How Your Association Can Benefit from its Own Magazine
Do your members know what your association stands for? A professionally-created magazine will showcase your services and provide a communication platform that makes a statement.
Your statement.
Are you familiar with trade magazines or how one will benefit your association? There is tangible value in marketing your services and expertise to your members and the entire industry. Whether you’re a national organization that represents people across the country, or a state/provincial group that works on behalf of a particular region, your association will reap the rewards of direct communication via the pages of an informative, strategically-designed publication.
Trade magazines aren’t the typical “buy at the grocery store” type medium. No, they are much more than that. Association-led publications target a particular industry, trade, profession, or business, and then provide important information geared toward those select readers. From cover to cover, everything that is found in the pages of a trade magazine is of some value to the industry it was created for. Trade magazines carry the latest industry news, changes to legislation and regulations, special reports and opinion pieces from industry leaders, and feature articles on a wide variety of topics.
Because of the focus on a single industry or profession, trade magazines can often cover your industry with much more detail than could be done through mainstream media. For example, if you were interested in learning about the construction industry in North America, from an owner’s perspective, a trade publication would be the best place to find current and relevant information.
“Our magazine has been a vehicle for the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) to communicate with the industry, convey the message of the construction owner, and present the industry’s top trends and issues,” says Kyle Kosco, marketing manager for CURT.
While it may be true that the internet is faster in getting your message out to the masses, there are few ways better than a trade magazine to truly engage with your membership. After all, a well-designed magazine in the hand is tougher to ignore than e-mailed correspondence, which we all know can be deleted with a split-second decision that’s based on whether or not the content is of any interest to the reader at that particular moment in time.
As a communication tool, a trade magazine can work phenomenally well as a promotional centrepiece for your association and its efforts. While flipping through the magazine’s pages, current and potential members will have the opportunity to really see what your association is all about and the issues that matter most. In addition, the industry-centric nature of trade magazines helps to put a brighter spotlight on those issues and presents them in a way that can be more impactful and influential.
While you run your association, we’ll do the heavy lifting for your magazine
One of the biggest concerns that you may have in adopting a trade magazine is the amount of resources and hard work required to make it happen. You’re busy and you’ve got an association to run; you’re out lobbying, searching for new members, taking care of the needs of current members, and—at the same time—you’re likely also planning your next conference. Who has the time to put together a magazine and make it look great?
The simple answer to that is Matrix Group Publishing Inc.
“Our mandate is to build truly customized publications while giving you the power to maintain full control, guaranteeing you’re 100 per cent satisfied,” says Shoshana Weinberg, customer service liaison at Matrix. “Whether you want to be completely involved in the magazine’s content or give us direction and let us take it from there, Matrix Group Publishing Inc.’s editorial team is ready to bring your stories to life. It doesn’t matter if you’re hands-off or hands-on—the final product will turn out amazing.”
As your publisher, Matrix will handle all aspects of the publishing process for you, including selling the advertisements, writing and/or editing the articles, designing the pages, and mailing out the final product to your members. But don’t fear, you will have the power to determine your level of involvement in that process and have the absolute final say over all aspects of your publication, right down to the font size and choice of photos.
“After a bit of a ‘false start’ on our own, Matrix Group Publishing Inc. came to the Canadian Transportation Equipment Association (CTEA) in 2008 with a game plan that was well-tailored to our association’s needs,” says Don Moore, director, government and industry relations, liaison to CTEA Today. “Since the start of our partnership, Matrix and the CTEA have published over a decade’s worth of excellent editions. It is a pleasure working with the professionals at Matrix, and we look forward to collaborating on many more premium quality editions of our magazine.”
A trade magazine can do many things for your association. It can be a powerful networking and lobbying tool, it can help foster a greater sense of community among your membership, it can create more buzz about your industry, and it can work at showcasing your association’s purpose and services to potential members, as well as promote your upcoming events and conferences.
So, in the end, maybe the question shouldn’t be whether or not you need a trade magazine for your association; it should be how quickly can we get started in making it happen?
Contact us for information on how we can help your association showcase its mission and services via an industry-specific publication – all for no charge. We also offer newsletter and web advertising services. E-mail publishing@matrixgroupinc.net for further details.