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When it comes to advertising your products and services, regional parenting magazines may be one of the best kept secrets in town. They present the advertiser with an opportunity to speak directly to an attentive and targeted audience, while offering low-cost ad rates. No doubt, the perfect small business advertising alternative.
When you reach parents during their child rearing years, you are reaching a very motivated group of consumers who are at the highest acquisition stage of their lives. Large corporations are keenly aware of the purchasing power of this influential parenting market, which is why they place $90,000 display ads in the most popular mainstream parenting publications month-after-month.
However, they routinely ignore the regional parent and family magazines because these magazines don't have large enough circulation. This creates a wonderful opportunity for a small business with a limited advertising budget, who can use these regional family-oriented publications to reach out to passionate parents across the country. And the best part, is that the advertising rates for these local regional publications are infinitesimally lower than any mainstream parent magazine.
As consumers, parents and grandparents across the U.S. and Canada are demographically linked together by an imperative desire to do what's right for their families, and to buy the best services and products for their children. Parenting magazine readers actually read the ads in these magazines. In fact, surveys conducted across the country have shown that 74% of these readers say they read the advertisements in the parenting publications most of the time or all of the time, and most of these readers use these ads to make their buying decisions.
You don't need to be a marketing genius to figure out the potential here. The real question is, does your product or service fit this market? Let's examine some of the readers' characteristics and lifestyle.
First of all, with the exception of some major magazines of nationwide distribution, regional parenting magazines are usually distributed for free to their readers. These readers make shopping decisions for their families and for themselves:
78% are women (52% of them work full-time)
75% are mothers (33% are planning to have more children)
20% are expecting mothers
78% have children under the age of six
57% have children in grade school
38% have at least one preteen or teenager at home
32% have at least one parent who works at home
Average household income is $68,000 (national average)
These are busy, time-starved parents who are 80% either college graduates or have some college background. The type of products and services they have purchased in the past and plan to purchase in the future includes everything from vacation packages, financial investments and services, to children books and clothing, children toys, home furnishings, work from home opportunities, health services, recorded music, electronics, and much more.
Circulation for these publications range anywhere from a few thousand to several hundred thousand per issue. You can target specific geographic regions of the U.S. and Canada, which is an ideal way to test your ads, or advertise at a nationwide level. And display advertising prices in some cases could start as low as $100, with many publications offering low-cost marketplace and classified ad sections.
In addition, most of these publications offer several theme-based supplemental editions throughout the year, giving the advertiser extra options to focus their message.
Regional parenting and family magazines offer the small business a golden opportunity to reach a targeted market at affordable rates. It's time you explore how it could work for you.
