Magazine profiles are a beneficial advertising strategy, allowing you to showcase your business yearly, not just in a one-and-done situation. While buying a feature for your business within the profile section is a good investment even if it’s only once, you will find yourself getting much more out of the process if you make sure to do it yearly. Keep in mind, city and regional magazines have an amazing way of celebrating local businesses through featured profiles. Here are examples of feature profile sections commonly found in Inside Columbia Magazine:
- Ask The Expert
- Best of Columbia
- Thought Leaders
- Women in Business
- Faces of Columbia
- Help My House
- and more!
Each of these sections provides an opportunity for you to personalize your profile and truly showcase your business in a unique and high-quality way. Often, this is either topic or industry-exclusive, which further benefits you as a business.
Benefits of Participating in Feature Profile Sections Year-After-Year
Consider the followings 6 reasons that appearing year after year in a magazine’s featured profile section is a solid marketing strategy and should never be a one-and-done prospect:
1. Goes Behind the Scenes
We all love to know what’s behind the curtain, what is making the magic happen, and how the trick works. This natural curiosity humans have plays right into your hands as a business sharing a “behind the scenes” or “man behind the curtain” look at your business. In fact, many readers look forward to these sections year after year and take their time reading through them. They look for familiar faces and love getting introduced to new people in your business i.e. employees, business owners, managers, and others. It is a great way to personalize your business in a way that simply isn’t available in any other media.
2. Topic and Category Exclusivity
Another reason that magazine profiles can be an advantageous marketing strategy is that they offer you an opportunity to shut out your competition by being the only business in your category profiled. What’s not to love about this? After all, being able to stand out in your industry alone as an authority or leader in your field, can only benefit your standing and reputation in your community. This can go a long way in creating trust as you simultaneously benefit from the magazine’s reputation as a solid source of information. It’s an opportunity to lock out your competition that you can take advantage of yearly.
3. Fresh Content
In today’s digital world, it’s more important than ever to keep your content current. Content is immensely important when it comes to marketing, and having fresh, high-quality content like a magazine profile is a valuable asset. Take your presence in the magazine, and use it in several ways. You can use this updated profile in a variety of different ways to support your overall brand strategy: Print a nice glossy color copy and frame it to post in your office. Post it on social media and add it to your website in an employee profiles section. It adds a breath of fresh air to your digital presence and personalizes your presence.
Ultimately, a magazine profile in a trusted publication does provide an authoritative and professional snapshot of your business that you cannot duplicate when being featured digitally only. It is a friendly and welcoming way to enhance your customers' customer service experience when they meet the profiled team members in person.
4. New Staff, Product, or Service
Another benefit of yearly appearances in a profile section of a local magazine is it gives you a chance to update information. This means keeping readers abreast of all your current staff members, any new services or products you are offering, or other trends in your business. Things change constantly, so making sure to appear yearly will give you an opportunity to share any significant changes your potential customers should know about. You never want to feel like you lost business simply because people didn’t know you offered a particular product or service, or that it could be used to help them solve a particular problem. Be sure to continue educating your customers on the value they can find in working with you consistently. Don’t miss an opportunity to publicly celebrate your employees, especially after working hard to hire the right ones!
5. Consistency is King
Unfortunately, it is human to simply forget about something when it is out of sight. Incidentally, that is where the adage “out of sight out of mind” was derived. Thankfully, having your profile reappear year after year is a way to remind people you are still here. It also gives you a chance to connect with them once again or, for new readers, for the first time.
It’s important to realize that the exact same people will not always be reading your profile from year-to-year. People are transient and life changes. This means priorities, interests, and life situations change. Consequently, someone who might not have cared about your profile last year might be extremely interested in your brand this year. Therefore, it’s vital to your overall brand strategy to maintain a consistent presence.
6. Reputation Management
Another important benefit of entering your profile in a magazine yearly is reputation management. After all, if you were a thought leader or a woman of the year last year, are you suddenly not that this year? You are building a trusted brand reputation in the marketplace as a business that is growing, advancing, and making a difference. That is a story that always bears repeating and perfecting. Therefore, keeping your story out there and your profile current can be a way to positively impact your overall reputation in your field. You own that position in the minds of readers…don’t hand it over to your competition so easily.
Magazine Profiles Are a Solid Marketing Strategy
As a business owner, you are always looking for ways to elevate your brand, gain exposure and widen your circle of influence. Thankfully, by entering your business in the profile section of a local magazine like Inside Columbia Magazine, you can do all this and more. For all the reasons outlined above and others, regular magazine profile entries, at least on a yearly basis, are a worthwhile marketing strategy on their own and only enhance other marketing campaigns.
