M1 - Marketing and Distribution

Marketing and Distribution

Distribution Plan:

The magazine would likely be best to be distributed online as it can reach a very large audience and due to being based in a small town, it would be difficult to find a large audience for our magazine. Using the internet to distribute our magazines would be highly beneficial as we wouldn’t have to spend money on printing and hiring staff for the print factory which would save us a lot of money. Using the internet allows us to use many methods to achieve more views such as online advertisements.

Using the internet to distribute also allows us to use social media such as Instagram and Facebook which can be used to promote the Magazine to our target audience. Social media is highly useful as it will also reach a large variety of audience and people will be more likely to see it as it should show up when they search for Football related things.

I could also put the magazine on its own website then advertise the site on other web pages through adverts such as side bars or even sponsorships. This is effective as websites are able to track the amount of visitors so I can track how many people are viewing our magazines each day to monitor any progress.

Marketing:

·         How the company makes the audience aware of the product by advertising

Methods of marketing:

Posters - Traditional, below the line marketing methods

Social Media – Interactivity with audience, can gain feedback from targeted audience, its free

Leaflets/ handouts

We could use posters to distribute in football centres or near football stadiums so that the audience is relevant to the magazines audience and will hopefully gain the interest of football fans. Online adverts to show the idea off to the audience, it will help create an audience for us and see if the Magazine is anticipated or if there is no audience.

During the release, we could use radio or TV adverts to promote our magazine to inform people of it. This can help create some hype about our magazine product before it is released to give our target audience something to look forward to.

After the first release of our magazine, we can continue to use posters and adverts to retain our customers as we hope our magazine and football fans will want to purchase more editions of our magazine multiple times.

 The marketing needs to appeal to the audience demographics that we are looking to aim the Magazine toward. Therefore, the marketing needs to make sure that it appeals to the demographic.

When looking at other competitor magazines that publish football magazines, it is apparent that the majority operate on a subscription basis as well as selling them in shops. A subscription would be beneficial for us as we want to publish weekly editions of our magazine. It will also benefit the customer as it provides them with the reassurance that they will receive every weekly magazine and won’t miss out on a copy. Their subscription can easily be managed online if they chose to end it. The online subscription also allows easier marketing as the customers have to sign up first before they buy the subscription. This means we will receive the email and addresses of our customers with their consent, meaning that they can be directly targeted with marketing methods such as email newsletters or special offers through the post. This method would also be very beneficial to those with a busy lifestyle as they possibly don’t have the time to go out and purchase a magazine.

Social media

To promote my documentary, I could use social media as our target audience. Social media is now known to be used by a wide range of ages, therefore we can reach all of our targeted age groups. Another reason why I will be using social media is because it’s free, meaning we would have nothing to lose if the promotion wasn’t as effective as expected. Accounts can be created for free on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram before the release of the magazine to gain some public interest before we release the magazine and no one knows what the magazine even is.

Facebook could be used as its average age of users is 18-34 years old (source- http://smallbusiness.chron.com/breakdown-facebook-users-age-63280.html)

This is a large percentage of our target audience as many younger people in the UK play Football so we could find a large amount of potential customers on this website.

On Twitter and Instagram, hashtags can be used for slogans as they allow you to search the hashtag and it shows all tweets containing the hashtag. Therefore, I can use a hashtag in the advertising campaign so I can see what people have to say about the magazine just by searching the hashtag.