marketing

Here are the marketing tips we have provided to newsagents for this Christmas season. We publish Christmas tips annually to newsagents using Tower Systems software – as part of a broader marketing tips program. I publish them here for anyone to use, modify or abuse in any way they choose.

CHRISTMAS ART
Give your windows over to the kids for Christmas – have an art contest. Give the winner a certificate – it’s about recognition more than money. The art entries, on the Christmas theme, hanging in your window will provide a community connect and add warmth.

DONATION BOX FOR A LOCAL CHARITY
Talk to a local charity and offer to put a collection box at your door for customers to make a product donation which fits the needs of a local charity. Include photos of work the charity does. Invite the charity to let its contacts know what you are doing.

EMBRACE THE SEASON FROM YOUR DOOR
Change your floor stock as much as you can. From just inside your door have your first offer, then another followed by another – each with a Christmas theme and a compelling deal. Design your store layout for Christmas success, let it do your selling for you.

CREATE A TOP TEN
People love lists. Book and music retailers (online and retail) use them to great effect. Create a top 10 for your shop. You could even start with a Top 3 for under $10 or a Top 3 for under 15 year olds etc. Create the list or lists and update them each week. Put the list in a prominent place and locate the top performing stock nearby.

SHOW PEOPLE WHAT TO BUY
Create space to display Gifts for Mum, Gifts for Dad, Kris Kringle Gifts. If space is short create one display for a week and replace it with another the next week and so on. Plan in advance what you’ll recommend and create a flyer to give to customers with your recommendations/promotions. If you can’t create a full on display you could use bookmarks or some other tag to indicate that an item is a recommended gift for MUM or for DAD.

EMBRACE HAPPINESS
Have a staff meeting. Talk about Christmas and how important it is to customers and the business. Get employees to ‘buy in’ on the season and how it’s a time to be happy. Be generous – hand out gifts to your team. Be happy yourself and commit to a happier workplace. It’s infectious. Customers enjoy a happier business. Through the busy period bring in treats and find other ways to maintain the happiness.

REST
Schedule enough time for rest. Recharge and make your days more successful.

COUNTDOWN
Create a H U G E handmade countdown calendar – behind the counter. 20 sleeps to go, 19 etc. Put this on badges if possible. This could be a point of some fun.

SERVICE, SERVICE, SERVICE
Christmas is stressful for shoppers. Be sure to have extra staff on hand to help reduce the stress and help your customers buy their gifts in your shop.

It’s a challenge to draw together the range of Christmas related items. The result below is thanks to a window dresser we bring in for the season. Tomorrow I’ll post photos of what he’s done inside the shop. The idea of using lights in the newsXpress Christmas bauble is one I picked up in London a couple of weeks ago.

This week’s New Idea hit the shelves three days early – Friday last week – with the Belinda Emmett feature. Woman’s Day came out as usual on Monday with a similar feature. The three days have made a difference in my newsagency and others I have spoken with – New Idea is ahead of average weekly sales by 20% and Woman’s Day behind by 15%.

As I have covered at my Tower Blog, we are close to finalising the Tower Systems 2006 Fast 3 Awards. The Fast 3 are the three fastest growing newsagents using our software. Through the awards we are encouraging newsagents to compete with themselves – to enter they print a report which compares sales over a ten month period in 2006 with the same period in 2005. We measure on unit sales. The three with the most growth win. With over 1,300 newsagents using our software today we are drawing from a considerable entrant pool.

The Fast 3 Awards gets newsagents interacting with their software. They underscore the importance of competing with yourself and reward growth regardless of the size of the business. Entrants are vying for prestige more than a financially rewarding prize as this is more about the process than anything else.

There is no comparable growth focused award for newsagents.

A year ago at newsXpress we decided to invest in Halloween this year in terms of marketing collateral for our stores. Some people thought we were nuts and that our planned group-wide $25,000 – $35,000 investment in marketing collateral was nuts.

Patting ourselves on our backs it’s pleasing to see activity at Movie World on the Gold Coast, Australia ZOO and in Better Homes and Gardens in a Halloween feature. The newsagent connect is that we sell materials for decorating the home, school or workplace and we have a range of Halloween products such as cards that light up, severed hands, candy baskets, cobwebs, witches brooms and face masks. In my own shop we have not encountered one negative customer comment.

Disclosure: I an a Director of newsXpress, a national group with 95 newsagent locations.

newsXpress is providing its 95 stores with an exclusive calendar deal which delivers the best margin for any calendar this season. Inside, customers find vouchers providing access to more than $90 worth of discounts – two for each month – luring customers back to newsXpress outlets. Priced at $2.95, the newsXpress exclusive calendar is well positioned in the marketplace. The calendar is being supported by a range of marketing collateral. I expect it to be a sell out. What makes this news is that it’s a first for the channel.

This calendar deal is another example of the benefits of a group of newsagents as one on a commercial deal. Unlike deals negotiated by some industry associations, this deal more than doubles margin newsagents are used to. The deal also puts pressure on newsagent marketing groups – there is strong competition between newsXpress, Nextra and Newspower and newsagents are the winners.

Disclosure: I am a Director and shareholder of newsXpress.

This is a photo from newsXpress Garden City (QLD) showing how far they have gone in embracing Halloween. It’s great to see this activity built around having fun in retail.

Okay so it’s American and based in occult and other ‘scary’ things. Halloween is fun. At least that’s how we’re seeing it in my shop and, thanks to great marketing collateral from newsXpress, 90+ other newsagencies. We have embraced Halloween and even though we’re only a few days in are already experiencing strong sales. We have cards and bears from the US (exclusively) and a range of novelty items from Australian companies plus Halloween chocolates. Based on current sales I’d expect us to sell out of our range. As far as I know newsXpress is the only marketing group running a Halloween season in Australia. The real fun comes in a couple of weeks when everyone dresses up for the day.

Well, not quite. We leveraged the OzLotto and Powerball jackpots this week into a super syndicate providing tickets in both draws – a $35 million prize if we’re really lucky. The syndicate sold out in record time. So did the next. People like to dream and the key is to make the dream opportunity spectacular.

We love lottery syndicate customers as they browse longer and spend more on other product.

Footnote: OzLotto did not go off last night making another great trafic generator for newsagents for next Tuesday. Note suppliers – Tuesdays are no longer a soft retail day inn newsagencies.