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Companies may use various techniques to promote business and keep filled the top of their sales funnel. Continuous stream of customers dropping into the sales process, is probably, one of the key factor successful businesses do. And in the era of blooming permission marketing this process starts much earlier than it used to be. Blogs, webinars, websites, digital magazines and culture of knowledge sharing is what gain momentum this days. Since the sales is not a one way road anymore, customers come and go penetrating different parts of the standard AARRR sales funnel.

A digital magazine can help keep them coming back, and build trust to the brand that triggers “Aha!” in the right moment. In this article you will learn how it works through powerful examples.

How digital magazine works

Digital magazine is a type of goods. And even if it is used as a content marketing tool, usually it is seen as a commodity, a stylish commodity that brings added value to the reader. The knowledge and the very unique experience. So the brand can shorten distance with their readers more effectively than they would do that through traditional advertising or other marketing tactics.

It is because brands can position themselves at least as a passionate about subject of their customers’ interest. They can write about things that are in common interest of their model customers and they can tell stories connected through their products.

What is most important, initial signal of interest comes from the reader who, by installing magazine app on his mobile device, literally gives permission publishing brand to show off their genuine content.

The Red Bulletin

promote business with a digital magazine

This is a Red Bull’s magazine. Probably everyone knows what Red Bull is all about. They share passion to extreme things and gather the most active people on this Planet. They tell stories with their fabulous brand staying behind them.

Tip:

If you sell a product under a single brand make it bold. Tell the stories that vibe thanks to outstanding, branded photos. Visual context helps memorize the story. This is how human’s brain works.

Growth Hacker

Growth Hacker Magazine

This is a blog-like-magazine about growth hacking and digital marketing. They share step by step knowledge and useful how-to guides. The content is delivered by the team behind Colibri the fabulous growth hacking tool that combines analytics and IA features to help grow online ventures.

This is a very interesting model the team has chosen to use. They have created a different publishing brand through which Colibri educates their potential clients.

Tip:

Share knowledge your potential clients strive for. People tend to look for knowledge through Google search and Quora. Help them find you through the slides shared on Slideshare and answers left on Quora that direct readers to your magazine’s website or App Store page.

Your Nails Magazine Case

Your Nails Magazine

This is a digital magazine that have been created by a nail technician who – through this type of activity – communicates with her clients to promote business of her among specific group of interest. After a while she turned this activity into a full time publishing business. And she still is gluing this niche with here digital title.

Tip:

If you are a service owner, not necessarily a nail technician, your magazine can be a single point of contact for all things around your service. E.g. barber can write about design, translators about different cultures or even run a simple language course etc.

Productive! Magazine

Productive Magazine

This is a monthly digital magazine that brings dose of inspiring, practical and timeless articles written by the best productivity experts on the Internet. The magazine is published by the Michael Sliwinski, CEO and founder of Nozbe, a tool that helps busy professionals and teams organize time and projects.

I asked Michael about his magazine and its role in promoting their SaaS business:

Michael, you run your own magazine, the “Productive! Magazine”, where you invite people like David Allen or Seth Godin to talk, you tweet, publish in the industry press, in other words it’s top-notch multi-level communication. What’s your purpose in doing it?

Michael Nozbe Sliwinski – I’m building my image as an expert in productivity and a guy who runs this kind of a magazine. I saw that there’s no such magazine, and besides, I think that building the image of a person who’s behind an app (a tool) is very important.

If someone’s responsible for a certain product s/he raises trust. People connect with people, and not products.

I get a lot of feedback from users, that due to the fact that they can see I’m all about productivity, that I’m passionate about it, that in all these videos and interviews that I record they can see the passion, and that I manage all this somewhat on my own and it’s what keeps me going – because that’s actually true (smiles) – all of this makes people trust my product. They know that I know what I’m doing, so building the image of a pro in these matters, building the personal brand, is crucial to achieving success by Nozbe.

It raises trust among users, among clients.

Does it work that good?

– Yes and I’ll develop it further, I’ve several books to publish, and the “Productive Magazine” will be published even more frequently. It’s my other leg, the other part of my business, that’s highly image-related and at the same time helps a lot with Nozbe.

Conclusions

A company’s digital magazine can be a great tool on the journey to keep people closer to your business. Digital magazines lay on the same evolutionary path blogs do. They help build brands’ online identity and as blogs did in the past they became a must-have online marketing assets.

You can listen about how businesses can leverage digital publishing magazines to grow their influence from this podcast. The Interview was conducted by Clark Buckner from TechnologyAdvice.com (they provide coverage content on business training games, employee onboarding software platforms, and business intelligence trends and much more). Also be sure to check out their Tech Conference Calendar.

Key takeaways on how to promote business online:

  1. Start small as a blog or blog-like-magazine ( Medium gives fabulous experience both for reader and writers)
  2. Give your inbound marketing a burst by monitoring your brand performance and mentions with the Brand Tracker.
  3. Check what type of stories work best for your business promotion (in order to do this use Google Analytics and Mixpanel along with the data warehouse systems like Databox to harness all important metrics in one place.)
  4. Write relevant content and close it into the well-designed PDF file (it’s easy with iBooks Authors or you can use these free magazine templates).
  5. Team up with like-minded people that will support your publishing efforts (You will find them on Twitter using an advanced search tool)
  6. Use various distribution platforms for your PDF file: Issuu (by the way PressPad integrates their publishers’ sample editions with Issuu to promote businesses that use PressPad), Scribd, and build your mobile magazine app risk-free with PressPad.
  7. Grow subscribers list and stay on top of their heads through genuine content and push notifications. Your readers have the potential to convert into your clients – or at least they can become centers of the word of mouth activity, and WOM is a great way to promote business in the long run.