Online marketing guide launched for members of Magazines Canada

Magazines Canada has unveiled an online marketing guide for magazine media brands. Online Marketing Guide for Canadian Magazine Media Brands is available as a member-exclusive resource, concentrating on practicable digital marketing strategies, including search and email marketing, growing and mining subscriber lists and trends in digital marketing.

Contributors to the guide are digital strategy consultant Lisa Murphy, Cornerstone Group of Companies' Don Lange, Consumer Intelligence Group's Kevin Klein. Case studies are shared by Canadian and international magazines including Geist, Real Style, Inside Out (Australia), Magazines Canada, C magazine, Today's Parent, Shout (UK) and Vemma YPR (Germany).

One of the case studies about social media marketing is from Real Style, a quarterly fashion and style magazine. It details an unpaid social media campaign created for its winter 2014/15 issue:

"Our goal was to drive awareness and readership for our Winter 2014/15 digital magazine and to stimulate newsstand sales at Chapters Indigo by using celebrity influencers to promote links to our magazine, which were also retweeted by their numerous followers. We offered the magazine free of charge for the first 48 hours. After the initial major surge of online traffic, we instituted a pay wall and directed the readers to visit their local Chapters Indigo to pick up a print copy.

"We reached over 1.45 million Twitter accounts in December and achieved a 300% increase in newsstand sales. An additional 300,000 accounts were reached on Instagram. Our additional online campaign goal was to encourage readers to buy a print copy at Chapters Indigo.”