However, the magazines are not aimed entirely at advertisers, as the content and features have to appeal to the readers in order to attract them into buying the magazine. Therefore, they are required to produce content that will appeal to their target demographic and reflect the interest of their readers, such as celebrity gossip. For example, the magazine may have quasi interactive features wherein readers can write in with their comments about the magazine or celebrities featured in it etc.
It is important for a magazine to retain an audience, once they have attracted readers to the publication, and they will therefore use a number of methods to keep readers interested in the brand, for example by advertising the content in ‘next week’s issue’ and stating the date that the magazine goes on sale to encourage the audience to buy it. Specific features in each issue of the magazine may also be used to encourage continuity of sales, as the reader will be used to the format and expect certain content. The use of cover mounted gifts may also be used as an incentive. The magazines do accept that readers may get bored with their magazines or ‘grow out’ of them, but do their best to keep them buying magazine within the same publishing house. Magazines such as More! may advertise similar magazines that their audience might also like from within Bauer, such as Grazia and Heat. The publishers may also introduce their readers to other magazines within the publishing house with special deals, for example during the rebranding of More! magazine, it was published in a two-for-one deal with Heat, in order to encourage readers of Heat to read More!, or to gain new readers who would be attracted by the special offer. It is necessary for publishers to keep the readers interested in their brands due to the competitive nature of the magazine industry, as there would be many similar brands offered by rival companies. An example of this is IPC’s LOOK magazine, which offered very similar content in the women’s lifestyle market to More!, and caused a dramatic decrease in More!’s sales as LOOK proved more popular and still remains so despite More!’s recovery, with LOOK having a total circulation of 313, 013 in 2009, compared to More!’s 192, 860. Rival companies often have very similar magazines targeted at the same demographic, ABC1s, and a similar psychographic profile, where both More! and LOOK target young women with analogous interests in fashion, beauty and celebrities.
Changes in the media industry with the introduction of the internet as an accessible form of free information have led to the necessity for many magazine companies to converge with an online version of the magazine in order to promote the brand and also offer new features to a changing audience. The internet allows the magazine content to be accessed for free, from home rather than requiring purchase from a newsagents, and internet sites also have the advantage of instant updates with information and news as it happens instead of having to wait for the weekly magazine to find out the latest gossip.
Most magazines now have a supporting online version, and some have stopped print sales altogether to only be published through the internet. This platform is particularly accessible to young people, and probably preferred by men, which could explain huge decreases in the sales of men’s lifestyle magazines, which incurred losses of circulation in the region of -20%. The internet has possibly contributed to a loss in sales for the magazine industry as a whole, as people can find the same or similar content online, but could also be seen as an advantage to the magazine industry.
