If you are starting a company in the magazine industry, it is likely that you will need a business plan. Fortunately, Pro Business Plans has worked with many magazine companies to create professional plans for investment and strategy. This article outlines what is included in a magazine business plan and how it is structured.
When creating a business plan for a magazine, there are several factors that you must consider. For instance, the target demographics of the magazine will play a massive role in shaping its potential profitability. Some target demographics are adequately large, but intensely competitive. In other cases, your company may need to determine how it can profit from a small niche customer base.
Other important considerations include the content sourcing and distribution strategy. Many niche magazines these days are exclusively online in .PDF form, whereas others are a hybrid of online/offline. These factors and several more will be communicated in your business model and marketing strategy.
The business model section of a magazine business plan constitutes the bulk of the contents. It communicates what your magazine does to make money and how it will transform that into generating a profit. The business model can be sub-divided into many categories, but the emphasis is on why people should read your magazine and how you will profit when they do. For some, this may be free distribution of the magazine with extensive advertisements sold directly to companies. In other cases, magazines are charged a subscription fee and the number of ads are reduced. Both types can be equally profitable, but it depends on the readership demographics and quality of the content produced.
The marketing section of a magazine business plan is perhaps one of the most important parts for those looking to enter an industry with existing competitors. Not only will you need to persuade people to read a new magazine, but potentially switch their existing magazine provider for you. The contents and Email lists can be effective in retaining loyalty, but you may need to write on guest blogs and get media attention to gain early traction. If your magazine is niche, such as a trade publication, acquiring Email lists of companies in that sector may help to get targeted coverage. A consumer facing magazine may fare better by promoting to targeted users on Facebook or other social media platforms.
One of the most important parts of the financial projections is how much it will cost to acquire customers and how much you will obtain from each subscriber. The magazine’s profitability is simply a function of this because many magazines reach a point where it is more expensive to acquire loyal readers than the revenue they generate. When you determine the fixed costs associated with writing and disseminating the magazine, it will provide insight into the customer acquisition costs. One way that we determine this for new magazines is to base it on other comparable publishers that sell subscriptions and advertisements.
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