing pages of a newspaper or magazine where the textual material on the left hand side continues across to the right hand side. Image display: Promoting the image of a product or service, rather than promoting its functional attributes. JPEG: A commonly used method of compressing digital images where the degree of compression can be adjusted to suit. Lead-ins: Usually five words or less, that start off a photo caption in a magazine or newspaper. Lead-ins are used to catch the reader’s attention and lead in to the main caption. Masthead: A graphic image that is often found at the top of a printed or electronic page. The masthead is designed to catch the eye and provide an instantly recognisable page with a degree of visual appeal. Nested stories: In magazine layout, stories run in multiple columns at different column depths. Resolution: The number of dots per inch (dpi) in a computer-processed document. The level of detail increases with higher resolution and artwork should be a minimum of 300 dpi.
Saddle stitching: A method of binding where the folded pages are stitched through the spine from the outside, using wire staples. Usually limited to 64 pages size. Spot colour: Not made using the cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) process. The colour is printed using a separately mixed ink - each spot colour needs its own separate printing plate. Spot colours do not apply to digital printing. Strapline: A concise slogan used to identify brands (e.g. Tesco’s ‘Every little helps’). Considerations for a strapline should include being hard hitting, a play on metaphors, rhymes and alliteration. Tagline: Slogan that visually conveys the most important benefits that need to be conveyed. Tags: The various formats which make up a style sheet - paragraph settings, margins and columns, page layouts, hyphenation and automatic section numbering. Trapping: A slight overlapping between two touching colours that prevents gaps from appearing along the edges of an object because of movement on the printing press. Type families: A group of typefaces of the same basic design but with different weights and proportions. Vignette: Where an image fades out at the edges. This term usually refers to a single dot pattern that may start at 50% dot and gradually decrease to say 5% in a smooth graduation.
Build customer loyalty and add value If you want to create a dynamic and successful customer magazine, talk to us.
Contact us phone 020 8399 7400 email steve@marketing-impact.co.uk visit www.marketing-impact.co.uk Marketing Impact Ltd Springfield House 23 Oatlands Drive Weybridge Surrey KT13 9LZ
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