Get With The Times

Magazines are one of the most influential pieces of advertisement available to travel companies. People need to want to travel before they ever consider doing it. How do they know if they want to travel? They are inspired to do so. Pictures of beautiful, exotic places that put ideas into their mind. By putting vibrant and appealing pictures on a cover, it is likely that customers will open up that magazine and read about the places advertised. Magazines are fundamental in getting people to travel in an economy where fewer and fewer people are taking solely pleasure trips. Magazines can be inspirational and help cultivate a spirit of adventure if done well.

As more of the media moves online, magazines have suffered slightly, but reporter Steven McIntosh gives hope. He says that “newspapers and magazines are finding out if you can publish writing that is consistently and significantly better than what can be found online, people will pay.” So how do you utilize these statistics to better market your travel company? You must have a competitive edge over other online resources.

Why not create a travel magazine that is sponsored by your own travel agency? Although it can be difficult to launch a magazine, as a travel company you are in a better position than many other industries. You have access to extraordinary pictures and exciting content. There are so many possibilities. Send people on trips and have them write articles. Fly out photographers to take pictures. Most likely you already have some people doing these things, so you have a head start.

The higher the quality information and experience provided, the more likely people are going to buy these magazines. Though the magazine works as an advertisement for the company people enjoy looking through it. It’s a win-win. Magazines last and so will your business. Digital marketing consultant Ana Picasso confirms that people buy magazines and books they would like to reference at a later date, but they also buy magazines too, “have an experience that goes beyond information. A visual and tactile experience perhaps.”

When using your own magazine to advertise your company, it is important to make sure the advertisement does not disrupt the reader’s experience. A loud, flashy, money-grabbing ad may catch someone’s eye in a random magazine is important but the content inside keeps the reader reading. They should be reading without realizing they are being marketed to, or else you risk the reader putting the magazine down altogether. People have become much more cynical of brands after the economic crash in the 2000s. The minute it seems more likely that a company wants to make money more than help the consumer, many modern customers will walk away.

As time goes on, statistics show a dislike of advertisements only grows. People want to be valued and they feel this way when they are given helpful advice. Customers also value a company that focuses on integrity. Society is inundated with advertisements and to stand out a simple ad is no longer enough. A successful magazine should be an honest, entertaining, insightful product that allows people to interact with your company.

If creating a magazine is not a possibility for your business, consider advertising in other magazines. Despite the pervasive rumor that print is dead, 90 percent of adults still read magazines. You can count on this when advertising in an already popular magazine.

If not in-print, what about online magazines? No one said that magazines have to be only in print anyhow. In a sense, much of Instagram, with its heavy image format and text which ranges from a caption to a short article, is an online magazine in of itself. A small company might start out on Instagram, fill their page with breathtaking photos and enlightening articles, and then transition into print.

Magazines present travel companies with numerous resources to get to consumers. If you are publishing a magazine or simply inserting advertisements into someone else’s, be honest entertaining and insightful!