Stay ahead of the game while making your brand stand out with a digital magazine. And, we’ll show you how to do it.
Freebies have become one of the most-used marketing strategies by businesses to improve brand awareness and widen their consumer reach. There are so many freebie ideas for small businesses and the end goal, like any marketing strategy, is to increase sales.
For online businesses, a digital magazine is your ticket to show off your products, promote your business, and tell your story.
Elements of a Great Digital Magazine
In essence, a digital magazine is a digital downloadable book, usually in PDF format. And, the quality of your digital magazine should always be a top priority.
Here are our top tips for creating an eye-catching digital magazine. . . .
Solid Topic
Before you start designing your digital magazine, make sure you have a solid topic. As a business, there’s a lot you want to share with your audience. You’re a river of ideas and there’s a long list of things you want to talk about with your people.
It’s best to pick one topic and dive deep. If you’re selling essential oils, perhaps create a digital magazine on how people can incorporate essential oils into their daily self-care routines.
If you have a digital product, say a note-taking app, maybe do a hyper-focused digital magazine that details how a note-taking app can help freelancers elevate and grow their business.
The key: Craft a digital magazine where your topic is on-point and you provide valuable information on all those magazine pages.
Clear Formatting and Structure
Think typography and templates. When you pick fonts, make sure they’re easy to read for everyone. When you pick colors, the same tip applies. This makes the entire magazine easy to read.
The structure is also important. In a traditional magazine, you have the cover, front-of-book content, which would be columns and sometimes an editorial piece, then some short news pieces.
Let’s stick with the essential oils example from above, for digital magazines, you can start with these four main pages:
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Business introduction
- Magazine introduction (what your audience can expect to read)
And then, the meat of your magazine:
- What is an essential oil, essentially?
- Benefits of using essential oils
- 10 ways to incorporate essential oils in your self-care routine
- What to expect after using essential oils (lasting impact)
End the magazine with a few pages promoting your business, telling your story, maybe sharing your company mission and vision.
This sounds like a lot, with most freebie ideas for small businesses meant to be simple and small. But, today’s shopping habits are quickly changing. People care about the behind-the-scenes as much as they care about the product on the shelf.
You’ll want to anchor on that.
Visually Appealing
Another vital element of a great digital magazine is that it’s visually appealing. After all, this is the main reason businesses are encouraged to shift from ordinary e-books to digital magazines.
So, how do you make it visually appealing?
Like any freebie giveaway idea, your digital magazine should be created in a way that people can easily connect it to your business. So, use your business colors in the magazine but keep it minimal to have space for the other visual element: photography.
Choosing the right photos can make or break the whole thing. If it’s not visually appealing, people will eventually stop reading.
Bring your magazine to life by packing it with photos and letting these photos communicate with your audience. Don’t fully rely on words. Not everybody likes to read. So, be sure to convey your message through photography.
Find great stock photographs that complement each other and have some sense of uniformity. Don’t fill your digital magazine with photos of your product. Get creative and experiment with visuals.
Keep in mind, for online business freebies, the sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity.
Will Digital Magazines Help Grow Your Business?
That’s a loaded question. But, one thing for sure is that people remember things that bring value to them, free or not. There are so many moving parts in every business, so when you create something of quality and share it with your audience strategically, you can expect a positive effect.
Maximize stock photos, be strategic when searching for images, find trending photos that you can incorporate into your magazine. These great visual elements will encourage people to share your magazine on social media.
And, we all know the power of social media.
Take Your Project to the Next Level with Shutterstock Flex
Need beautiful photography to form the foundation of your digital magazine? We’ve got you covered.
With Shutterstock Flex, you’ll have all-in-one access to our massive library, plus the FLEXibility you need to select the perfect mix of assets every time.
License this cover image via Mariyana M.
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