Home Beautiful is the poor cousin of the in the Home and Lifestyle magazine category. It is often beaten for display space by Notebook, Real Living and Vogue Living. The latest issue of Home Beautiful, out Monday this week, came with good collateral to support a $40,000 new kitchen competition.
Good collateral means that Home Beautiful gets a good position and, hopefully, a good sales boost.
In response to questions posted here, we have put together some notes on how we go about running our Intralot Lucky Bingo syndicate at newsXpress Forest Hill. The information is published here as information and not as advice or a recommendation.
The BBC has announced a worldwide live tour by the Top Gear team. The show will tour to 15 countries including Australia with Sydney a confirmed city. In Auckalnd on friday I saw one store selling Top gear boks, DVDs and a game as well as the magazine. Given the development of this an other worldwide brands by the BBC newsagents ought to consider getting behind more than the magazine.
Tote bags are the most popular free gift in magazine marketing departments based on the number we have seen this year. I have lost count of how many have been on offer this year. On Monday, the new issues of Real Living and Bazaar came in, each with, yes, tote bags. We already have a couple of other magazines in-store with tote bags as gifts. This makes the gift less special and therefore less like to drive incremental sales. It certainly makes the exclusive claim some publishers make questionable.
While I appreciate that publishers need to find gifts which fit their budget while connecting with their demographic, I would have thought that there were more options available than constant stream of tote bags we see.
This is a photo of a window display at a Whitcoulls shop I saw in
Inside this store they had many A4 posters promoting a card offer – a free greeting card when you spend more than $40.00. Given that books around for almost half the floors pace in-store I suspect this is more about driving that category than cards. Whitcoulls certainly appear keen to use greeting cards as the discount mechanism to drive business based on the stores I saw yesterday.
We are seeing new customers as a result of the latest Hot Ink promotion. We have had 20,000 flyers delivered to houses around our newsagencies and, as with past flyers, new customers come in seeking product advertised. These results are a reminder of the importance of promoting the business outside our four walls. While it helps to have a good value offer, any professional marketing based on brands and tied back to our newsagency would drive traffic.
The stand I remember most from the GNS Market Fair in Melbourne two weekends ago is the stand by Vodafone – not because it was opposite out stand but because it’s branding was the strongest. They are in control of the visual in a bold and memorable way.
While we can make excuses as to why newsagencies are not as well branded, the reality is that many newsagents do not look at and work on the branding of their businesses. Too often, we follow the rules laid down by suppliers and create billboards for them rather than our own businesses. We do this out of laziness, ignorance or fear. I have found suppliers willing to embrace new ideas around in-store promotion which respect store brand ahead of a supplier brand.
While we cannot brand our businesses around a single offer such as Vodafone, the strength of their visual must give us reason to pause and look at our own businesses.
The photo shows the Father’s Day marketing collateral we have created for our Sophie Randall card and gift businesses – the sign on the left side of the photo. They are the result of a collaborative effort and reflect the style we feel best represents the Sophie Randall brand around the Father’s Day season. The small signs are easy to install – they have a fold out stand at the back. By completing the design to finished art in-house we have been able to contain costs for our group of four stores.
The Sophie experience continues to open opportunities in our newsagencies, beyond what one might expect. We are appreciating learning about brand management, multi-store operations management and merchandising. We have a long way to go. Father’s Day is the first season in a year and a half at this that we feel we are close to where we would like to be.
One decision we made early on which we remain happy with today is that our brand is most important. This is why you will see Father’s Day collateral around our brand and not that of another supplier. While I applaud supplier support in the from of good marketing collateral for newsagencies, sometimes the visual noise from supplier competition for attention is overwhelming. Hence, our decision in the Sophie businesses for a more constrained approach.
Customer reaction of the Father’s Day collateral has been excellent.
In the Newsagency Sales benchmark Report which was published last week I listed some ideas for promoting newspapers in newsagencies. I re-publish them here for interest. Consider these ideas a start. A big risk to newspaper sales in newsagencies is lack of action by newsagents.
I love this winner notification card Hallmark provided for as a follow up to our big bear giveaway as part of Care and Friendship Month. The card is important transparency on our part. It also gives us a way to promote the giveaway after the prize has been won, further showing that winners shop at our newsagency. While these may seem small points, they are important in creating an aura around our business.
Dad’s Nuts from Morish gets my vote for the best Father’s Day product for 2008. The name is brilliant, value fantastic, product quality excellent and the packaging stunning. Customers are loving Dad’s Nuts. I have spoken to several newsagencies and sales are good. When I first heard the name I thought people would react negatively. The opposite happens – people laugh, the love the name. While this is a newsXpress exclusive, I am yet to see a new Dad product so engaging.
There are radio ads running in Gippsland promoting Newsink and newsagents selling their ink and toner product. The value proposition is that if you can find ink cheaper elsewhere they will beat it by 5%. While it is great to hear newsagents being advertised on radio, I’d rather the pitch be one of leadership – this is our unique selling proposition, come and shop with us rather than think of us if you see a good price elsewhere.
A couple of marketing specialists I have spoken with say the low price guarantee approach works as it positions you as the place to go to when price is the key determinant. If the newsagents want to sell on price it is a good strategy. However, there are other ways to pitch on price without guaranteeing to be the lowest and without cutting margin in an already slim margin category. There are plenty of examples of clever use of hero products to drive price perception without being the cheapest on all products.
For ink and toner I am happy growing sales based on competitive (but not always the lowest) prices, a good range and great service. I like this approach because it is sustainable, it better fits with the newsagency model and reflects the approach national brands prefer – the last thing they want is to turn ink and toner into a liquor or soft drink price model where massive discounts are offered on a rotation basis. This will happen is we train people to buy this way.
At Forest Hill we have been playing in the ink space for more than three years. Growth continues to be excellent. It accounted for 40% of stationery sales on the 2007/08 financial year, up from 30% for the previous financial year. While we send our flyers, this is part of a co-ordinated campaign which pursues sustainable growth.
Disclosure: I am a Director of newsXpress which offers the Hot Ink ink and toner strategy. I am also a Director of Inkfast, an online ink and toner business.
ACP magazines has a good pitch at their website again this year for Father’s Day. I wish I could offer my customers a change to win a Holden SV valued at over $85,000.
We are promoting The Flying Scotsman partwork in our model train category as well as the usual partwork space. With model magazines selling so well in our newsagency, co-locating The Flying Scotsman makes sense. Model magazine customers are loyal if you maintain a good range and make browsing easy. They are efficient too, often buying two or more magazines at once.
We are promoting the OzLotto jackpot above our main magazine aisle again this week. not that Tattersalls would care. They only care about how we promote in their space. Smart retail is about leveraging traffic from one department to purchase from another.
If only they treated us as business people and recognised this type of additional effort. Newsagents across Victoria are going all out this week yet Tattersalls is only interested in what we do in their area and to their specific standards.
Retail is about creating theatre and good theatre is about the unexpected. Customers become store blind with the same old same old in the Tattersalls area. hence our efforts deep in the store and elsewhere around the $50 million opportunity.
I walked past ACP Magazines’ Park Street office in Sydney and say the stunning display of LCD screens. All connected with content co-ordinated. It reminded me how out of date we are in newsagencies with our paper magazine posters. Installing LCD screens is expensive once you factor in the appropriate software to manage content. however, it is a move more newsagents will make as they want to be visually relevant to today’s marketplace.
Marketing outside your newsagency is essential to growing the business. Too often I see newsagents rely on existing traffic or natural growth to boost sales. The latest Create Art flyer from newsXpress will bring new customers looking for quality art products at good prices. Some of these new customers will stick. The flyer is part of a broader year long marketing strategy designed to drive traffic, sales and depth of spend across multiple categories.
Major retailers spend a minimum set percentage of turnover every year on marketing. The Australian on Thursday had a story about Woolworths increasing its annual spent to $100 million, up 16% on the previous year. While newsagents cannot compete in quantum, they can compete by establishing a marketing budget which is a percentage of turnover. They can then balance the use of that budget across appropriate activities.
The Create Art flyer is a good example of cost effective marketing. Developed by the supplier exclusively for newsXpress, the store level cost can be zero or small depending on the number of flyers engaged and how they are deployed. The key is regular promotion of the business, using compelling offers for different categories, outside the shop.
Smart newsagents will increase their marketing spend across multiple departments in the face of tougher economic circumstances. Good execution will be rewarded with insulation against any downturn in our retail niche. Doing nothing externally sets the business up for average year at best or a drop is sales at worst. Given that rent, wages and other business costs increase annually, chasing growth is the only option.
I have some questions for newsagents reading this:
The risk is that newsagents and other small business owners see external marketing as too hard, that they cannot compete with the $100 million spend of the likes of Woolworths. There are many newsagencies which offer proof that you can compete. It is a challenge but as small business owners we are more local, flexible and connected than our big business competitors. Individual businesses can use this to their advantage. Groups of newsagents such as newsXpress can use their size to their advantage – as the Create Art flyer shows.
Even though the year is barely half over it will be a challenge to beat the launch of Top Gear. This is the best launch I have seen in a long time.
The marketing collateral is excellent, supplies good and the word of mouth around the new title fantastic. These elements make it easy for newsagents to support the launch. Kudos to ACP Magazines for their support.
The reward for all the effort around the launch of Top Gear is excellent sales.
I am often asked by newsagents where they can access good training in marketing without signing up for a long course. While there is no fast way to develop good marketing skills, I have found an online marketing course, Marketing 101, at Smallbizu which looks good. It’s free and from what I can see provides a good grounding in marketing principles. I especially like the structured approach it takes to preparing a marketing plan.
Our Sophie Randall shops were featured yesterday in the Domain section of The Age, in a report about the popular Cow Parade range. The first we knew about the coverage was when customers visited our Melbourne Central location asking about our cows. Their seeking us out as a result of the story is reminder of the value of editorial coverage in newspapers. We are thankful to Jasnor, our supplier of the Cow Parade range for pitching the story to The Age.
At the local newspaper level, newsagents have many opportunities to provide story ideas to editors: events in store, unique products, community support. All it takes is a phone call or a good press release.
I have put together a magazine workshop for newsagents which looks at retail and online trends and presents strategies newsagents can use to grow magazine sales. The goal is that by the end of the workshop each newsagent has an action plan of changes in how magazines are managed and marketed in their business. Most of the changes I discuss do not involve any capital expense and only a small investment in labour.
With magazines considered by most newsagents as a key point of difference they have over other retailers, I figured it was time for us to manage the department as if we believe this.
The workshop is free. I’m happy to present it to any group of fifteen newsagents or more. If you are interested in a magazine workshop in your area, please contact me.
The Chat branded crossword titles are not good sellers in any of our newsagencies. We are giving them a final chance by placing them away from the crossword section and with the Chat weekly magazine. With our crossword category growing more than 20% year on year and these Chat titles going nowhere this latest move is their only hope of staying with us.
4 Ingredients is one popular cookbook, according to our customers. Every couple of days we are asked if we have 4 Ingredients in stock. The question leads to a sure sale.
Once we realised its popularity with our demographic we moved 4 Ingredients to the counter from our cookbook area to try and shake out more sales. The success of this booksays something about word of mouth.
