We have been promoting the latest issue of InStyle in a premium location to make the most of the free gift of Napoleon mascara. Being a brand name gift is important as shoppers recognise this as a value gift. This is why it is important for us to show off the brand – to make the most of the gift opportunity. Putting this title in regular magazine fixturing would be a wast of the premium gift.
I saw the best thing ever on the weekend: an employee of a shop which competes with one of my newsagencies, in the ink and toner space, working behind the counter with earbuds in. Judging by his sway as he browsed the internet I’d say he was listening to his iPod. He was the only employee on duty at the time.
At first I was shocked … shoppers would be turned away, surely he would understand this. Then I was pleased … for the advantage it gave us – our team members don;t listen to their iPods while at work.
I have found myself thinking about what I saw several times in the day and a half since, thinking about how so many of us are plugged in through iPhones, iPads and iPods and other devices and how these devices interrupt transacting sales when our customers are using them. It can be frustrating – to sales staff as well as to other customers.
Interacting with the devices while at work and from the business side of the counter is another thing altogether. I see no place for this at all. I’d be interested to hear what others think about this.
in the meantime I am happy for our competitor’s employee to disrespect shoppers by listening to music while behind the counter.
Click on the image to see the trendsmap from Friday night showing that in AFL crazy Melbourne the Heath Shaw betting scandal story trumped every other topic. Trendsmap is a real time mapping of local Twitter trends. It provides an excellent, and fascinating, perspective of what is on the minds of Twitter users. If you look closely you can see interest in carbon in the background.
We have been promoting running magazines because of the Run Melbourne event held over the weekend. With The Age newspaper the major sponsor, the running event has been getting plenty of coverage. So it made sense to me that the try and tap into this by promoting running titles.
I like to grab any opportunity possible to connect titles in by newsagency with a local event as this reinforces connection with a diverse range of activities and the range of titles we have in the newsagency.
Yes it is a challenge to be aware of events around which we can promote special interest titles. It’s what we have to do if we want to call ourselves magazine specialists. Just putting a broader range of magazines on the shelves than other retailers does not, of itself, make us magazine specialists. We need to engage with the specialist range.
Our tactical promotion of Diabetic Living at the counter paid off with the title selling out. Most copies were purchased on impulse. Who says you can’t grow magazine sales? The question newsagents need to ask every day is: what am I doing today to encourage the impulse purchase of magazines?
The range of magazines available in newsagencies is the one point of difference all newsagents in Australia share. While there are other points of difference in individual newsagencies, magazine range is the one national point of difference.
Despite the challenges with the magazine distribution model, the migration of some print traffic to digital devices and other challenges around the print model I am confident that magazines will continue to play an important role in newsagency businesses for at least some years yet. This is why I am always looking for and thinking about different ways to promote magazines in my newsagencies.
So, to my marketing tip for today, why not run a magazine focused shopper engagement promotion in your newsagency…
MY FAVOURITE MAGAZINE
I see this as a very simple yet engaging in-store promotion. It is unlike anything you would or could see in any other magazine outlet. It is too customer engaging and too local to be of interest to supermarket, petrol and convenience outlets.
No, this promotion is designed for people who think about the magazines, people who have a relationship with the titles they purchase.
The idea is to engage with your shoppers about the magazines they like and through this to attract more shoppers to engage. The subtle narrative I would hope for from such a promotion is: what a wonderful range of magazine titles there is in this newsagency and what a passionate group of regular and local shoppers who love these titles. That has to be the goal for the more shoppers who realise the range and who connect with a regular visit the better.
Here is how I see a MY FAVOURITE MAGAZINE promotion.
That’s pretty much it. As I said, this is a simple and local campaign designed to show off an important point of difference between your newsagency and other non-newsagency magazine outlets nearby.
I have not run this promotion as described. It’s only something I have thought about in this format this week. I have run promotions where customers vote and others where we focus on top sellers in categories – but nothing like this where customer opinion and feedback for the magazine titles about which they are passionate is so vital.
If you try this marketing tip please share with us your experiences. Also, let your magazine distributors and key publishers know.
Magazines are vitally important to the newsagency channel. The value we harvest is up to us. Local engagement around our point of difference is vital over the next couple of years.
In the photo, to the right side of the entrance to the store, you can see the triangle display provided by the folks at the Herald Sun for promoting the launch of the Harry Potter collection series yesterday.
We reconfigured this side of the entrance to our store to accommodate the promotion. It was worth it based on sales and shopper traffic.
We have been enjoying good success with these Kung Fu panda books as part of our school holidays book sale.
Licenced product is especially successful at school holiday time. It’s a safe purchase for parents. Kids shopping with their parents drag them to the display.
We configure our stores for school holidays to make the most of the opportunity of the extra and quite different traffic to what we see outside school holidays. The results can be seen in the sales numbers.
We have been promoting the free Harry Potter Collector Album which comes with the Herald Sun today this week with this display behind the counter. It’s big, bold and generating plenty of comment.
You can’t miss this from inside or outside the newsagency. We appreciate the help from the folks at the Herald Sun in organising this. Talk about creating some retail theatre!
Yes, I know that I bang on here about the slim margin from newspaper sales. I also write about and appreciate the traffic which newspapers generate for us. They remain a very important product for newsagents, especially when you see promotions like that which starts today with the Herald Sun.
I have been actively promoting ink in my newsagencies since 2004 as regular readers here would know. Today, ink accounts for 40% of stationery sales and continues to deliver excellent year on year sales growth. This year has also seen excellent margin percentage growth. These two points combined with the new traffic the ink flyers generate maake ink a financially rewarding category.
Underneath these top line numbers is another story about ink which is lost on some ignorant people who talk down the value ink can have on a newsagency.
Ink is an efficient category on several fronts. Managed well, without much time investment, it can easily deliver a stock turn of between seven and ten times a year, more in some newsagencies. It’s return on investment is considerably above most other departments in our stores.
But the measure which I really like is the sales efficiency, the frequency with which ink is in the shopping basket with more items. Sometimes this is where ink is the add-on item. More often, however, ink is the product which drew in the shopper and the other items are the cream.
I have two newsagencies with permanent ink refill and cheap generic ink cartridge competitors just a few metres away. I prefer the shoppers who value brands as I see these shoppers as more likely to be loyal to their brand of choice and the retailers who support the brand than shoppers who prefer cheap, and often inferior, product.
Just when is seemed the e-reader market had settled. Mediabistro is reporting about three new e-readers on the go. This hardware innovation is all about pursuing mass appeal.
The success of local boy Cadel Evans in this year’s Tour de France so far the interest in the program for the Tour has remained strong. We went out early promoting this title in my newsagencies as this display from more than a week ago shows. It has been good to be able to satisfy growing interest as coverage of the race has increased. Imagine what sales of this and other Tour titles will be like if Cadel wins.
Topical issues of magazines are well worth additional promotion. This is even more true for special interest titles where we get to show off our credentials as the magazine specialist retailer.
Around the interest i the Tour de France is the opportunity for us to drive sales of biking magazines. This already strong segment is responding well to heightened interest – as always at this time of the year.
We have been promoting music magazines and, in particular, Rolling Stone magazine toward the front of the newsagents, at our Ticketek counter.
The Lady Gaga cover shot on Rolling Stone works well at attracting people, especially since she has been in Australia this week.
Music magazines have been doing it tough so it is good to have someone current, popular and in the local news around whom to promote the category. We ran this impulse purchase display at the front of the newsagency, facing into the shopping mall, for two weeks. We achieved incremental business in music titles as a result.
Last night in Sydney at the Forrester Hotel in Surry Hills newsagency industry people gathered to farewell Gary Monks who retires today as CEO of NANA, the Newsagents Association of NSW & ACT. Garry has served newsagents for twelve years. He has done so with a tireless commitment to his newsagent constituency. Gary has always been open, honest and fair. I have tremendous respect for him.
I have known Gary for many years. He is a true gentleman, authentic.. He served NANA through some turbulent times and has seen the organisation come out the other side and finish the latest financial year in excellent shape. Last night he received thanks and kudos for a job well done.
Farewell Gary … enjoy the next chapter of your life.
It is good to see the price of more international magazines fall in the last couple of weeks. While they have not dropped sufficiently to match the rise of the Australian dollar, the fall is welcome – by newsagents and shoppers. It will be good for sales in newsagencies with a large range of international titles.
The $A price of many imported magazines does not make sense. Someone must be making a killing somewhere. It’s not the newsagent.
Further to my post yesterday about a free copy of the current issue of MasterChef magazine with The Australian being given away at Qantas gates at Brisbane airport on Wednesday, I saw the same at Melbourne airport when I flew to Sydney yesterday (Thursday) morning. This is some mighty giveaway promotion from the folks at News Magazines.
Sure enough, inside the copy of the magazine was a subscription flyer offering a saving of 27% for a one year subscription. Gee I wish they would engage with newsagents and offer a locked in deal to drive traffic to our stores for collection.
Weight Watcher’s magazine is one of those titles which responds well to promoting in a high traffic location. While I am sure there are plenty of regular purchasers of the title, I am equally sure that there are those who buy it when reminded to – through displays like this one which we have in a high traffic location in one of my newsagencies.
In addition to this display, we have the title being promoted in with health titles. Next week we will also include a full cover facing in our weeklies impulse display and leave it there for a week. The reward when we engage with Weight Watcher’s magazine like this is sales … every time.
We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine with this simple display at the counter – along with a couple of other items which appeal to the same demographic.
While not a billboard like display, the real value of this display is the placement. Every customer making a purchase in our store will be in front of this display. The newsagent difference is that we give access to this premium space for free.
Since it is premium space, we will give the title three days. It stays longer if it’s delivering results. This is the only way to deal with premium counter space.
Check out this timely, moving and emotionally raw song by Biilly Bragg about the scandal which has damaged the News Corporation and Murdoch brands.
See what I had to say a few days ago about this scandal and Australian newsagents.
People flying from Brisbane to Sydney with Qantas yesterday who picked up the usual free copy of The Australian newspaper opened it to find a free copy of the current issue of MasterChef magazine. Talk about a nice giveaway.
The tie in could be the Neil Perry cover story in MasterChef – he’s the face of Qantas in-flight catering.
I’d love promotions like this to come with something which drives traffic to newsagencies for future copies and not just subscriptions.
Last weekend we ran Better Homes and Gardens and That’s Life Reader’s Recipes at the counter in one of my newsagencies, between newspapers. They sold well! At least six copies of each from this location alone. More sales were achieved from the usual location for each of the titles. This is excellent incremental and impulse business to primarily newspaper customers. We have ordered more of each title as a result.
We newsagents are better placed to drive this type of impulse business than supermarket, convenience and petrol outlets. we can be smarter in placement. We can decide what to promote based on specific covers and what we know about our shoppers. Our competitors promote titles based on what they are paid to do. So, we can leverage our individuality to our benefit … as we have done with these two titles.
We keep changing what we promote with newspapers because of the regular newspaper customers we see. Impulse purchase displays should not remain in place for more than a few days otherwise the sales are not worth it – unless you have a low number of regular daily shoppers.
Check out this week’s issue of Famous magazine and you will see why this title continues to perform well in the audit. Whoever designed the cover tapped into the Harry Potter phenomenon brilliantly. This magazine leaps out of the sea of colour. It is the first title you notice when looking at a magazine display – even if it is in the second pocket as shown in the photo. Brilliant.
Any magazine publisher wondering about cover choices and design should get to a newsagency and check out this issue of Famous live in store for themselves. Extra attention to design can drive incremental sales.
Any newsagencies with copies of this issue of Famous left should put them on the counter. The movie opens today.
Check out the display promoting the latest issue of Take 5 magazine created by the team at another of my newsagencies. I like their personalisation of the display … displaying lottery numbers. They selected the numbers based on favourites of team members.
This display is right at the front of the newsagency, facing shoppers as they pass by in the mall.
The numbers give shoppers a reason to engage. It separates this display from other displays they are likely to see for the title which will look the same. I love the extra bit of initiative here.
Is this display better than the other Take 5 display? I can;t say. The proof will be in the sales. What I like is that it is just that bit different.
Check out the display the team did in one of my newsagencies for the latest issue of Take 5 magazine and the accompanying $30 million lottery promotion.
The display is in an excellent location, easily seen by most of the shoppers who enter the store, especially those shopping for a greeting card. It certainly stands out. Better than that, it is working … driving good sales.
We have have the title in a half waterfall in its usual location and a pocket in an impulse display at the front of the newsagency.
When you read my next post you may think I don;t like this display. That would be wrong. I do like this display. It is vibrant, eye catching and working. Brilliantly executed.
