Further to my blog post a few days ago about kids activity books from Network Services, the photo shows a couple of books we have in-store at the moment from which we achieve more than 50% margin. Whereas the Network supplied books seek to leverage existing traffic, the book campaign I choose to participate in drives new traffic.
These books are more valuable to us than the Network books because of the margin and because they are part of a catalogue marketing campaign to thousands of homes around our newsagency. The book campaign drives traffic – I can tell because customers come in with the books they want circled in the catalogue.
Few newsagents would benefit from Network using its magazine relationship with newsagents to send out books. We need to negotiate rules with Network which would see this behaviour stop.
There was considerable discussion here on the weekend about the future of newsagencies and the need for a so called cure. We will find our own future by making smart business decisions – such a choosing to engage in traffic generating campaigns, like books, and to carry better margin products, like books.
I have seen newsagencies take book sales from $10,000 a year of $75,000 a year (and even more) on the back of the kind of new traffic generating marketing campaign I have written about here. Steps like this are crucial to each of us finding our own future.
Revenue from books in July was up 38% compared to July 2010 at our Forest Hill store. This is a brilliant result since around 75% of books are purchased on impulse. The remainder are purchased as a result of external marketing we do to drive new traffic based on the book offers. With an excellent margin, the value of the sales increase is considerable.
