Well, the short answer is: Incentivize them!! While phishing for subscribers on Facebook groups and the like may not necessarily be a bad idea, any good fisherman/woman worth his or her salt knows that you won’t catch many fish without some tantalizing bait! Now, with that said, the latter posits that there exists an inextricable nexus between the kind of fish you want to catch and the type of bait that you utilize to achieve your objective.
In regard to the aforementioned, it would behoove you then to revise your query and, instead, submit the following for the approval of savvy Quora readers: What are some cost efficient ways to incentivize my magazine’s demographic to subscribe to my free local magazine?
Your magazine’s demographic is analogous, of course, to the fish and the incentive that will lure them to subscribe is no other than the bait. It is imperative to remain cognizant of the fact that the latter is invariably predicated upon the former. Hence, it is incumbent upon you, as the magazine publisher, to have already compiled accurate and thorough demographic data on your magazine’s readership. This indispensable information should already be located in your media kit! If your media kit was put together properly, it should contain subscriber and reader surveys that specifically delineate the consumer trends of your magazine’s demographic. In fact, ‘consumer trends’ should be a separate section unto itself in your media kit! The consumer trends of your demographic will provide you with the necessary insight to discern what tangible and intangible products, services, etc. could be used to entice your magazine’s demographic to subscribe. Furthermore, your media kit’s distribution analysis and circulation analysis will help you to effectively target your magazine’s demographic with the incentives that you ultimately decide to utilize to increase your overall magazine subscription rate. Like consumer trends, the distribution analysis and circulation analysis should be separate sections in your media kit.
Since I am not privy to your magazine’s media kit, and as a consequence the demographic data contained therein, I am not in a position to recommend with conviction the precise incentives you should utilize. In other words, I don’t know what type of fish you desire to catch or the environment (salt water ocean, fresh water river, lake, etc) for that matter and, as such, I am in no position to suggest, with any certainty, the type of bait that would best assist you to achieve your objectives.
