I loved the article in the Telegraph this weekend about The Lady Magazine getting an online makeover.
When FOXY Lady Drivers Club was in its infancy we ran a competition for The Lady readers having been encouraged by their Media Pack that their audience was largely in the South East, wealthy and an average age of 60-ish. That profile ticked a lot of boxes for us but our ‘How to survive the garage experience’ promotion didn’t work because the charming ladies that contacted us as a result were not at all web-friendly and our business runs by email and via a passworded members area of our website. So it was a misfit and whilst we probably did raise awareness of our business name we didn’t recruit many members.
I now read that the average age of their readership is in fact 76 which makes more sense, given our feedback, and that when asked about email in a survey some respondents thought this came through their letterbox.
Now the article was having some harmless fun about what is for many females a trusted institution. Like the WI before them they are now having to look for tomorrow’s subscribers and therein lies the challenge; to grow its readership back to the good old days…
And until Magazines are banished altogether in favour of websites (unlikely I’d say) the economic reality is that it is cheaper, easier, more immediate and more efficient to deliver information and support services online. I know because we wrestled with this dilemma and tried to do both until last year. And sadly we lost some members who were unable to do online and were deeply disappointed that we could not afford to give them that choice.
But perhaps The Lady magazine can combine the two more effectively because of its female friendly brand and heritage. Where else would you look for a nanny, butler or chauffeur…
It needs a very clever marketer to get this right but the age profile is perfect (50+ is the market now), SAGA is doing very nicely thank you and they can probably bump up their advertising rates to support them as they grow.
Good luck anyway – we foxy ladies should support each other!
