marketing tip

Ryman stationery in London offers delivery of ink and toner in selected London boroughs within 90 minutes. That’s pretty cool since businesses ordering ink and toner have probably run out or are just about to run out. This is the next big push of online businesses – same day delivery … giving online shoppers a timing experience almost equal to in-store shopping.

Here’s the tip – if you consider your newsagency to be local and committed to local service, why not offer same day delivery of ink and toner?  I bet if you offered this you could wrest business away from online stores and bigger businesses nearby.

But you would need to promote it widely and regularly: on your car, shop window, flyers … all over town and through personal contact with businesses.

Yes, there would be challenges around your stock holding. Work through this. get to know your customers. Stock to their need.

If being local is a point of difference for you, live it! This is just one example.

Newsagents using good newsagency management software have access to a range of free marketing opportunities with which they can grow their retail businesses  Here is a list of some of the free marketing you can engage in:

• Coupons on receipts. Receipts can be more than a record of sale. Add a coupon to the base and lure customers back into your business – like your own shop-a-docket. Good software can include coupons based on what was purchase, the amount spent and or other criteria as appropriate. The keys to successful coupons are – a compelling offer with a sunset and which is presented simply and attractively.
• Promotions on accounts. Never send mail without including a promotion – including and especially statements and accounts. These can easily contain a promotion printed on the statement or account – it’s easy to have your software do this automatically. It’s free and silent marketing effort.
• Up-sell during the sale. Use your point of sale software to guide staff on up-sells for items. The promotional script appears on the screen without interfering with the sale but reminding staff of the offer. The key with good during the sale up-selling is that the offer is compelling and easily pitched. Track success by staff and reward success.
• Two for one, three for two etc. Using your software, easily offer discounts for volume purchases. Your sales staff need do nothing since the software can track the offer and apply the discounted pricing for quantity purchase. You can set start date and times and end date and times. It’s easy and fast to setup. You can make this for one item or a whole catalogue. Also, you can run multiple offers at any one time or over times which crossover. The keys are: make the offer compelling, promote it in the usual place for the stock as well as at in a high traffic location.
• Loyalty marketing. Reward customers for spending more than usual. THIS IS IMPORTANT – too often I see newsagents for rewarding customers for doing what they usually do. No, reward them for EXTRA EFFORT. Using the loyalty facilities included in the Tower software, you are able to accrue points for customers and offer these as a form of currency. Running your own VIP Club or some similar named loyalty program is easy to setup and manage. The system tracks points and lets customers know balances etc on receipts and via correspondence generated by the software.
• Customer database marketing. Using the marketing tools in good software you can quickly trawl your customer database based on what your customers have purchased, when and for how much as well as using other criteria. The key is to track customer details. This is why most businesses run a loyalty program – not so much for customer rewards but for research about customers and what they purchase. The Tower software has excellent tools for this. Email, mail or call them with the offer – low cost marketing which should drive more sales.
• Trawl your data. Track what sells with what. The 10×10 report is excellent for this, it lists the top ten items sold with the top ten items sold. See what customers buying your top ten items are likely to buy, place these near the top sellers so more will buy them. Just looking at this data will unlock more opportunities for you.
• Gift cards. Give your customers something they can buy for family and friends which locks in business for you. Gift cards only work if the giver feels that the recipient will find something they like at the store – your store.
• Service, service, service. Customer service is the most important differentiator in retail today, especially in newsagencies. Sure, you can discount and use price as a differentiator but where is the commercial sense in that? No, customer service is king. Customer service is a marketing activity.

Using the free marketing opportunities in your software enables you to leverage what you already have without extra investment. This is a great starting point.

Theatre is important in retail if you want to separate your store from an online shopping experience. Retailers need to exploit ways to demonstrate the added value of the physical store shopping experience.

Having products on the shelves or racks is not enough. You have to bring these to life.

Beyond being able to touch and smell and item live, every retail store has opportunities to make the shopping experience more personal and physical.

Supermarkets do this all the time with food sampling and demonstrations. They have someone cooking product nearby where the product can be purchased. These in-store demonstrations are done because they work, the drive sales. The smell and the taste guide the senses to encourage the purchase.

You do not need to be selling food for an in-store demonstration to work. Here are some suggestions for other retailers on how they could use in-store demonstrations and other techniques to bring products alive:

Books: book readings, book clubs, author visits, performances from children’s books.

Fashion: Fashion show, a talk by a designer, a talk by a stylist, a dress making demonstration by an expert, a makeup demonstration to go with the clothing you sell, a hairdresser to show the importance of hair to go with what you sell.

Camping: A tent setup competition, tips from a local ranger for safe camping, stories from camping trips – a group discussion sharing ideas, a supplier presentation on new equipment.

Homewares: A dinner party in store showing how a range of dining homewares products look when you have guests over, a stylist speaking about how to style your home, a manufacturer presentation on a new line.

Card shop: A calligrapher to write beautifully on cards purchased in-store, a local writer to help customers with the right words for each card purchased, a card stylist to help shoppers find the perfect card for the occasion, a card maker presenting a talk on what goes into making a card.

Stationery business: Supplier presentations on the latest items for sale, a competition for customers based around clever use of a particular line of items you sell, a recycle class from an environmental expert on how to recycle used stationery items, a presentation on the different brands of printers you sell and how each suits a particular need.

Cosmetics shop: Host a fashion parade showing off how your cosmetics look with the right fashion, run cosmetics classes for different occasions – make up for work, evening wear and weekend fun times, have a manufacturer speak about what makes their products special.

Each of these ideas is about bringing interactivity to your store, going beyond static products on the shelves and bringing them alive. This separates your business from the mass merchants who will have fewer in-store displays and from online retailers as well.

Schedule interactive sessions. Plan them carefully, promote them and make sure that they are covering topics of interest to your shoppers. Ask your shoppers too if they have a presentation idea as they could be a welcome source of new in-store content.

I love watching customers because I can learn plenty. Watching how they enter and exit the business, where they want in the shop – observations can inform better business decisions.

One of the reasons we changed the location of our crafts titles was the observation that 70% of people purchasing from our women’s weeklies display turned left as they exited the women’s aisle. This revealed to us the importance of what they saw on their left side. We moved craft titles to this position and have enjoyed extraordinary year on year sales growth as a result.

So, we have made good money from watching customers.  You can too. It’s easy.

Take time to stand still and observe. No, you can’t do something else while you do this. It’s important. Watch your shoppers and how they move around the store.  Look for patterns.  Use your observations to determine what you place where.

Remember, selling to shoppers as they go to the counter and then leave the newsagency is as important as selling to them as they enter.

Yes, watching customers can be commercially valuable.

Shoppers who shop based on habit are tremendously valuable to retail businesses. Likewise, shoppers who shop to satisfy habits (obsessions, hobbies and the like)  are tremendously valuable.

A habit based shopper to a newsagency would / could include any of the following:

• The magazine shopper who visits for every issue of their favourite magazine(s).
• The magazine shopper who browses the shop to satisfy interest in specialist topics like model railways.
• A partworks collector.
• The lottery customer who puts tickets on at least weekly.
• The card shopper who gets cards for all (or most) card-giving occasions.
• The tobacco product shopper.
• The customer who purchases replacement ink cartridges and or printer paper.
• The daily newspaper shopper.

Customers who shop with you out of habit are, as I have noted, tremendously valuable. They need to be encouraged, respected and loved.

Here is the marketing tip, or question, what are you doing to attract, keep and love your habit based shoppers? What is unique about your offer that gets them back and more of them back? Is it that good that they talk about it to their friends?

A good place to start in considering habit based retail is to make a list of the products and service you offer which fall into the habit based category. Get your team involved in this, listing every item which could meet habit based criteria.  Hopefully, as you create this list you will think of ways to better connect with and serve these valuable habit based shoppers.

While this idea may seem simple and almost of questionable value, I am certain that you will unlock ways to making more money from habit based shoppers – by looking at a type of shopper you may previously not have look at in this way before.

Love your habit based shoppers and they will love you back. You can bank on it!

The product mix in the majority of newsagencies is the same as any other newsagency. To a shopper, the product mix in a newsagency can also be found in a supermarket and variety store.

Newsagents often reinforce this sameness by not breaking free visually.  Looking from the front of the shop in the message is often one of variety with no point of difference or no local branding standing out.

We face a similar challenge to the eateries in New York.  There are hundreds, of diners and eateries on the streets of Manhattan. By diner I mean a walk-in venue where you can get a simple meal to go or have a quick bite sitting in. There is usually not a big difference in fare,l the menu in each is often quite broad but the same.  Each diner needs to find a way to cut through so that they attract some the considerable foot traffic on the streets.

Check out Fluffy’s Cafe Bakery.  Click on the image for a full-size version. How they stand out is through bold branding of their own and making choice easy.  Their pitch is that for any meal you want you can choose one of their sit items or create tour own. From outside the store a passer-by get’s this pitch from four points – each supports the other. If you’re in a hurry, choice is vey easy. If you are fussy, getting exactly what you want is easy.

Inside Fluffy’s the experience matches the pitch. They make it about choice, easy choice.  I have been into plenty of diners in New York over many trips and Fluffy’s is a place to remember because it breaks free from the average.  They do this with a bold street presence backed on a good and consistent message in-store.

This is what each newsagency needs: to stand out, to reflect a point of difference and to live the point of difference. Newsagencies which don’t do this will suffer from the increased competition we are seeing from the supermarkets and others.

So, what do we do? From the front of our businesses in we stand for something, something we own, a point of difference which is ours and ours alone. This is a big challenge for out type of business. It’s a challenge we must meet.

Fluffy’s shows that the customer comes first.  They make we want to come back again.  The challenge for us is whether we reflect a message as strong and simple as that to people who walk past our newsagency and to customers who shop with us.

Check your prejudices, biases and other baggage at the door and think about the retail business which you consider to be the BEST.

Think about why you consider them to be the best.  Break down their business in your head.  In doing this, look for opportunities to mirror what they do.  Their success often comes down to relentless pursuit of their core business principles / values.

The Reject Shop – value; David Jones – aspirational, quality; Boost Juice – healthy; Zara – cheap fashion; Smiggle – fashion stationery.

This tip is another way of saying spend time pursuing your Unique Selling Proposition.  Being a general retailer without an obvious and valuable USP is not good for any business.