marketing tip

Newsagents regularly tell me that they have better product knowledge than their competitors. This is usually mentioned in relation to stationery, ink, cards and magazines.

My tip today is in the form of a question: if you think your product knowledge is better that your competitors how are you leveraging that leadership? Being more knowledgeable is only useful if you use it.

One way to leverage knowledge is to host a training event. get support from a key supplier, offer some prizes basic catering and promise to deliver valuable knowledge on products you sell. In the stationery area, for example, you could share insights into how to save money or knowledge about choosing the best pen. The topic of the training is not the key here – that you offer training to leverage your knowledge is the key.

This is an excellent way to promote your business, by showing off something unique to your business, your product knowledge.

Rather than wait to see what happened s a result of the change in magazine delivery days, we introduced a new promotion to attract shoppers. The posters were placed to be seen in the mall, to attract people into our newsagency, to try and break into their destination shopping plans.

This is my newsagency marketing tip today – work with suppliers to unlock offers you can promote to get people into your shop on a day they would not usually visit. Run the offer for a limited time, a time that suits your needs. A secondary tip is: don’t wait to see how a cahnge impacts you – get on the front foot and drive change for yourself.

We’d been selling the Robo Fish for a few weeks before the TV campaign kicked in. As soon as we knew it was on air we moved the display and added the sign AS SEEN ON TV. Sales took off and I’d say this is because of the TV campaign.

The red sign was to reinforce it, as if to say – yes this what you saw on TV.

We have plenty of products in our newsagencies that are promoted in TV campaigns. Rather than promoting all of them like this, we choose the products with a point of difference, products out of the ordinary that people will remember, like these Robo Fish.

The TV campaign connection works at driving new traffic as well as getting existing shoppers considering the items.

This type of engagements starts with us being aware of what is on TV. Some supplies supply us (thank you!) while for others we need to find out for ourselves.

FYI, we downloaded the AS SEEN ON TV sign from the internet. It’s a common graphic representation of this – something people recognise.

Today I am repeating an idea from two years ago because it’s time.

Christmas in July is growing in popularity in retail businesses.  It can provide a good retail focus and sales kick in between major seasons. It is an opportunity to move stock while having fun with Christmas out of season.

Christmas in July is an excellent opportunity for newsagencies.

A couple of years ago we moved in excess of $2,000 in boxed Christmas cards at a 75% margin.  Our Christmas boxed cards later in the year were stronger than ever so the July promotion did not pull forward sales.

A Christmas in July promotion could be as simple as a sale based around the season or it could be a fully integrated campaign covering the whole of the business.

Christmas in July is a particularly useful campaign if you sell items which would help with celebrations in the home or if you sell items which work as Christmas gifts. While the opportunity is promoted as Christmas in July, it is a chance to get some early Christmas sales happening – ahead of most other retailers.

Check with your local council or business association as to what they have on – more and more are running Christmas in July events. be sure to check with charities too.  A quick search online shows plenty do. Talk to suppliers to see whether they have anything which could help you embrace the opportunity.

Remember, the real focus of a Christmas in July promotion is to increase sales. Every move made as part of the campaign must progress this opportunity.

• Run the Christmas in July campaign over no more than two weeks in July. One week could be enough.
• Choose dates which are away from any other promotion – it works best with little competition.
• Get all employees together, seek their ideas and explain the value of the season you are creating.
• Set aside a defined space in-store for promoting stock connection with the season.
• Dress the team and the store to suit the Christmas theme.
• Display any spare Christmas stock from last year.
• Play Christmas music.
• Choose a day for an extra special celebration and make this an all-out focus.
• Have a competition for the kids around the theme. This could be a coloring competition – offer to display their works of art as parents and family will visit to see.
• Create a giant Christmas stocking which one lucky customer can win.
• Use the event to discount slow moving items – try and create a real sense of bargains.
• Promote the event using a flyer to houses around your location – it is a great way to draw people into your shop. On the flyer, promote the activities and any specials.
• Call the local paper and get their attention.

Christmas in July is an excellent opportunity to get suppliers on board.  Maybe they could provide products for you to give away as gifts – I.E. every shopper gets spending over $10 a ‘Christmas’ gift.  Suppliers could use your promotion as an ideal time for trialling products and getting your customers engaged.
Events like Christmas in July are all about giving people a reason to visit your newsagency. Making the event fun and relevant to the season (winter) should make it a winner for you.

With more and more retail sales involving one or more searches online, newsagents ought to consider engaging in advertising on Google. You get to choose the search keywords you advertise with, the amount you spend, the geographic area you target and the duration of advertising.

I’ve used Google Adwords for a number of retail businesses with success.  It’s a good fit for newsagents. The keywords I suggest you targeting, coupled with your geographic location, are: stationery, magazines, greeting cards, gifts and any other services you care to promote.

Ads are running almost immediately.  Given the control you have over the spend it’s easy to control the financial exposure to the business.

This is not something for the channel to do, it’s best done at a local store level. But make sure you have somewhere to send them – a website or a page on a website.

Thanks to good buying by many newsagency suppliers we have access to an excellent range of positive products – products that promote happiness, optimism and generally positive messages – like the signs in the photo.

When we first got them they sold out in just over a week.

Now, with more stock, we are using them at the front of the newsagency on the lease line to attract shoppers from in the mall. It’s terrific seeing people notice one of the messages and walk over to browse the range. I am certain we would not get as many in the newsagency if the messages were not as optimistic.

We took care to place the signs so that strong positive messages stood out. A small amount of time invested helped us achieve our goal.

We have no doubt – shoppers love positive, optimistic, products.

Convenience store owners and their suppliers talk about Grab and Go offers, products that are compelling, easily understood and good value, products places at or near the counter and other high-traffic locations.

The term Grab and Go defines the type of products to place in this high-profile impulse purchase situation. In newsagencies, focussing on Grab and Go items is essential for those with a convenience-centric model.

I mention this term here to help change perception. We have spent too long offering the same old products at the counter. We need to focus on fresh impulse lines that offer more than 25% GP. Newsagents in the convenience space need to get serious about convenience and thinking about products in the context of Grab and Go is part of that in my view.

There is an excellent article at Convenience Store Decisions about this. I encourage convenience-centric newsagents to read this.

I was in Queenstown in New Zealand recently and used taxis several times. Just abut every time, the taxi driver gave me their card and told be how much they or their partner would love to take me back to the hotel out of town. By the end of the couple of days I had a collection of cards. The experience reminded me of the importance of business cards and of asking for business.

One way to check your progress on promoting your business by handing out business cards is by counting them. Set a weekly goal and engage your whole team to have out the cards.  You could even have an offer or at least a pitch for your business on the cards. Tell people why you’d like them to shop at your shop.

The Queenstown taxi drivers hand out cards because they know it works. it could work as well for newsagencies.

The first step in exerting control over magazine supply to your newsagency is to advise the magazine distributors of the total pockets available. Putting this in writing to them provides them with information the most likely do not have today. It establishes your land mass, thereby providing them with the information necessary to not over supply you.

While the magazine distributors do not work together on equitable ranging – stupid as that is – them knowing your total number of pockets and their own knowledge of the titles their computer carries means that they should behave more fairly toward you.

Write to the distributors, let them know your pockets and send this in an express post envelope or as registered post – so you can prove the received it.

You should send this letter any time you change the amount of space you allocate to magazines.

With retail and the traditional newsagency model changing more rapidly than at any time in our channel’s past, we need to reach out to new customers. I urge newsagents to set it as their goal to reach out to new customers every week. Whether it is through a personally delivered to a business, an approach to a community group for a co-op campaign, letterbox drops in a single street or some other activity, reach out to at least some one new every week.

If we don’t get more people onto the conveyer belt carrying people to our businesses then one day we will find that conveyerbelt not sustaining us.

Lottery products generate excellent traffic for many newsagencies yet many fail to turn the traffic into anything more than lottery product sales. Newsagents often blam their customers or the lottery products for not driving sales of other items.

Here’s an idea, a crazy idea, for getting the attention of lottery customers.

Get coupons printed that look like luscious red lips. Pay to have them die-cut. On the back have text like: five kisses gets you 25% off as many greeting cards as you want or five kisses gets you 33% of as much stationery as you want.

The key is to drive lottery shpper loyalty and to offer a reward for that. You achieve this with a simple, bright and unique coupon that is handed over with a fun pitch. Do all this and you’ll cut through to lottery shoppers who otherwise might never remember your shop.

Why a coupon in the shape of lips – kisses? Because it’s different. They’ll remember you for it.  This is not another coupon, it’s a kiss and who doesn’t like kisses?

Go on, have some fun and promote your business. Turn good traffic into more sales.

There are loyalty programs and then there are loyalty programs. The former are more about collecting shopper data than offering a reward for loyalty. The latter are about getting shoppers to act in an above-average way – rewarding you business in return for you rewarding them.

It’s easy to accrue points on purchase … what are you doing with them?

It’s easy to let a lucky customer win a prize … how do other customers feel?

Before you start with a loyalty program, work out the sort of program you want. This means working out the outcome for your business.  It should be to drive sales and achieve a higher sales efficiency from your customers.  If this is the case, then your loyalty program has to relentlessly target these goals.

In my experience working with a broad range of programs – at the single store as well as networked group levels – programs operating at the single store level work best. They drive loyalty to your business.  Next, programs that reward shoppers and encourage them to return sooner work a treat.

Setting up and managing a loyalty program takes time to get right for your business. Invest in this and the rewards should be good.

In my newsagencies at the moment I am trialling three different programs to see which best achieves my goal of bringing shoppers back in sooner. As with any loyalty program tracking shopper engagement using the newsagency software is the key … tracking, reporting, tweaking.

Choose an item you want to sell and get one or two staff to wear it with a sign … sticky tape, a stapler, a new pens, a new magazine. Since staff don’t usually wear products, the product should be noticed and, hopefully, purchased.

This is a crazy idea. I can’t think of anyone who would try it. I doubt I would. And that’s the reason to try – because it is so crazy. What’s the worst that can happen? – customers will laugh. And the best? They buy the product.

Stand in front of your newsagency and count how many different marketing / promotion messages confront your shoppers. By different I mean different content, different core messages and or different look and feel.

If your newsagency is like a typical newsagency, there will be at least twenty different messages to customers. The messages will lack consistency in look and feel and lack consistency in value proposition.

These messages are not marketing your business as much as the products they are promoting.

A business like a newsagency should have no more than  two (maybe three) core overall marketing messages confronting shoppers from the entrance to the middle of the store.

Provide a consistent, good, message and you;re more likely to see engagement.

Newsagencies have been built on more than 100 years of formal and informal rules and regulation. Embedded in many newsagency shopfits are rules about what goes where and how it is displayed. Burnt into our brains are rules about how we handle certain product. Supplier representatives, too, have rules they expect us to follow. All because that is how it’s been done.

Many rules and regulations are nonsense and should be tossed out.

Today’s world dictates that we need to operate our businesses based on rules appropriate to our own businesses.

Here’s a tiny example. After Valentine’s Day we had a space Hallmark card unit. Instead of storing it for the next major season, we placed it at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle with a selection of cards we felt would appeal to the shopper entering that space.

This off-location placement of the card unit gets the cards seen by people not visiting the shop to purchase cards. That action along will drive some incremental business for us.

It’s a rule broken … for the good of our business.

Footnote: this was one of the points of my post earlier this week about the Westpac Bank branch I saw in Auckland.

Newsagents and newsagency businesses are creatures of habit, promoting certain types of gifts for Valentine’s Day, other types of gifts for Mother’s Day, school related stationery at back to school and so on. While predictable, it works for most so it continues.

Recently we promoted a Parker pen offer next to our Valentine’s Day cards. We sold more than 40 pens at $13.75 with a 50%+ margin. The display was simple. What got the pens noticed more was that we promoted pens outside their usual ‘season’.

This is my marketing tip today: promote products outside their usual time in the spotlight. For example, stationery outside back to school and mid year, gifts away from a season, magazines promoted by interest at any time and coloured card as it’s something we tend to not promote.

On gifts, plush for lovers could sell well outside Valentine’s Day, gifts for mum could sell away from Mother’s day and toys for kids could sell outside of Christmas.

Think about the magazine idea: when was the last time you did a display promoting, say, all your food magazines. I bet you could create a display showing that your newsagency has the BEST range of food titles in your area. Get known for this with a brilliant display, make it a talking point, something people tell others about. Do this at a time when food is not on the radar – i.e. not at a major season.

Most newsagency shops have the space, you certainly have the product … all you need is some time and some creative flair.

The best way to drive impulse purchases of items is to promote them at times other than  when everyone else is promoting them. This is why we are promoting some homewares items right now … and its working a treat.

Businesses that act in an average, expected, way will achieve average results.