The higher price of petrol climbs, the greater the opportunity for newsagents. People will think before they get in the car and drive to shop. If they can get what they want locally they will walk or at least drive a shorter distance. This is where the high petrol price is an opportunity for newsagents. We are the quintessential local business. We ought to seize the opportunity. Here are some ideas:
- Local Marketing. Reconnect with households and businesses around your newsagency and remind them that you have locally what they might otherwise drive for – or that you can get it in for them.
- Improve convenience. Look at how you can make shopping at your newsagency even more convenient and appealing.
- Comparative pricing. Make it your business to beat a major competitor on some popular items. For example, at our shop, our printer ink prices are better than Big W, Australia Post and Officeworks. While customers discover this and are thrilled, a small sign near the category could people not in the market for ink to trust us for other categories and shop locally more often.
- Delivering value. Offer a free delivery service for purchases above a certain value.
- Save money. Do deal with a local independent petrol outlet. Offer coupons for discount petrol which they provide in return for them handing out discount coupons for use in your newsagency.
- Talk it up. At your next team meeting share some ways they can let customers know that shopping locally reduces what they spend on petrol.
- Offer deals for volume. In some areas people will shop less frequently. Drive a deeper shopping basket by offering deals for a bigger spend.
While rising petrol prices present serious challenges for newsagents, they also present opportunities worth exploiting.
Walking to a local newsagent is also better for the environment and healthier than driving across town to a destination store. More importantly, I find a walk, plus exchanging a few pleasant words with a newsagent is more uplifting than driving, parking, then queueing in a big impersonal store.
Being a Newsagent in a regional town of 5000 with a much larger town of 12000 with far more competitors that here 60kms away I could not agree with this point more. Fuel prices down here are amongst the highest in the county and whilst we do lose some business to the next town or Canberra we are most definitely finding that the high fuel prices have made an increasing number of customers rethink about driving out of town. Whilst we lose some of the bigger orders to the big operators like Officeworks that freight stuff in we are still doing very well. We are in the process of giving our stationery a real push and part of our marketing blurb includes fuel prices and freight versus shopping locally and getting free delivery.
Angelo;
Your stationery will boom if you promote free delivery in town. Officeworks make it easy for newsagents to compete on this issue, they charge $15.00 – $30.00 per delivery.