Google is Very Nearly All-Powerful. Can it Improve your Newsstand Sales?

In a cover concept meeting in which I recently participated, we got to talking about which phrase might be most powerful to increase sales on a newsstand cover:  “desert island” or “pristine beach.”  Each school of thought had its advocates; but without running a split on the newsstand or doing an online cover test, how to know?

One way would be to check out Google’s Keyword Tool and see what phrases people are most searching.

When I say, as I sometimes do, that the Internet is the best thing that has happened to magazine publishers, the response is not always hearty assent.  Yet for those of us who spend our professional lives with a foot in each realm, the possibilities that each offers the other are impressive.

At the intersection of online and print is the audience, and each reader and consumer and participant who makes up that audience.  Whether online or in print you have the committed audience members, the regular readers, who subscribe to your publications and bookmark your pages; and you have the broader audience of browsers who are looking for something specific to help solve a problem, answer a question, learn a skill, improve a life.

Reaching this audience segment is as important online as it is at retail; and many of the same skills that go into writing cover lines also are important in writing search copy for website pages.  A benefits orientation, an active and vigorous voice, the ability to capture the essence of a story in only a few words—an editor who can do this can capture the attention of the casual and impulse-driven browser and convey the benefits of becoming an audience member.

Secrets, tips, exclusive information, and new discoveries are as compelling to a newsstand browser as they are to someone doing a Google search.  The phrase “how to” –long understood to be one of the most powerful you can have on a newsstand cover—is also the among most searched combination of words on the internet.

At this summer’s Yale Publishing Course, one of the instructors mentioned that successful companies weather change by encouraging teams to learn one another’s disciplines and incorporate pan-corporate skills, rather than creating more rigid silos of expertise.  I can see why.  Many editors and publishers are still learning that writing great cover copy requires a good dose of ad copywriting skills; and writing great search copy requires the ability to incorporate some of these same skills into page content. 

Publishers who have mastered this cross-pollination the best are not only using their cover copy skills to write compelling search copy; they are also using online tools to learn what is important to their readers.  Google Analytics, for example, shows the specific words or phrases that brought people to your site; mightn’t some of those same words or phrases, used on your cover, encourage someone to pick up your magazine and read it?  Google’s Keyword Tool shows which words or phrases in a specific category or with reference to a specific topic are most searched, which least.  Mightn’t that give some information as to what your audience is thinking?

Of course because the usage isn’t equivalent, common sense and a knowledge of the market must to be brought to bear on the process.  For example, Google’s Keyword Tool shows about 60,000 monthly searches for “make new friends” and half again as many for “meet new people.” An interesting finding; but people come online specifically to meet new people, but might be more interested in learning friendship skills in a magazine.  Still, how much is it worth to know what your target market searches when they go online?  Lots.

Other online tools can reveal new combinations of words or phrases; still others can facilitate the brainstorming process.  These are not tools that should be limited to the web design team or used only by the SEO group.  They should be a seamless part of the work of every editorial department, and used in every cover design meeting.

By the way, the winning phrase in terms of Google search hits?  It was desert island, with 135,000 searches—one thousand percent more than the searches for pristine beach.