Reading the comments at my recent post on flat retail sales got me thinking about practical ways newsagents could turnaround their retail businesses. I have put together a few ideas below which are a mix of basic business advice and out there crazy ideas. They are offered as thought starters.
If your newsagency sales are flat and you are doing the same things today that you have been doing for the last year it is not good enough.
Business will not come to you. You have to go out and find it – often through a series of small steps as opposed to a big bold move. You have to obsess about presenting a compelling offer to everyone walking through your door.
Different businesses are approaching the tough retail conditions differently. Take Myer. I heard CEO Bernie Brooks speaking the other day and he made it clear that they remain committed to their discount policy for now. Price appears to be working for them as a point of difference and while they don’t see it as ideal, that it is working in a tough market sees them sticking to is.
Price is not a point of difference option to newsagents – not across the board at least. Australian consumers expect us to be expensive. That has been shown in plenty of consumer surveys. Railing against this is a challenge. We can do this for some categories and at seasons but not across the board. Ink is a terrific example where we can promote on price – it is a key driver of the success we are having with that.
Other retailers focus on a unique range as their point of difference. The mix requirements of our shingle make that a challenge.
Here are some tips for newsagents on responding to flat sales:
- Refresh the counter. Most newsagency counters look the same today as they did a year ago and beyond. Create something different and fresh. Take everything off and rebuild the counter with the purpose of selling product on impulse. Make strategic choices. Develop a plan for moving products through the counter – it may be a magazine next to a register this week, a candy bay next week and some cheap pads the week after. Have an impulse offer at every high traffic touchpoint. Once you have created what you think is a better and more business focused counter, look at it critically as a customer would. Is it the best you can offer? Monitor your results. If the changes have not drives a sales lift, do it all again.
- Refresh the window. Look at your shop from across the street or the mall. What do passers-by see? What are you selling? What is compelling about your business form the window? If the answer is not obvious then take everything out and off the window and create a compelling story which draws people to the business. Let people see why they should browse your shop. A full and busy window is all to often a barrier to the business.
- Refresh the shop. Change change and change. Move departments and categories. Make the shop feel fresh to regular customers and to your team. Make strategic choices about what products go where. Use dump bins for specials. Place impulse products next to high traffic products. Once you have undertaken the big moves, create a plan for continual change each week. Change shows that the business is a, living and breathing thing. It can make the shop appealing to new visitors. Newsagents who don’ change their business reinforce that the model is a retail dinosaur.
- Refresh the team. Let your team know than business is tough. Ask for their ideas. Take some time out of the business to relax over a meal or drink or some other social activity (mini golf, go kart racing, fishing, bushwalking) and share an adventure outside the business. Sometimes getting away like this can get creative juices flowing about changes which can be made back at the business.
- Ask suppliers for help. If your business is slow it is likely that your suppliers are finding it slow too. Ask them for some good value deals – not the stock they can’t sell but the stock they have plenty of and which sells well. If you can get some of that for a good discount you can pass this on and offer good value impulse opportunities. Talk to suppliers about visual merchandising opportunities too. I know one newsagents who did a brilliant window display for shredders – thanks to supplier support. The store ways around security. He sold plenty. The supplier was thrilled. New traffic was generated. Ask suppliers for suggestions – they are a source of excellent ideas.
- Lure customers back. Look at the top selling items in your newsagency. Create a strategy for getting these customers back. Create a small flyer offering a discount on something if they come back in, say, a couple of days. Do this for newspapers and or lottery tickets. Have a small flyer saying – As a valued customer come back within two days and you get 25% off a greeting card purchase. Make it look life a gift card or a coupon. It has to look like it has some value. Put the works THANK YOU across the top. Date stamp each one. Track how many you give out and how many come back. Newsagency point of sale software can automate this process of handing coupons with sales.
- Create an event. Look at your magazine sales and in particular the segments which sell the best. Let’s say you sell plenty of craft magazines. Consider running a craft day when you get an expert on a craft topic and promote that you will have a free in-store demonstration. Local clubs are happy to provide an expert for free as they can recruit new members. I know of a newsagent who once gave over part of the shop to a model train club – they had over 100 people in. The flow on buzz was fantastic. Don’t run an event like this once. It could be quarterly with a different subject each time.
- Get in the newspaper. Seek out ways to help local clubs and groups. It does not need to cost a lot. Support could be more practical than financial. Maybe the shop could become a hub on a local issue – a place where people can go to sign a petition on an important local issue. Get in the local paper and get known for your community connection.
- Run an event. Have fun. Get the community involved. Create an event based on what you sell: a paper plane competition, a papier mache local attraction model competition, host a bake off from a cookbook you sell, run your own Project Runway event to find a local fashion designer or run a cute baby contest. Any idea which connects in some way to products you sell is fair game here.
- Connect with the community. Go to community clubs and offer a discount to members and a rebate back to the club for business their marketing efforts on your behalf deliver. This is easy to setup and manage. The more people you have in the community saying to their friends that they should shop with you the better.
- Ode to you. Run a competiton to find the best poem which reflects why your newsagency is important to the local community. Get the finalists in to read them live and get your customers to vote. Maybe the local newspaper will run the winner?
- Crazy ideas. Think outside the norm. Nude day has been done so has the underpants idea where customers get a discount for shopping only wearing underwear.
Stop talking about it. Yes, retail is tough. Talking about will not improve your situation. Doing something is better than talk.
The ideas in this blog post are offered to get newsagents thinking of ideas which are appropriate to their businesses. It would be easy to dismiss them and say there is nothing new there. Maybe not. But what are you doing about tough times in your newsagency?
Change is oxygen to any retail business regardless of its current sales health. Doing nothing in tough times will make the tough times tougher for you.
Personally, I am optimistic about the future for newsagents. There are enough good operators who enjoy embracing change for the channel to have good prospects.
Very good advice
Well done Mark. Some great ideas there and some reminders of good ideas I had forgotten.
“Crazy ideas. Think outside the norm. Nude day has been done so has the underpants idea where customers get a discount for shopping only wearing underwear.”
seriously?
Long time voyeur here but first time commenter. What Mark has written is a great asset to all newsagents. Tell your friends to read it. I am. Yes things are tough but it is up to us to do the best we can. There are good ideas here.
Aaron: nude day – Gaslight Records in Melbourne in the 1990s. They closed a couple of years ago. Underpants discounts – MagNation did it this year!
I remember Gaslight (I grew up in the CBD)
but never remember a nude day. Wondering if it would still be possible for a store of any kind to pull it off?
As for the underpants discounts, isn’t that similar to the bar/pub events that offer discounts/free alchohol to girls that flash?
Although it does seem like something that MagNation can pull off. (and obiviously did)
Ha I remember the hype surrounding the Gaslight nude day. Didn’t go there, but was sure a sensation.
With the demographic around here, it’s:
a) the wrong time of year for a nudey/undie day and;
b) the wrong demographic for a nudey/undie day.
LMAO
We’ve had our thinking caps on for a while now, to work on bringing more customers. But looking back on our figures, while overall they’re either down or static, some areas have really taken off, which was a very pleasant surprise.
Ideas are forming, and some groundwork has been done about some of those, so we’re looking forward to implementing some at least subtle changes over the winter.
Stunts like nude day are great for a spike. I think that what is needed in newsagencies and probably most retail outlets is sustained effort around refreshing and refocussing the business – hence many of the suggestions in the blog post.
In our own situation, Ink, Books and Gifts are very strong and generating new traffic. Magazines and cards are above the industry average. We do much of what I have written about and I think it is paying off.
I love the ode you you idea. We need to better connect with customers aboout what is specail about newsagency businesses. This and the community idea are great. I am going to work on these.
Newsagency/Retailing is about connecting with your customers , its not about being met by a dour middle aged man or a gun chewing year twelve student who can’t even look you in the eye. For too long reatiling has jsut been a fill in job. It can be a rewarding career, but only those with the right frame of mind!
Hope that guns made of chocolate..
There’s an idea, get them (chocolate) gun toting year twelve student to round up them there customers and herd em in…
The thought of a nude day here is enough to keep you sleepless for a year! To quote Apocalyse Now = ‘The horror .. the horror’
The most common comments I hear from newsagents as I talk with them is that business is tough. The idea of my blog post is to put a range of ideas out which could be useful to newsagents in navigating these tough times.
It would be terrific to get newsagents sharing more ideas here – in addition to those I have posted.
G`day Mark, i like your last post about us newsagents sharing ideas, heres mine….we have been dabbling with the Facebook marketing of our store and am yet to be amazed by any real results, that said i was talking to a customer this morning who lives in a retirement village close to our store and he mentioned Facebook. I was thinking, retirement village/facebook is this guy serious? The more we spoke the more i realised that these retirees are all over facebook like nothing i had imagined, so now with that customers help and input, together we are going to see if we can come up with facebook offers that will be value to both parties. Whilst i could say these people shop with me anyway out of pure convenience it will be interesting to see how much i can increase their basket size by. I am also very confident that this will be an exercise that is genuinely measurable as opposed to other marketing exercises that may not be.
I must also admit that i had to apologise to this customer this morning for thinking that Facebook was a young persons thing…he laughed and told me it was my shout for the newspaper!
Cheers
Al
All the ideas are quite good , but the one that is lacking so often in so many retail outlets is GOOD customer service and that starts with the owner, because the staff will follow.
Take an extra 10 seconds to engage with the customer , a happy interested demeanour, focus on the customer as you serve them not on whos next or what you are going to do next, they arent interupting you from stocking the shelve they are a customer its what you want.
Another point about refreshing most of your customers are regulars so refresh little areas frequently, an impulse unit on the counter can be switched every day so as its a new offer.
What confectionary is most likely to be bought in the morning? Mints?: chewy? and the afternoon , maybe a mars bar? entice them.
Finally they sy that 3 days forms a habit? make your customer see you as a habit.
“but the one that is lacking so often in so many retail outlets is GOOD customer service ”
I just remind myself not to act like the Safeway staff near me.
I expect good (great!) customer service is a given. Newsagents who don’t get this own dying businesses.
I am beginning to see the light, slow as I am at all of this. I am what you would call one of the “old school” newsagents. been in the game 25 years. I have a shop and round. My business has not changed much over the years because I liked it that way and because I wanted to get out. Now I realise that I can’t get out so I need all the help I can get.
I like some of the ideas like refreshing the business and the staff. I can see this is a big job but it has to be done.
There are a lot of newsagents like me, old and set in their ways. Someone needs to kick us up the backside before it is too late.
Good on you David, being honest with ones self is a major step towards change, again, good on you!!!
cheers
Al
Well Done David, What a breath of fresh air! Good Luck to you, I hope you are succesful in your new Journey.
How does everyone have the energy to keep at it all the time. Don’t get me wrong, these ideas are good but after you do a 16 hour day what is left to get this stuff done.
Keith,
Appoint staff members to take care of some of this stuff! They have great ideas. We encourage our girls to try new things.
Not everything works but most of the time the cost of the exercise is so low that we look at it as a learning experience!
Keith you are probably doing busy work, things which are unecessary to the success of the business. Step back and assess how your time is spent. Focus on what is important to you. Also, no matter how big a challenge, allocate some time off each week.
I contacted a local knitters club and they have agreed to come and run a workshop for new knitters in my shop. They plan to make small items for a charity. Now I am getting excited. I have never done anything like this before. Next stop the leader newspaper to see if they will be interested.
Over the past 3 years we have run an Art exhibition, footy card swap days, charity days for the little girl that we support, we have an artisit that sits at the front of store for several days a week to help people with art and we have an ink refill expert who comes in most Saturdays to run ‘Bunnings’ like workshops on ink and how to get the best out of their machines. We also do the usual mag and card club and lotto 2nd chance draws. We still have rough moments due to shopping centre traffic flow but without doing these things we would have been gone long ago.
We have also door knocked local businesses and schools trying to get ink and stationary orders as well as flyers and radio. The cheapest options have been the best by far. Handing out a special flyer at the enterance of the centre gave us the biggest lift in people in the shop. Marketing is about getting the people in the store. Once there they need prompting. The final thing that we have had success with is bold instore signage and display. The signs I found online and cost us about $60 but it created great themes.
Mark would you consult for a newsagency looking for advice specific to their needs?
Henry, I’d be happy to help in any way I can. I can be reached on 0418 321 338.
i had read this blog some time ago but had forgotton about the things mentioned, we are haveing meetings locally with other business in town as we are being bypassed in 12 months or so about how we can get people to call into our town after the bypass,one of the things suggested to me by others was to get old newspapers and mags( like 10 years ago) and have a display for people to brouse do you think the people that call in would tell others to call in and have alook, the other business are thinking of other ideas as well that may bring people back or atleast they would remember where they had been
any ideas?
Kellie, Look at other towns around which bypasses have been built. Look at what has worked and what has not.
The town needs to stand for something to be of interest to get drivers off the freeway.
While old newspapers and magazines may be interesting, they would need to have context.
I’d suggest the whole town working together on this.
thanks mark
we are all working on things maybe items locally would be good
Kellie we to are going to get a bypass around our town in a few years there are meetings just about every week to stop it , something that will happen and not looking forward to it .
Yes can be very daunting. I have witnessed a few towns that have prospered with a bypass (gets the through traffic out of the town centre and makes it more accessible to the shopper)….and others that have struggled. Pick your strengths & attractions & get the message out there. Good luck 🙂
Thanks for the great ideas
Some great ideas here, I’m taking them to my boss tomorrow and see where we can go from here. Thanks to you all for your input and willingness to share what’s worked for you.
The only advice I can give is to get involved with your local chamber of commerce and get behind local issues, not just as a business, but as individuals too. We’re handing out labels with a roadworks complaint hotline number on it for people who are fed up with the council constantly digging up our high street. Also our boss is secretary for the chamber of commerce and has a big say on key decisions affecting our shop.