Give your media kit more muscle

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1994 by Julie A. Laitin

Your media kit is your most powerful sales tool, on duty 24 hours a day. Is yours selling as hard as it should?

Every word in your media kit must be aimed at generating sales. This means your kit must target eight key sales areas effectively and persuasively. The more facts you can offer to demonstrate your strengths in these areas, the more likely you are to sell your customers.

Your market: Nothing is more important to advertisers than market facts. Even large advertisers seek additional information on the markets they serve. Agencies, too, are hungry for facts that educate them about their clients' products and customers. The information you provide will enhance your stature as an expert in your field and as a resource for your advertisers. If possible, you should show market size, components, levels of distribution, history, potential and future growth areas. This will give advertisers confidence in your ability to help them market their products effectively and productively.

Circulation: Don't rely on your audit statement to spell out the facts about your readers. Because many agency personnel start in media - often without sufficient training or understanding of how to read audit statements - relying exclusively on your audit statement to explain your circulation benefits can be a grave oversight. Provide a simple and clear explanation, in words and/or charts, of what your circulation advantages are: more readers, more decision-making executives, more influential purchasers, areas of importance to advertisers, and so on.

Demographic study: Too often, publishers simply reprint information about reader demographics provided a research firm, thinking that the facts will speak for themselves. This is what I call "telling" - not "selling" - the results. Instead, provide a headline that will highlight the benefit contained in each chart.

Example 1: Use a headline such as "Our readers are seasoned professionals" for a chart showing your readers' years in the business or profession.

Example 2: Try "Our readers are heavy buyers of electronic equipment" as a headline for a chart showing the percentage of readers who buy various types of equipment.

Advertisers should be able to understand, just by reading the headlines, exactly what the final research has uncovered. More detail is provided by looking at the charts. Headlines make it easier for your customers to quickly absorb and retain the major benefits of your magazine and audience.

Editorial: of all the sections included in media kits, by far the most neglected is the editorial area. Perhaps this is because most magazines assume - wrongly - that advertisers and agencies already know what their publications are about. In fact, few agency buyers know the specifics of your editorial, especially in the trade area. For this reason, it is vital to underscore exactly what your magazine brings to your readers - and, by extension, to your advertisers. Among the items to include in this section are the following:

* An editorial profile explaining your magazine, its reason for being, and how it helps readers enhance their lives - personally and/or professionally. The editorial profile has another important function: It should explain how your magazine differs from its competitors so that advertisers will have a clear idea of your magazine's position in the marketplace.

* An editorial calendar everything your magazine offers each month, including value-added services and benefits. This will help advertisers select the months in which they want to run. This calendar should work as a sales tool, not just as an editorial run-down of major features. It should help bring in new categories, generate schedules, and trade up existing clients.

* Additional fact sheets, which might include the linage or number of editorial pages you ran last year in specific advertising categories, linage comparisons with your competition, bios of well-known columnists or authors, and lists of editorial awards.

Remember that the importance of your editorial to advertisers is not that it be interesting or informative, but that it bring readers into your magazine - and into contact with their ads.

Readership: That a certain number of people receive your magazine is not Proof, from an advertiser's standpoint, that they read it. Proof of reader interest and involvement - in your editorial and your advertisements - comes from research surveys. These studies offer qualitative distinctions that set your publication and its audience apart from its competitors as a marketing vehicle. Among the facts that can be demonstrated are the following: how many issues subscribers read; how much of each issue they read; the time they devote to an average issue; where they read it; what they do with the issue after reading it; and to how many other people they pass it.

Advertising: This section should show advertising success and advertiser results Increased ad pages are third-party endorsements that your magazine works for your clients. Showing your competitive advantages in graphic form (bar charts) offers immediate accessibility.