Technical Without car magazines, how will advertising reach car guys?

Most of us fall in between 40 and 75 years old, we all have pretty much grown up looking at car magazines. And we learned about the newest thing to buy from ads in those magazines. How many of us sent off for someones catalog because we saw their ad somewhere in Hot Rod, Rod and Custom, or Street Rodder? I'm sure in some areas like Southern California word of mouth was important, especially after WWII, but those in the other, often rural areas, of the country learned about hot rod and custom parts from those ads in the magazines we found.

Now, most of the magazines are gone. History.

How will car guys learn about hot rod parts now? I know there are some cable TV programs that a few advertise on, but they aren't available on all cable systems or over the air TV. There are also some YouTube videos that are sponsored, but you have to hunt them down.

So, how will up and coming as well as us seasoned rodders find ads? How will we be able to see these new products? I remember I used to pour over the ads in the mags when I was looking for speed parts, and sometimes I'd spot something different that caught my eye. How are they going to get that info to us now? I know some of you will say, I only use original speed parts , well that's fine and well, but wouldn't you like to know if a great reproduction of some long discontinued item became available again? Without those magazine ads, we might never know now. I know with my somewhat limited free time, I can't go to everybodies web page and hunt to see what's new or who sells what.

I think this may have some harsh effects on our hobby.

 

That's a great question. While I frequent several online car forums, now that I'm thinking about it I literally couldn't tell you the last I was on a car magazine website. If they think they can cancel all of the print magazines and suddenly we're all going to run to their webpages so they can advertise to us I think they've made a major business miscalculation. Most of the guys I see at car shows I attend are 50's and up. Is this the crowd they think will transition to a company website after a lifetime of paper magazines?

I can log onto the HAMB or a thousand other car forums and see a million specific topics directly related to my personal interests. I guess we'll see what parts our fellow builders are using on sites like the HAMB etc. and maybe then look the companies up directly.

At this point something like Car Craft online seems like an answer to a question nobody asked. One last thought, I already pay for Motor Trend tv as part of my pay tv package. Now Motor Trend is trying to get me to pay more money for additional programming (and I'm sure advertising) on their app. How many hours a day can you sit in front of a tv?

 

Just use google or bing for a search engine and all the ads you could possibly think of will follow you around for weeks.

 

Most of the ads are from Hoffman companies anyways, so what are we missing?

 

You make a very good point and raise a good question.

There is a lot of criticism about the amount of ads in most of the remaining car magazines. In general I don't share that view. I personally like the ads, they are often what I look at most.

Suppliers seem to like to say ... see our website. But who has the time to hunt through who knows how many websites to find the needed/wanted info? And all to often the info on a website is out of date when you do find it.

But sites like the HAMB have a way of distilling much of the BS and and adspeak because we can ask who uses what for some task or parts source and get pretty good responses pretty quick. That's a pretty good start.

 

The on line magazines are so full of adds it eratating.

 

It's been a long time since I actually looked at ads in car magazines.

 

Unfortunately the companies that have spent good money on developing their websites will prosper going forward. Just look what the cell phone has done. It killed MP3 players, the camera industry, and will eventually take out cable and satellite companies. The newer generation don’t wait for magazines or print, they search it. It’s just like selling parts. You can sell a part locally and hope you get 100 for it but sell it online and ship it to the door for 500. People are lazy now. They don’t drive for hours for a part, they tap the buy it now for way too much money button and wait till it hits the front stoop. I watched a video on YouTube the other day talking about the value of a 70 Duster field find. The guy said normally it would be a 4-600 car but to him it was worth $11k. He calculated selling every inch of the car online as patch panels, every piece and panel. He is right and that is where our hobby is heading. Buy some desirable rusty junk, sell every inch of it online, and take the cash and buy whatever it is what you want to own. We see these cars online at auction prices and we say it will never bring that, then guess what, it sells. Buy and hoard all the 3rd gen GM cars you can find and in 5 years start selling the parts. You will be able to buy whatever you want with the proceeds, 32 Ford, 54 Chevy, whatever. Email me in 5 years and tell me I’m wrong, j hope so but don’t think I will be. Let’s look at 55 Chevy for example. The generation that wants those cars either have them or will soon. Prices on those have been stable for many years and won’t climb any higher. Muscle cars are muscle cars and have been stable as well. Then we move to the 70s and early 80s. Out of sight in the last 5 years. Now it’s 5k for a roller fire chicken or other mullet mobile. Can’t stop where the future is heading. Just predict it and hopefully prosper.

Toqwik


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You got the magazine for the ads? Just like penthouse and playboy.

 

It's not that I got the magazines for the ads, or that I even looked at that many of them, it's the saturation of the intended market that I'm talking about. Internet ads are fine, but how to you get the word out for folks to find you? Say Holley comes out with a new stainless steel fuel pump that will work with any fuel, how will they get the word out now? Old days, they's saturate all the car magazines with an ad describing their new product, no matter what you were into, rods, customs, sports cars, that ad would reach you. That is just about gone now. I don't see how they can have the same saturation with strictly internet ads, there are so many choices of websites to go to, they can't cover even a fraction of them now.

I'm just wondering how us in the hobby will find out about products now. If you don't know something exists, how are you gonna look for it is my point. I frequently hear on some other forums about some product that I'd never heard of before. Maybe it is going back to word of mouth, I don't know....

 

There are a bunch of different car mags at the local Barnes & Noble, just not the TEN magazines that were canceled. Plenty of print for the advertisers to use to get the word out.

 

Have any of you looked at Canadian Hot Rods magazine? It's pretty good. As far as advertising, When looking at there ads in a magazine, they usually have a web sight. I know a lot of people that don't like computers, but it's a changing world, and they need to adapt. Anybody on here knows what I mean.

 

Good question...but many times you have a general idea of the item and manufacturer of the part your looking for....your look on the web now....hit the www and I’m sure that Mfg has a home page that will be touting its latest products...Is it my favorite way to get information...nope...but it’s today’s reality...and me I still buy print as much as I can...Hop Up, Rodders Journal, Kustoms Illustrated...yep buy them all..I also loved traditional Rod and Kulture..I’ll miss that one..

 

Sure, you can do a Google search but the lead results are paid for by established dealers and manufacturers. A start-up company won’t get any traction there, even if its product is great it won’t be seen in a search. Print
is different, all that’s needed is an alert editorial staff at a magazine that picks up on new trends and features them for all to see.
A better camshaft, new wheel, or somebody with a suspension idea, or whatever might get some ink and their business could take off. I visited Pete & Jakes in 1976 because I saw them in a magazine article- they had a better mousetrap with their four bar using bushings instead of tie rod ends or heims. Their Hot Rod Repair in Temple City was two guys and a couple of welders making stuff. Anybody think Google might pick up on that today?
Maybe, but how far down the list would that result appear, if at all?
Magazine ads can be seen and items compared, buyers are not led to a purchase by slanted results from a search engine created to generate $$$.
Print is dead? Yeah, maybe, but that’s not for the better.

 

I spend a lot of my day avoiding advertising.

 

We had a Hastings in town, they closed a few years ago. The nearest B&N is 75 miles away.

I guess we'll all just have to keep using the same old crappy parts we've been using for the past 50+ years, now that we won't be finding out about new stuff. It sucks, but we'll just have to deal with the new order of things.

 

Actually, countless surveys in the sixties and seventies showed that advertising ranked second or third in the reasons for buying/reading car magazines. Several of the major speed equipment mail order companies are toying with the idea of dumping print catalogs. Went to the San Diego Car show last month and when I asked for brochures, was told to go on line. I'm surprised that Ryan hasn't figure out a way to do a Craig's list type of website for hot rod parts given the base of subscribers here and over on the Fordbarn.

 

Advertising dollars will be used to pay their way to the top of google search lists. I cannot remember the last time an ad in any magazine led me to a company. You google what you are looking for, find a company, google them to make sure they are legit and then order.

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I used to advertise monthly in Street Rodder, Rod and Custom, Street Scene, and in Hop Up quarterly, The LA Roadster program and others. Currently I only have ads in Street Scene and Hop Up. After years of advertising like this I find that if I can keep toward the top of Google I get quite a bit of traffic on my website. Toughest part of keeping at the top is company's like Speedway pour countless amounts of money to stay on top, something a small company like mine can't afford to do. It's getting real tough to reach out to customers in today's world the old fashioned way.

 

Is it really cheaper to rely on search engines for traffic and sales rather than on magazine advertising?

 

I spend very little on advertising for a number of different reasons.
I think word of mouth is the best way for people to find out about a business.

I am in my 18th year of running the business and at 73 I stay as busy as I want to be and I rank high on Google which seems to be what most people use for searching the internet.
I do think the world is changing the old car market will always be there but I do believe it will be much smaller then today.
Most companies involved making and selling anything to do with old cars and after market parts see this happening and their sells are showing the results of this trend.

I always wondered why almost 50% of the customers placing orders were women and then I finally figured it out that their husbands or boy friends did not know how to use a computer!

Jimbo

 

It's already happened/happening. Companies are doing lots of advertising on different forums, search engines, Facebook, Instagram, etc. And that's what's working for them. If the magazines were working we'd still have them. Print is going away. If you like a magazine that has made it so far you need to be supporting it. Subscribe, use the people that advertise with them and let them know you saw the ad in a magazine. Things are always changing.

 

I think companies will adapt, 25 years ago who would have thought a bunch of old car guy would sit at their key broads for hours and hours. Every thing changes with time.

 

I suspect the impact will be felt on the smaller specialty guys over the big players.
we will feel the loss an end users as the better mousetrap guys will be unable to get big enough to get on the first page of google results. I rarely read the big ads in the front, but always checked the small ads in the back for anything new.

 

That's where social media comes into play. All the "I will never do social media" guys on this site miss out on tons of stuff. Having a closed mind as to how you are willing to attain your information is more of a problem than it being out there.

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the reason magazines are dying is that there isn't enough ad revenue...

 

Have y’all missed the advertising on Jalopy Journal? Log out and view the H.A.M.B. on a web browser and see alllll that advertising?

Those “small businesses” are probably doing better now than ever due to social media. Instagram, Facebook, webpages, etc allow these niche businesses to showcase their goods waaaay better than a print ad. If they need to advertise Google targets their audiences by the content they view and small businesses can still advertise that way if it makes sense for them.

 

I haven't had a magazine come to the house for at least 25 years. I rarely buy one unless it has an article I want to read and keep. Do a search online and you'll have all the ads you want, watch out what you say around your cell phone... it listens and throws the ads in everywhere it can.

 

With all the magazines that have gone belly up lately, the advertisers can now concentrate on the titles they think are geared to the product they have to offer, they have always been creative and will continue to roll with the punches. HRP

 

Cool mag