Talking about the future
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been part of the conference newsXpress hosted in Melbourne yesterday where terrific opportunities for transitioning newsagency businesses were discussed. The large room at Crown was full:
The agenda was varied and included presentations on products never contemplated before in newsagency businesses as well as an exciting magazine title promotion and plenty of good margin deals.
For me, however, it was the products through which we can reach shoppers who might not usually contemplate our businesses that interest. I firmly believe that our buying is a key factor in the new traffic we attract to our businesses. Get the buying right and all other activity necessary to get new people into the business flows.
It is vital for every newsagency business owner to be thinking ahead and planning on attracting new shoppers. There is no more important task we can undertake.
I am a Director of newsXpress. If you want to find out more about the opportunities this group offers your business, please reach out to National Sales Manager, Peter Francis: 0423 298 020.
What to do if traffic in your newsagency is down
If traffic in your newsagency is down and revenue down as a result, you must act. A traffic decline that is more than a blip or related to obvious factors such as street construction or major weather events demands a response.
Doing nothing is not an option. Complaining achieves nothing.
You must act.
- Make your business more appealing to new traffic.
- Reach outside your business to attract the new traffic.
- The more different your response to what you have been doing the better the opportunity of finding new traffic.
Okay, I get that these three points are simple and not detailed. That is deliberate for this post. My goal here is to stat what I see as the obvious: if you do not make changes in your business you cannot expect to alter the traffic and performance trajectory of the business.
You make your business more appealing to new traffic by engaging with new products and product categories.
You reach outside your business through smart and fun Facebook posts that you boost.
These are things any newsagent can do.
If your traffic is down, these are things you must do. The alternative is that you complain next month, and the month after, and the month after that traffic is down. What kind of business plan is that? It’s not, that is my point.
No supplier owes you a solution, no landlord has to fix this for you. Falling traffic is your challenge to lean into and to resolve.
I have seen it resolved. In fact, a dead business I took over less that a year ago is an example of this, an example of recasting the business for a new traffic future.
Success in approaching the declining traffic challenge will demoed on how far you are prepared to go, how different you are prepared to pitch your business outside of what it has been known for. This is difficult if the only retail you know is newsagency as recasting the business involves significant steps away from that traditional business.
Ask for help. Seek to be challenged. There are plenty out there who willingly help retailers recast their businesses.
New faith based cards driving new shopper traffic
We have had several ranges of DaySpring faith based cards in store since prior to Christmas, long enough to get good data to access performance.
In addition to being added to baskets of existing shoppers, the DaySpring cards are helping us attract new shoppers to the business. We are doing this through a thoughtfully crafted social media campaign that seeks to reach people we think could purchase these cards.
Customer feedback has been wonderful.
DaySpring is a Hallmark subsidiary. These cards have never been available in newsagencies or regular card shops in Australia before. It is new ground we are grateful to have the opportunity to tread.
What we are finding is that the DaySpring cards have brand appeal, broader than one may think when you loom at the cards and realise that each contains a bible verse related to the sentiment expressed.
I know one newsagent who has the range who sold $165.00 of the cards to one customer in one transaction … yes, the customer was that thrilled to find the range.
The DaySpring shopper is more likely to purchase multiple cards in a single purchase, making them more valuable than the average card shopper.
We have the range in a spinner, which we move to interrupt destination traffic in-store and thereby have more retailers see the range.
Footnote: the DaySpring range is part of the newsXpress product exclusivity project that delivers newsXpress members access to products they are unable to source elsewhere, providing a range advantage. I am a Director of newsXpress.
Pitching Valentine’s Day in the high street
One of the benefits of having a newsagency with no agency lines is the flexibility to pitch what we want to passers-by how we want.
Here is out front window Valentine’s Day pitch in the high street store we have It is working a treat:
The concept is to kind of wrap the business in the love of the season. It is working in that people are coming in to check out what we have inside … plenty of new faces too.
Being the only shop in the strip shop location this committee to Valentine’s Day helps the business get noticed.
I think it is vital that we pitch seasons like this, out to people in the street as getting them to step through the front door is the most important action you can have them take. Once inside, the shop does (or, hopefully does) the rest.
Give the situation off th store sand the location of the counter we cannot display products in a boxed window. Hence the pitch las you see it in the photo.
Why you need more than one Valentine’s Day display
Look at the store of any major retailer during a season and you will see multiple pitches for the season, no matter how small the store is.
Even in a store of 100 sq metres you will see a key season pitched in at least three locations. I have seen this in gift shops, card shops and similar.
Each placement is visually connected to the other, but different, an advancement even.
This is on my mind today as I have been talking with a newsagent who says seasonal sales are declining in their business. They do one display per season. While it is is in a good location and looks good it is only one display, there is only one opportunity for people to connect.
By having at least three displays, you reinforce the message, hopefully getting through.
It starts with a bold, signature, statement at the entrance.
This is followed by a secondary display behind, usually at a key traffic destination.
This is followed by a third display placement, at or near the counter, where you can impulse pitch.
We should be growing seasonal sales, not only in cards but gifts too. To achieve this, we have to match and better our competitors. This is why I say for this Valentine’s Day, take a look at your pro motion points in-store. Make your you have at least three, they they connect and that they give you excellent opportunities to pitch to shoppers.
It is easy to look at the declining sales for a season or a promotion and blame the economy, suppliers or other factors. The reality is, it is on us as the retailer. We are responsible for the success or otherwise. It is on us.
Valentine’s Day 2018 is a good opportunity to start. Take a look at what you have done and see how it can be improved for greater success. Ensure all team members are on board. Then, make a similar, layered, pitch on social media.
Know last year’s numbers, so you know what you have to beat this year. Involve all team members in this, in the actual number you are out to beat. Everyone in the business should be invested in achieving this.
For me, multiple displays is a key factor for success and changing the displays as the season unfolds is also important. Multiple displays combat store blindness, which is common among newsagency shoppers.
Oh, and take note, people don’t often look up. In fact, there are plenty who do not even look straight ahead.
A single display does not cut it anymore.
For context, here is how my high street newsagency promoted the recent jigsaw offer fro outside the shop to behind the counter to the counter to inside the front door. It could not be missed, and it worked a treat.
How we pitch Australia Day is challenging
All of us in business want to connect with major holidays, for business and for community connection. It is challenging with holidays meaning different things to different people.
Australia Day is challenging as we learn more of what happened on that day, especially that is marked the start of the systematic reduction of the 700,000 aboriginal population down to 70,000.
Without wanting to enter the politics of change the date, through my newsXpress business and my POS software business we sought to recognise the day in two different ways, away from the usual green and gold and barbie approach.
The reaction to each was terrific. We received some wonderful feedback.
I have written this post in the context of earlier posts about the need for us to evolve how we pitch our businesses. This involves us playing beyond the traditional, giving people other reasons to consider us.
Humanise your business with shopper photos
More and more retailers use using photos of shoppers in-store to personalise their businesses. Toms (see photo) is one example. This is something we can do in newsagencies, especially regional / rural newsagencies.
The photos could be of events, customers with purchases, charity engagement, competition winners, local happenings or photos people have brought in that are somehow relevant to the business.
Over the course of a week in the US recently I saw at least fifteen stores with shopper photos like those I have included with this post. I was drawn to look at the photos as were others ion the stores.
I have seen photo walls placed in high profile locations as well as dead space locations. The where can be stored out. Starting somewhere is smart.
A photo wall shows your business as supportive and engaged beyond simply trying to sell stuff. I think there are enough who would appreciate this to make it work the try.
Small business newsagents help parents contain back to school costs
Small business newsagents are doing an excellent job serving local families and schools with access to an excellent range of stationery and other supplies at competitive prices for the 2018 back to School season.
Watching TV and reading the newspapers you would not know this as the mainstream media are focussed on big business stories about Back to School as well as stories about this year being more expensive than last – although the actual evidence of this is scant.
Local newsagency businesses give parents the best opportunity to save money and to support their local school community.
While big businesses spend a ton of money advertising they are cheaper, small business newsagents work hard to be competitive, they deliver.
Being competitive is not just about price, it is also about practical support for local schools and families. This support often comes in the form of practical assistance, prizes for competitions and other support. This and other support is often done without self promotion, without beating the chest like we see big businesses do so regularly in the media.
Sure, the percentage of Back to School won by small business newsagents is less years ago, it remains an important part of business for plenty of newsagents and an important service for local communities, especially in rural and regional Australia.
Local schools and parents of kids in schools need to support their local small business newsagencies if they expect to knock on their door looking for support for the school during the year. Custom today is what makes it possible to provide support tomorrow.
Free workshop: Ideas for transforming your newsagency in 2018
Ideas for transforming your newsagency in 2018.
A free management workshop for newsagents.
newsXpress invites newsagents from across Australia to free management workshops. We also offer to fund air travel for newsagents to ensure easy access to this important event.
Hear how newsagents are transforming their businesses, finding new customers, enjoying a new lease on life. We will share case studies from city and country newsagencies.
- See new, exclusive, product that is attracting new shoppers, product you have never seen at a gift fair or trade show before.
- See greeting cards not available in any other newsagency, greeting cards that appeal to shoppers beyond the usual caption range in Australia.
- See the evidence of success of the newsXpress multi-site web strategy that is driving online as well as in-store sales. We will share the latest sales data.
- See the newsXpress P&L – demonstrating transparency.
Here are the only dates in this series. Please tick your selection.
- ADELAIDE: 5th Feb, 10am @ Rydges South Park, 1 South Terrace SA 5000
- SYDNEY: 6th Feb, 10am @ Hilton Sydney, 448 George St Sydney NSW 2000
- BRISBANE: 7th Feb, 10am @ Brisbane Riverview Hotel, Kingsford Smith Dr,
- PERTH: 8th Feb, 10am @ Parmelia Hilton Perth, 14 Miller St Perth WA 6000
- MELBOURNE: 9th Feb, 10am @ Grace Park Hawthorn Club, 6 Hilda Crescent
I am posting this here as I am a director of newsXpress and will be hosting each workshop.
Book by emailing help@newsxpress.com.au or by using the booking form.
If you have any questions, call me – 0418 321 338.
Beware the doom and gloom reporting about Facebook
News outlets and some social media commentators / consultants have been saying the sky is falling following the announcement from Facebook last week of planned changes to their news feed algorithm.
As often the case, plenty has been said about what might be. I think we are better off waiting to see what actually happens, how the algorithm changes actually play out. Once we see those facts those of us who make active, daily, use of Facebook for our businesses can adjust accordingly.
Facebook is a business. It’s sole focus is share price. Share price is driven, in part, by revenue. Revenue is tied back to boosted posts and advertising. Advertisers will spend money if they can make money.
While we need to wait and see, I suspect facebook will ensure it has a healthy revenue model. That benefits those of use who use the platform commercially.
In the meantime, no, the sky is not falling.
TV campaign for newsXpress
newsXpress yesterday kicked off a national TV campaign promoting jigsaws. 93% of purchases with jigsaws have only one jigsaw in the basket. The goal o the TV campaign, in-store promotion and social media engagement is to drive basket depth – in addition to making newsXpress stores destination stores for jigsaws.
Last year, jigsaw sales increased by more than 10% in Australia, off a strong base. Jigsaw shoppers are loyal.
The more newsagency businesses are promoted outside what have been traditional traditional traffic attracting offers for the channel the better.
In 2018, make every day your payday
For several years, I have written that newsagents need to make every day their payday.
This is an important message as it focuses on the goal of driving business value. Too often, I see retailers working about, being focussed on, the wrong things, things that do not directly affect business value.
As 2018 gets under way, I am pitching this again, with revisions.
Make every day your payday.
There was a time when small business retailers could rely on selling their business for a handsome increase on the price they paid thereby providing a good pay day, when businesses sold for a good multiple of net earnings.
No more. Today, the best way to extract value from our businesses is to make every day your pay day, to not rely on your pay day being the day you sell the business. In fact, the typical newsagency today will sell for somewhere between 1.l5 and 2 times actual net profit as shown in the business P&L.
The P&L matters as this is what you need to be guided by in all business decisions and actions.
The challenge is how do you do this?
Retailers need to look at their businesses differently. This starts with the mindset of every day being your pay day. Each decision needs to be considered in this context, in the context of the P&L impact.
Focusing on profit today will give you a better result today and make your business more valuable tomorrow.
Here are some suggestions for making every day your pay day:
- Run with the leanest roster possible. Just about every retail business I review has capacity to lower labour costs. In a typical newsagency, one hour saved today is worth between $75.00 and $100.00 in revenue.
- Ensure you can sell when the business is closed. Yes, this means sell online.
- Promote the business outside your usual foot traffic area … increase your customer base.
- Promote your business outside the brand people know you as. or example, online pitch under a brand other than your newsagency brand.
- Have your best people working the floor, helping customers spend more.
- Have stunning displays that attract people from outside the shop.
- Have compelling displays in-store that encourage people to browse beyond their destination purchase.
- Always have impulse offers at high traffic locations.
- Charge more every time you can. Loyalty programs such as discount vouchers, bundling into hampers, multi buys such as 2 for 3 and other opportunities enable you to do this by blocking price comparison.
- Buy as best you can.
- Grab settlement discounts every time you are able.
- Measure product category performance by gross profit. Quit the categories that are not paying for themselves.
- Promote outside your store using online and social media opportunities.
- Leverage adjacency information. Chase a deeper basket – people purchasing more each visit.
Be responsible for the profitability of your business. Don’t blame your suppliers, your landlord, your employees or some other external factor … it all comes down to you – the decisions you make and the actions you take.
If you relentlessly pursue profit with a clear focus you are likely to see profit grow. That’s better than waiting to make money when you sell because that’s less likely to happen in this market.
Doing all this relies on your measuring the performance of your business. The Tower software helps with this. It is easy.
If you are open Christmas Day
I love what Shashi and Pallu Patel, the owners of Meet and Deep newsagents in Twickenham are doing for Christmas Day and I love that Twitter enabled me to discover this wonderful story. Read the full report here.
Meet the newsagents in Twickenham who open their shop on Christmas day and put on a family do for those feeling lonely over the festive period pic.twitter.com/QkJ3yX5aF1
— ITV London (@itvlondon) December 21, 2017
Newsagency marketing tip: leveraging passion
One of the easiest ways to attract a new shopper into any retail business is to pitch products that connect with passion(s), theirs or those for whom they purchase gifts. Some passions are easy to spot while others are obscure.
Once you have found products that can tap into a passion, like Kombi vans, the best marketing approach is too pitch outside the business, using social media. I have found a simple post with a good image can be widely shared. better still, I have found it can generate net new traffic for the business.
The success of this marketing approach starts with sourcing products that connect with passions.
Remember, your key target is the shopper buying for the person with the passion.
Newsagency marketing tip: be unique in what you sell
Packaging items together to create a unique item is a terrific way to position your business away from others with similar products.
While other retailers may sell journals, erasers, pencils, rules and similar products. Only you might have the items in a package under a name you created. The photo shows how a premium stationery brand does this.
You can create a unique package with what you have in your shop today. You could package together based on function, colour, brand or more.
For what it is worth, I think packaging by colour is a good starting point.
Beware social media consultants
A small business retailer told me last week they were paying a social media consultant $500 a month for Facebook and Instagram posts. The agreement called for two posts a week. The consultant overdelivered with there to each platform a week.
Six months in to the agreement and the retailer was concerned as they were not seeing any result in revenue.
While the likes for posts were good and likes for the business Facebook page had grown considerably, there was no tangible benefit, no new faces, no in-store mentions of the posts.
In my opinion, social media posts are best if they come from within the business, are simple, entertaining and serve to pitch the business against whats people would assume the business to offer.
Paying a consultant to write posts is dead money as no one can speak for your business sin such an immediate and interactive platform as you and those who work in the business with you.
It is easy to spot social media posts by an agency or social media consultant. It is overthought, often bland, smelling commercial and, usually, overwritten.
Social media consultants can make a strong pitch, helping you with something you may not understand, making it seem easy, coming across as the expert, winning you over with marketing charm.
When it comes to small business social media engagement, the experts are those in small businesses doing it successfully, doing it with a direct revenue benefit. While there may be some consultants achieving this, I am skeptical there would be many.
Sure it is an extra task to complete. The thing is, in today’s world, it is probably the single most important marketing task for the business.
Newsagency marketing tip: control how people see your business
You control how prospective customers see your business. This matters if you want to attract people who are not looking for what they think a newsagency is.
Your front window, social media posts, advertising (if you do any) … in fact, anything you write, say or do outside your business that can reflect on your business determines how people see your business.
If you are concerned people think of your business as traditional newsagency, you know you do not have your messaging right.
The importance of acceptance cards in the card department of a newsagency
Acceptance cards are an often neglected part of the card story in newsagency card departments.
Tucked away, out of sight and not promoted, acceptance cards are always there, but often forgotten.
Yet, acceptance cards represent a point of difference opportunity for us, they and other cards with them can be promoted to pitch a point of difference inn our businesses over other card retailers. They can be leveraged to reinforce us as card specialists.
One way to pitch these small format cards is to talk about the keepsake value of the acceptance card. Wedding couples love having cards to look back on ten, twenty and more years later. Our range of cards in-store allow us to help create these wonderful memories.
Facebook posts talking about making memories is one way we can leverage the opportunity of acceptance cards and similar for our businesses. A thoughtfully written social media post could educate engaged couples about collecting acceptance cards for future memories.
I think too often we expect cards to sell themselves without any out of store call out. We can’t rely on cards to sell themselves at all. No, we have to continually educate people about card giving. We have to show the importance of providing the keepsake memory in a form people will cherish in years to come. This is why I write about acceptance cards today – they lend themselves to this type of promotion.
While you won’t retire on the mo new you make from acceptance cards, you will benefit from reminding people in the area you serve that you have a range and educating them about how loved acceptance cards are by recipients.
Newsagency marketing tip: shining a light on friendship
This image is another example of how an image can drive social media engagement, which then drives in-store purchases.
A brief moment taken to put items together and photograph them pays off when a post drives outcomes at the register. It is easy to do this yourself, without using an ad or social media expert.
This is simple and effective marketing, for which your business can be known and through which your business can break free of the usual advertisements that hit people on social media and elsewhere.
Easy visual marketing is the best given the platforms to which we have access to today.
The value-add purchase that drives magazine sales
This Pacific Magazines value-add purchase supporting several of its titles and exclusive to newsagents in the nexus marketing program is terrific. It will sell out.
There are multiple layers to the promotion we can leverage to maximise the opportunity, beyond the usual magazine focus.
There is a counter unit for pitching the amazing value Model Co. make-up products. This can bounce people to the magazine.
The there is the excellent social media collateral that is ready to use, making pitching the offer on our social media pages, something we can do in seconds rather than minutes.
The folks at Pacific have put a lot of thought into the campaign, giving us an offer that is compelling and supporting g it with materials we can leverage to make it work for us.
This is much better than asking for an aisle-end display that only leverages in-store traffic. this is the type offer that we can use to bring in new traffic or shoppers who do not shop with us frequently.
It is especially useful where one competes with supermarkets, as they will not have this offer.
I have dived right in, promoting this on Facebook and in-store, making the most of it at every touchpoint possible. I don’t often do this anymore with magzines. This offer, however, is different, well worth promoting. I want to sell out, early.
Marketing tip: photograph to a story
When photographing products for use on social media, photograph to a story. Ic you do this you will achieve better engagement. The best story brings together multiple items in a single shot. Here is a good example. My text for this photo would be Happy Monday or Inspiring or Desktop support or Portable inspiration.
