The ultimate guide: Create your customer magazine

​Some people may consider the customer magazine to be an out-of-date concept. Others swear on printed customer magazines, but print always cost money. Experience proofs: A customer magazine can be a very effective marketing instrument - even better if it comes in a digital version instead of being printed. Most people nowadays get all their information online. And this is how you can establish an even better relationship with your customers. 

This guide will give you all the information you need to know to get started creating your customer magazine. 

Why a customer magazine – and why a digital one?

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• You’ll reach people who are already interested in your product or service. You are aiming at your target group directly, without scatter losses as you might know it from advertisements.
• A customer magazine increases customer loyalty and adds a profile to your brand.
• Within a fixed frame you get the chance to tell stories and provide information about your products. The digital format allows the integration of videos and immediate reactions.
• You can also use stories from the digital magazine for your blog or your social media channels.
• The digital format meets people where they are: online. It goes without saying - the magazine will work well on all devices.
• The digital magazine reaches people without any risk of infection. In times of trade fairs being cancelled and many people no longer feeling great about going to stores, print products are less easy to distribute.
• For customers, it’s only a tiny step from reading a digital article to actually commenting it or clicking for more information. For you the analysis of the created data is helpful in order to a better understanding of what exactly your customers wants. You will get the demanded leads to address them individually faster.

Before you start: Who is your target group? 

Like any other magazine, a successful customer magazine is a great mix of important stories, service pieces and news. It sure should be visually appealing, entertaining, informing. Furthermore it should ultimately strengthen your customer relationship.

The actual implementation always depends on who your customers are: Do you want to address the decision-makers in businesses or the final consumer himself? Are you targeting technology specialists, young people under 25 or the wider society? The target group defines style, language and address:

• Simple or Detailed? If you are selling a highly specialized product which requires a technical explanation, you can count on a basic technical knowledge and also use a specific vocabulary without having to explain every word. Otherwise your customers would feel strange about it. But if you are selling technical products to end consumers, please explain everything as simply and obvious as possible. Please also use different examples of use.
• Casual or serious? A magazine for families with children can be a bit more colorful and cheerful. Targeting business customers you want to make sure to appear serious, but not too serious.

The customer magazine: Between journalism and corporate identity 

Your customer magazine is a business product - and you want people to recognize. Name, logo and presentation should match your business. The customer magazine concept should be matching with your communication strategy. Make sure to remain authentic and don’t become too promotional.

It will only perceived as a medium worth reading if all its content won’t be press releases from the management floor and the marketing department. Offer material which is worth reading:

• News from the industry which is also interesting for a wider audience. What is not only new, but also relevant to many people and could solve problems in the future? The view can be a bit broader, but not random.
• Behind the scenes reports from your business which could be of interest to your audience, for example: What is your effort to make the production of your product as environmentally friendly as possible? How do you ensure your employees health during the corona crisis? Do you have a product or offer with an extraordinary story? It goes without saying that the facts must also comply with the truth.
• Example of use: Let customers speak for themselves and report on behalf of their experiences - either with an interview, which can also be a video, or in the form of a guest article. This will make you look authentic and convincing.
• News and personal stories from your business that are interesting enough.
• Announcement and explanation of new products, practical tips.

Create a magazine: it all starts with the concept 

A digital magazine also needs an arc of tension and the right mixture. Before you get down to the customer magazine concept with your team, some formalities should be defined:

• A suitable name 
• An interval for your publications which makes sense for your business. In terms of customer loyalty, four editions a year are a great compromise. If the magazine is published less frequently, you run a high risk being forgotten. A more frequent rhythm only makes sense if you have something more to say.
• An approximate scope. With your digital magazine, you are not tied to any printing requirements. It’s better to choose a smaller scope four times a year than less often, but with a wider range of content.

Also important for the customer magazine concept: The magazine should own its consistent structure. Every issue should have a catchy cover story presenting different topics. The structure could look like this, for example:

• Editorial
• Short messages from the industry and your business
• Cover story
• A customers practical example
• Presentation of new products
• Practical advice
• Entertainment / humor
• Special promotions

By using the cover story you can also draw attention to your latest issue on social media. Also practical tips can be quite successful on social media. Your digital magazine will be reaching in just one click.

Implementing a customer magazine - who’s task is this? 

Implementing a customer magazine takes some work - that cannot be denied. The good news: You will save time and money with a digital magazine eventually. There will be no costs for the special print layout, general printing costs or sales costs.

Still: content and image or video material must be created, edited and uploaded - and they should look professional. Big companies may have more human and financial resources. However, it is possible for everyone.

The following options are imaginable to create the magazine:

• All of your employees are working to full capacity and don’t have time to create the content. You delegate the task completely to an agency which takes care of both the content and the online implementation. The agency will need a contact person in the company. This option usually is the most professional, but also most expensive, to create your online magazine.
• You build your own editorial team which defines the content, organizes image material and writes the articles or organizes someone to do so. They know your company and your industry best. They involve partners and customers, including freelance authors if necessary. You only leave the technical implementation to a digital agency.
• Your editorial team is keen to implement the customer magazine on their own completely. Therefor we created the modular editor, with which you can create professional digital customer magazines by yourself. So everything stays in one hand and there are no friction losses due to the commissioning of external parties.

The added value of a digital customer magazine 

While with a printed magazine you’ll never find out how many copies have actually been read and how many end up in the trash, you can control this very precisely with a digital magazine.

The analysis of each page tells you how many readers have read which article, which videos they watched, what they’ve been clicking on and which article made them leave the magazine.

Simply by evaluating one issue of your customer magazine you’ll get more information about your reader than with a customer survey. You can use this information to produce and deliver better content to your readers, to keep them longer in the magazine and thus in your ecosystem.

The magazine evaluation being linked to the analytics data, for example from your website and your social media channels, helps your digital customer magazine to become an important component of your customer journey (while the PDF usually remains a black box). You can easily integrate buttons and forms into your digital customer magazine. This allows you to collect valuable information and real leads which you can use for marketing and sales purposes.

More readers thanks to search engine optimization

Another advantage: your digital customer magazine is not limited to those person groups who you already know or who have come to your store. It helps you to ensure that your content is found by search engines such as Google.  That way new potential customers become aware of the magazine and your product or service.

And finally: nothing is older as yesterday's newspaper. The content of your digital customer magazine can be updated and corrected at any time.

All of these facts contribute to the customer magazine becoming strongly important. In addition to disconnected blog posts and individual articles from various sources that compete for attention online, the completed magazine character offers a context.

Like no other medium before, the online customer magazine creates what it comes down to in marketing: trust.