Reader profile research

A Reader Profile is a document that every large magazine and publishing company needs to create. The reader profile is used by the magazine to decide what content to put into the magazine, and also by advertisers to decide either if they should advertise their products in a certain magazine, or what products to advertise in the magazine, or how they should market their product. The Reader Profile shows information about the magazine's audience, generally: Age   - The magazine needs to be age appropriate, the majority young children don't want to be reading about politics and rock and roll, they want to read about One Direction and Taylor Swift, so a magazine needs to establish what age their target market and readership is.  Gender  - Gender is another factor music magazines need to keep in mind when both choosing what sort of products to advertise and choosing content for the magazine, stereotypically woman are more into pop, while men are more into rap and hip-hop - although with the rise of stars like Nicki Minaj, gender is becoming less of a problem when it comes to what content to market to different sexes; but in advertising, it's extremely important to know what gender you're marketing to. For example, a majority of men won't be interested in makeup and beauty products, and a majority of woman wouldn't be interested in aftershave (unless products were marketed as gifts for partners/friends/family). Race  - Stereotypically different races have different hobbies and interests, so knowing the race of the readers can help a magazine to both make sure the content they're producing is something that their readership is interested in, and also know what sort of products to market in their magazine. For example, an advert campaign for foundation may be substantially more successful if the shade of the makeup matched that of the majority of the readers. Sexuality - Sexuality isn't such an important factor in Music Magazines, as gender rolls and acceptable mainstream tastes are becoming increasingly more diverse, but a publishing company may use this to know what sort of products and services to market to their readers. For example straight men wouldn't be very interested in an advert for a gay dating website. Education, Occupation, Annual & Disposable Income (i.e. Socio Economic Grouping of Readership) - Firstly, this shows advertisers what products to market to the readers (luxury/inferior/normal products). It also shows the magazine what sort of content they need to be producing; generally people of a higher Socio Economic Grouping (a/b/c1) or people that are well educated would want to read articles that are more sophisticated, articulate and academic that people of the lower groups, who would stereotypically prefer a different approach to the article. Some other psychographic information about the readership that would be in the Reader Profile that would attract the right advertisers would be: Brand Loyalty Media Interest Current/Desired Lifestyle Buying Habits Culture Product Interests Hobbies It is important for the information in the reader profile to be accurate, as if advertisers choose to purchase advertising space in the magazine and their campaign is a flop because they're taking an approach that isn't of interest to the readers, they're not going to spend more money advertising in the magazine. It is important that magazines get repeat purchases from the advertisers in order for them to have a steady cash inflow, it also saves costs when it comes to the magazines actually marketing itself to new and potential advertisers - all together this means more money for the magazine, which is what the publishing companies usually want.  It is also important because if the content they're producing isn't what the readers want, they're not going to keep reading and buying the magazine - which would cause it to not be able to continue publication. The Reader Profile contains two main types of information; Psychographic Information is qualitative data, it is non-statistical characteristics: Personality Values Opinion Attitudes interests Lifestyle That cannot be put into numbers.  Demographic Information is quantitive data, it is statistical characteristics that can be presented as a percentage or number (e.g. age). Reader Profiles can be easily found online for all large magazines by simply searching for the magazine name followed by "Media Pack/Media Kit/Reader Profile", here is a breakdown of the Reader Profile section of NME's media pack. By looking at the language used in the media pack you can easily see it is aimed at persuading advertisers to advertise in NME. -Explain what a reader profile is -Show an existing reader profile and break down each area and state why it is important for a magazine to understand their audience and profile their readers. For e.g. what type of audience does it attract? Gender ratio? Age or reader? Social class bracket? Where they distribute? What makes it desirable/ the audiences want to consume it? -State what you think your reader will want -What is the purpose of a reader profile?

-How will a reader profile help sell your product?