Wedding Magazine Advertising – Why it’s alive and thriving in the digital age

There’s the argument that print advertising in general has been on a steady decline in recent years; with each and every part of our lives now digitised, there’s no getting away from the fact that we live in a digital world, so why would advertising in a printed wedding magazine be important?

Wedding magazines have been around for years; those glossy mags you used to see on display shelves in supermarkets in times gone by. With their bumper pages filled with more wedding inspiration than you can shake a stick at. However, it’s hard to find a wedding magazine on display in a supermarket now as many have shifted online.

But here’s what they’re missing and here’s why advertising in any wedding magazine should still be a major part of your marketing strategy in 2023, 2024 and beyond.

You can’t beat the Experience of reading a physical magazine (from a couples point of view)

Circling ideas and inspiration, folding down pages, creating mood boards. Many couples are harking back to days gone by and foregoing reading a digital magazine in favour of something more physical, so it feels special. They treasure these wedding magazines and carry them everywhere with them. Nostalgia is back in fashion as it’s a departing from the digital age where everything is available at the click of a button. A Physical magazine gives so much more than that; it adds to the wedding planning experience and many couples re-use and pass on these magazines to friends who get married after them.

Benefits the Digital Detoxer

Just like the above point, consumers today now more than ever are very aware of the effects of too much digital consumption, and are actively reducing how much time they spend online in favour of more traditional media formats. A printed wedding magazine is a traditional media that supports the digital detox yet still provides all the information a couple could want when planning their wedding. And if they find a supplier they want to know more about, they still have the opportunity to find them online, with details from their advert.

Your message is harder hitting

Advertising in a physical wedding magazine avoids all the confusing mixed messaging you get using social media sometimes, where everyone is trying to promote to you all at once online; it dilutes the message down because there’s so much noise going on. In a printed magazine, there’s no pesky pop up ads surrounding your advert either; only your business offering your message in your dedicated advertising area for couples to get in touch. It’s also a known fact that consumers take in and retain information better when it’s in printed format compared to online.

The Kudos of using a well known brand to promote yourself

And I’m not just talking about us at I Do Magazine. It’s always a good thing to link your business to a trusted brand in the industry if you can. Brands like Hitched, Confetti as well as I Do Magazine have been helping couples get married for years and are well known in the industry as trusted companies who provide services and products related to weddings. So if you can jump on the brand train and share some of that Kudos, why not? Couples are more likely to trust that you’re a reputable business if you advertise with a well-known brand because why would they advertise a bad supplier and risk damaging their own reputation? They wouldn’t.

Extra Credibility

There’s something about advertising in a magazine that adds credibility to your brand. Similarly to the above point, putting your business in a wedding magazine adds more reliability to what you do. Anyone can Google ‘cake supplier yorkshire’ and tonnes of results come up, not all of them great. And it’s hard to separate the truly good suppliers from the bad ones. Promoting your brand in a wedding magazine helps get you more leads and adds that credibility.

The opportunity to promote both online and in print

Lots of wedding magazine brands know their customer well enough to know that options are everything. That’s why many offer the choice of an online and printed edition, to allow you to choose how you advertise. Some offer it all as a package in one (like us) and others offer you a choice of which you’d prefer. Couples want to be able to find information wherever they choose; so ideally having a presence both in a printed edition and online is your best solution.

Better targeted advertising direct to your market

Rather than a radio advert, or even social media advertising (the algorithm is ever changing and making it more difficult for us to get in front of our target audience), a wedding magazine enables you to showcase your wedding business to your target market with ease. There’s no second guessing who will see your advert as you can almost guarantee that whoever buys or picks up that magazine will be getting married. You can’t target it any better than that.

Lower Cost to advertise

Many suppliers see the price of advertising in a wedding magazine and are shocked to see how expensive they seem to be. But if you look at the bigger picture of paying one cost for an advert, compared to 12 months of paid advertising on social media with variable costs, the print advertising wins out every time. That’s not to say social media advertising doesn’t have its place, it does. But it’s the careful utilisation of these strategies together to form the marketing strategy for your business that will win you the business of interested couples. Marketing 101 says don’t put all your eggs in one basket, spread it across a few different baskets for a better return.

The important note to take away from this is wedding magazines are very much alive and thriving. In a digital age where people are wanting to take a step back from the online and move back to more traditional media, the wedding magazine is the perfect wedding planning tool and the ideal format to get your business noticed by couples getting married.