If traffic in your newsagency is down and revenue down as a result, you must act. A traffic decline that is more than a blip or related to obvious factors such as street construction or major weather events demands a response.
Doing nothing is not an option. Complaining achieves nothing.
You must act.
- Make your business more appealing to new traffic.
- Reach outside your business to attract the new traffic.
- The more different your response to what you have been doing the better the opportunity of finding new traffic.
Okay, I get that these three points are simple and not detailed. That is deliberate for this post. My goal here is to stat what I see as the obvious: if you do not make changes in your business you cannot expect to alter the traffic and performance trajectory of the business.
You make your business more appealing to new traffic by engaging with new products and product categories.
You reach outside your business through smart and fun Facebook posts that you boost.
These are things any newsagent can do.
If your traffic is down, these are things you must do. The alternative is that you complain next month, and the month after, and the month after that traffic is down. What kind of business plan is that? It’s not, that is my point.
No supplier owes you a solution, no landlord has to fix this for you. Falling traffic is your challenge to lean into and to resolve.
I have seen it resolved. In fact, a dead business I took over less that a year ago is an example of this, an example of recasting the business for a new traffic future.
Success in approaching the declining traffic challenge will demoed on how far you are prepared to go, how different you are prepared to pitch your business outside of what it has been known for. This is difficult if the only retail you know is newsagency as recasting the business involves significant steps away from that traditional business.
Ask for help. Seek to be challenged. There are plenty out there who willingly help retailers recast their businesses.