marketing tip

I have revised previous Easter marketing ideas that I have published and offer revised content here for early advice on marketing your newsagency for Easter:

1. Have fun. No matter what you do, make sure it involved fun.
2. Promote gratefulness. Easter is a good this for people to be grateful for what they have, family, friends. It is a good season to put a stand of Thank You cards next to Easter cards.
3. Show appreciation. Without being overt, appreciate local people who matter to you and to your business. Your appreciation of them on your business Facebook page is a terrific way to connect with appreciation in the lead up to Easter.
4. Do good. Collect for something during the season. Given the animal theme of so much Easter product, maybe a local animal shelter.
5. Promote reconnect with a friend – send an easter card. Give people a reason beyond the season itself to send a card. Offer a discount: but a card and get 25% of your next. Alternatively, offer to post an Easter card free for any customer.
6. Give rabbits a discount on a set day or days. Give a doubt to everyone who presents as a rabbit. Promote it widely – get the local paper in for a photo. Make the discount worth it for them dressing up.
7. Have a festival of tastes in-store. Invite customers to bring a plate of Easter traditional food to share with others.
8. Invite a wall of stories. If you have a wall available, cover it with paper and invite your customers to write or draw what Easter means to them. this makes the season more interactive.
9. Have an egg eating competition – who can eat the most in 30 seconds.
10. Offer free fried eggs one or two mornings for a gold coin donation to a local charity.
11. Make a giant papier-mâché egg with things you sell (old newspapers, coloured paper, paint). Go big, I mean really big. Taller than a person. Let the kids paint it. Make it a local thing for people to come see.
12. Have an Easter Egg hunt for over 70s. Egg hunts are usually for kids but those over 70 will have a different recollection of the season from when they were kids. Cater to them with a hunt in your shop for tasty eggs.
13. Respect the season. Easter means different things to different people. Respect this outside of the fun you may have. Be sure about your greeting and that it is appropriate. Maybe include a nice message on your receipts.
14. Give away eggs. Freely and with a smile! Contact a chocolate supplier and buy in bulk.

Easter is considered by many to be a small season. I see it as full of opportunity and primed for fun in the newsagency. Chase year on year growth.

We changed the small square Facebook icon photo last week and a few minutes later we had a sale of the item featured in the photo. The photo of the Harry Potter school bag was a hit. We used the photo because we liked it, not actually expecting to make an immediate sale. The experience was a timely rem under two regularly change this photo and to do it regularly.

Every year I publish Christmas marketing ideas. This year, I have put together a small list of my favourite ideas.

1. Pitch easy shopping. People often talk about how hard Christmas is. Be the local business that makes it easy. Tell people how you make it easy.
2. Make the shop less about Christmas. Consider pulling back on the Christmas visual noise. Go for something simple, muted, respecting the season but making a calm statement. Consider declaring the shop a Christmas carol free zone – not because you hate carols but because you want to help customers take a break.
3. Help people rest and recharge. Create a Christmas shopping rest and recovery zone. Offer free tea, coffee, water and something to eat. Encourage people to take a break in your shop – without any obligation for them to spend money with you.
4. Let your customers help each other. Setup a whiteboard or sheets of butcher’s paper, yes keep it simple. Get customers to write gift suggestions under different age/gender groups. For example: Girls 18 – 25, Boys 55+. Encourage your customers to help each other through their suggestions.
5. Make price comparison difficult. If you sell items people are likely to price compare with other businesses, package them so price comparison is not easy. Put items into a hamper as a perfect Boy 8 to 12 bundle for example. Or offer the item with pre packages services if appropriate for an item.
6. Be community minded. Choose a local charity or community group to support through Christmas. Consider: a change collection tin at the counter; a themed Christmas window display; promotion on your social media pages; a donation to their work; a collection point for donations from customers.
7. Facilitate sharing stories. Find space in your shop for customers to share their Christmas stories. It could be a story wall inside or in front of the shop. This initiative encourages storytelling by locals and better connects the business with the community.
8. Leverage Christmas traffic. Encourage the Christmas shopper traffic surge in after Christmas. Give them a reason to come back. A coupon promotion or a discount voucher on receipts could be the enticement to get shoppers back in-store. Note: the Tower POS software produces discount vouchers to rules you establish.
9. Become a gallery. Work with a school, kindergarten, community group or retirement village to bring in local art for people to come and see through Christmas. A small space commitment can drive traffic from family and friends of those with art on show.
10. Make your shop smell like Christmas.
11. Send cards. Send Christmas cards early in the season to suppliers, key customers and local community groups. This connects you with Christmas. Invite all team members to sign each card.
12. Host a Christmas party. For shops nearby. You are all in the season together – let your hear down before things get crazy.
13. Keep it fresh. Every week make significant change to your Christmas displays and promotions to keep your offer fresh.
14. Share Christmas recipes. Each week for, say, four weeks, give customers a family Christmas recipe. This personalises Christmas in your business, creates a talking point and makes shopping with you different to your bigger competitors.
15. Free wrapping. Sure, many retailers offer this. Make your offer better, more creative and more appreciated.
16. Hold back. Don’t go out with everything you have for Christmas all at once. Plan the season to show off what you have as the season unfolds. This allows you multiple launches.
17. Share a taste. Regardless if your type of business, bake a family recipe of Christmas cake, Christmas pudding or Christmas biscuits and offer tastings to shoppers on select days. This personalises the experience in your shop.
18. Offer hampers. Package several items together and offer them as a hamper. Time-poor shoppers could appreciate you doing this work for them. We have seen this work in many different retail situations.
19. Buy X get Y. Encourage people to spend more with a volume based deal. Pitched right, this could get customers purchasing items for several family members in order to get the price offer you have. Use your technology to manage this.

Christmas is the perfect time to plan for next year. It is the time to do everything possible to leverage bonus Christmas traffic to benefit your business through next year.

Asking people to like your Facebook page or other social media outlets is not the way to grow your audience in my view.

Indeed, asking people reflects a fail.

Content matters.

Provide people content they enjoy, get value from, find entertaining and / or interesting … and the likes will come naturally.

It is as simple as that.

An audience of at least 500 people is valuable. growing this by 2% at least every week sees it evolve to become even more valuable.

Content matters.

Don’t chase sales. Don’t be pushy.

Be fun.

Be informative.

Be useful.

Be yourself.

Get it right and people will follow you.

A good Facebook page can be the most valuable local marketing platform to reach possible new shopper traffic available to any small retail business.

This video promoting jigsaws has been a hit. I created it, using a video service I pay to access, as a disposable promotion of jigsaws. I say disposable because that is how we need to see social media content – content to throw up and not think about it as we move on to the next post.

Looking back, though, this jigsaw post got good engagement in a couple of places with people commenting about liking the batteries comment.

I like the jigsaw category in that it fits with the crossword magazine category, is family friendly and lends itself to show floor engagement.

What I have done here is easy. Anyone could do it for little or no cost. The point of my post is that this category is ripe for social media promotion, interest is on the increase.

We are running a Christmas in July promotion for three weeks to attract new shoppers through different approach to a regular sale approach. While this is an optional national newsXpress promotion, each store selects its own products for promotion. In our case we have brought in some products to pitch, to bring a genuine Christmas theme to the opportunity.

Running across the front of the store on the lease line, it is attracting shoppers from the mall. People are telling us they like the 10 x $500 cash prizes on offer.

We figured a Christmas in July retail store pitch was better than a Mid Year Sale pitch as plenty of other retailers, especially in shopping malls, are doing this time of the year. So far, a week in, it is working a treat. We are clearing some slow moving lines and moving at good margin items bough in especially for this promotion.

The traffic boost we are already seeing also plays well for other parts of the business as people drawn by the promotion do shop the shop to see what else we sell. It is a thrill to see this.

In addition to the in-store pitch with posters and displays, we are promoting Christmas in July on social media. This is being done with collateral that matches the in-store collateral. There are also price tickets and other collateral that leverage a single consistent message re the 10 x $500 cash prizes on offer nationally. Here is the main A1 double sided collateral we are using:

By running this as Christmas in July we leverage a growing mini-season in Australia and do so in a way the we can build on over the years if we wish – through a structured approach that does lend itself to consistent execution in-store.

Filling these months between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day with traffic-driving events is important to smoothing traffic and revenue flow in newsagency business. While peaks from seasons and terrific, the troughs can be challenging. It is our job as retailers to fill the troughs with businesses. That is what I am on about here.

Small seasons matter. Today is the day to feature all things pineapple, because we need to attract people for more than the major seasons for which we are known.

There are around 20,000 searched for the term pineapple in Australia every month.many more for phrases with the word.

Pineapple gifts, cards, homewares and novelty items and more are popular. A day like today is an opportunity to shine a light and to make your business attractive beyond the everyday. This type of activity is vital for a transforming newsagency business, it is vital for attracting shoppers who might otherwise not shop with you.

Happy pineapple day!

While Coles supermarkets may gave the fancy, season specific, stand, there is nothing stopping newsagents pitching gift cards with Mother’s Day cards, especially gift cards for their own business.

Gift cards are an easy gift for this season of notoriously last-minute clueless male shoppers.

I share this photo as inspiration to engage with the gift card opportunity in the newsagency.