Yes it is true that magazine ad sales are down. According to recent figures, magazine ad pages, a measure of magazine ad sales, is down around 12% year over year. So where are companies spending their advertising dollars? While the recession has taken a big bite out of ad spending, many companies have also shifted their advertising dollars to online media. There is direct evidence of this in the rise of Google Pay Per Click rates over the last few years.

Even though offline channels like newspaper advertising, and now magazine advertising, have gone down, their advertising methods have not. As business owners and online marketers, we can still learn a lot from these offline channels. Let’s take a look at magazine advertising, for example. Before a magazine can sell advertising, it must first sell itself to customers perusing the magazine aisle in supermarkets or in bookstores like Borders.

The way that magazine writers do this is to create compelling mini-headlines. Cosmo magazine is the master at doing this. Here are some examples of the type of eye-catching headlines that you would see on a cover. There are a total of 8 mini-headlines that try to convince customers to pick up a copy. This is very much like what online advertisers do with PPC on Google.com.

The mini-headlines on the cover of might read:

617
pieces that
will change
your life

SPEEDY
TIPS FOR
PERFECT
HAIR

WE’RE GIVING
AWAY MORE THAN
$475,000
worth of
free gifts!
PAGE 236

How just
5 pieces
can get you
through
the week
PAGE 212

Update
your look
in one
simple step

NEW SECTION:
THE BEST
ONLINE SHOPPING
(and we should know!)

INSTANT
GLAMOUR:
THE ONLY
MAKEUP ITEM
YOU’LL NEED

Jenny Lauren
The strong
and sexy type

I tried to preserve the colors, caps, and bolding schemes that Lucky used to capture people’s attention. Study these mini-headlines and sub-headlines. This is the kind of wording that magazine advertisers have to try and capture and hold a passerby’s attention. Usually, you only have 3 seconds or less before people choose.

Study these examples. They represent excellent copy writing. In the next blog post, we’ll study these headlines in more detail.

DONOTCHANGE