It seemed like a good idea at the time – an in store marketing campaign which sought to turn magazine browsers into greeting card customers. The idea didn’t work and now we’re processing the learnings from the experience.
I came up with the idea and convinced my colleagues at newsXpress to test it through five newsXpress locations. The tests, over the last month or so, have not resulted in the incremental sales I expected.
We designed coupons, business card size, had them professionally printed and offered these to people browsing magazines at high browser time – late night shoppers and guys on Saturdays and Sundays. We focused on guys as they are less likely to buy cards. The coupon was redeemable that day only and offered 25% off cards.
That test did not work does not concern us. We had a go and have learnt something from that. We’re likely to regroup and try again. All good marketing is developed this way – testing, tweaking and more testing. Some of the successes I blog about here are the end result of countless hours of hard work. I have faith in the concept at the heart of this idea, there are elements of the execution which need work such as the coupon itself, the pitch and even the core offer.
I see it as important that we work at leveraging existing traffic in addition to drawing new traffic. You cannot do one and not the other. While we drive our stores to up-sell themselves, it is always good to find ways to facilitate team member interaction with customers beyond a hello or a smile. Standing behind the counter serving doesn’t cut it nor does the gimmick promotions of If I don’t ask you about such and such you get a free thing. We need to engage with our customers and add value to their visit. It was belief in these things which led to the development of the coupon campaign.
There are some in the newsagency channel who are happy to report other’s failure. They see it as a badge of dishonour and gleefully gossip about it. Having a go is part of being Australian and part of what we newsagents need to do now more than ever. When was the last time you tried something challenging in our newsagency? I mean really challenging? Your competitors are doing it all the time so why not you?
Every day we make a change in the newsagencies I own – from moving product categories to creating a display outside of what suppliers ask us to do to running an local promotion to shifting product at the counter. This sense of perpetual motion is key to stopping customers and team members becoming store blind. Change is something we enjoy an celebrate.
The greeting card up-sell didn’t work. In the numbers game of marketing it strengthens the chances of the next idea working.
Why have I blogged about this? It’s important to me to be open with you here about ideas which don’t work so the learnings can be shared and to demonstrate that failure is an important part of success.
Thanks for reading.
It seems that small is in with magazine publishers. We received Healthy Living from ACP magazines this week. I’m happy with the product and the category – health related titles are doing well. I’m unhappy with the long shelf life and more unhappy with the size. While they’d like us to put the title on the counter, I don’t have the space for that so it has to fit into magazine fixturing – which it doesn’t. What could have helped is the supply of fixturing with a universal clip of some sort which allows me to attach the display to the magazine stand. This way the title could look like it is part of the category rather than the poor cousin it looks today.
