We are promoting Australia’s Open Gardens magazine at the counter as part of our proven strategy for this title. If we repeat last year’s success, we will be sold out within a month. We will leave it on display at the counter for up to a week and the co-locate in our garden section and with women’s weeklies titles. In the third week we will promote the title with our newspapers. Few newsagents promote in this Australia’s Open Gardens way and they miss sales. Even though the cover price is $17.95, avid gardeners love this title. It is terrific to see a Saturday newspaper customer at the counter upgrade from a $2.00 sale to a $20.00 sale.
Newsagents with healthy gardening magazine sales ought to consider shifting this title to a prime location for a few days and see if they have the same success we expect. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us.
My only frustration is that the Australian Open Garden Scheme website does not promote newsagencies as a place from where to purchase the title. They could easily list all stores with the title or, better still, offer a search by postcode.
Mark thinks “They could easily list all stores with the title or, better still, offer a search by postcode.”
He often states this with other titles and if he intends ‘stores’ to mean ‘newsagents’ then he is incorrect. Allocations of a publication change from week to week (or month to month) depending on the status of each newsagent’s accounts with the distributors.
So it would not be easy; it would require considerable maintenance for each publisher to update their websites. Probably why many publishers choose to state which distributor handles their title/s.
You are wrong Jeremiah. This is an annual publication for a start.
For weeklies and monthlies, there is not a large variation week to week in terms of whether a store carries a title or not.
That said, maintaining a dynamic database of stockists would be easy with smart technology.