When everyone else is promoting back to school maybe it is a good time for you to promote something else that could be relevant to the season.
If you do promote back to school and jump with the crowd the challenge is being noticed as the market is crowded with similar pitches. As these things go, the business with the biggest budget is the one what people notice,.
Newsagents are not likely to have the biggest budget.
So how do you get noticed in a big season dominated by big businesses with massive advertising budgets?
Jump out of sync. Be the business not swimming with the crowd, the business with a different message, the business with a different offer that gets noticed, the business that engages in a fresh and exciting way.
It could be that you promote something other than back to school while still doing back to school in the business. Or that you run a wonderfully engaging competition that brings more generations into the back to school opportunity. Or that you make your BTS sales about raising funds for a local school and thereby engage families from that school more effectively. Or that you focus on selling to parents who will be free of their kids (finally).
I think we have within our selves in our own newsagency businesses and in different clusters and groups working together the capacity, and creativity to think and promote differently, away from what big business competitors do and non a way that is more engaging and appropriate to our local customers.
On the idea of the competition: ask your customers to write on one page their own back to school story. Put these on a wall. Invite customers to vote. Make it a gold coin donation to a local school to enter. Done well, this could drive traffic from all ages and the school community. It shows your business as locally concerned and connected compared to the big business that spends more money saying they do good than actually doing good.
Stand out by being different and not jumping with the crowd.