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newsagency marketing

Facebook by the numbers

Here are numbers released by Facebook at their latest results announcement overnight. The numbers reinforce why the Facebook community is valuable for small business retailers to leverage.

• Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.37 billion on average for September 2017, an increase of 16% year-over-year.

• Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.07 billion as of September 30, 2017, an increase of 16% year-over-year.

• Advertising revenue for three months ending September 30 jumped 49% YOY to $10.14b.

• Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 88% of advertising revenue for the third quarter of 2017, up from approximately 84% of advertising revenue in the third quarter of 2016.

• Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures for the third quarter of 2017 were $1.76b.

• Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $38.29b at the end of the third quarter of 2017.

• Headcount – Headcount was 23,165 as of September 30, 2017, an increase of 47% year-over-year.

[All figures US$]

Source: Mediaweek.

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Newsagency management

Facebook community growth is as important as shopper traffic growth

Growth in the number of likes for your business Facebook page(s) is as important as growth in shopper traffic through your front door.

I see a direct correlation between the two, if you use Facebook well. Of course, if is the important word in that statement.

I have been actively using Facebook for business for many years. It is an excellent platform of reaching new customers and talking with existing customers. It is an important tool in business growth.

HOW DO YOU GET MORE LIKES ON FACEBOOK?

This is simple, provide good content, content that gives people what they come to Facebook for – entertainment, inspiration, a laugh. The more you do this the more your post will be liked and shared. The more likes and shoes the more people you reach.

Growth in likes for your page begins with your content. If your page likes are not growing, look at your content.

While you can ask people to like your Facebook page, resulting likes may not be as valuable as those who like your page of their own accord.

You can also buy likes. That, however, is a waste of money.

HOW DOES A BUSINESS USE FACEBOOK WELL?

Businesses that use Facebook well entertain. This can be by making people laugh, smile, feel emotional or be happy overall. They do it by being human, real and engaged. They do it by not trying to sell. They do it y not being commercial.

Photos are real, not studio shots, showing products in use more so than on the shelves. They show customers, happy customers.

They share something of themselves.

A newsagency uses Facebook well by not writing about products newsagents sell.

HOW DO MORE LIKES OF YOUR BUSINESS TRANSLATE INTO MORE SALES?

Someone engaging with your business Facebook page is similar to someone browsing your shop. Both can lead to sales.

People being on your page and engaging with your page brings them close to you and proximity = sales.

The more people who like your business Facebook page the more people you can pitch and offer to or reach out with an event or product announcement, them more people who will hear what you have to say.

Take Facebook seriously as a key business tool. The benefits are real and valuable.

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Management tip

Promoting early Christmas card purchases

We are engaging in-store and out of store campaigns to attract earlier shopping for Christmas, especially for Christmas cards – both single and boxed.

We are using several messages in the campaign, designed to engage in a light way with the early shopping opportunity.

I like the monochrome collateral created by a team member as it sits well against colourful cards. Too often I see colourful collateral with cards, and it is lost.

The messaging in the campaign will change over the next four weeks for what we consider to be the early part of Christmas shopping. The messaging is consistent in-store and online, to leverage the value of repetition.

It is important we evolve how we pitch our businesses. People will pay less attention if our messaging does not change, because it will be the same old.

If you are worried Christmas this year will be the same as or worse than last year, you still have time to change your messaging, brings in new stock and create a different story to what you have done before.

Average results happen in businesses where they do average things.

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Greeting Cards

The value of specialisation in independent retail

Specialisation is more important in independent retail today than ever.

With the lines between retail channels blurred what was a differentiating yesterday is no longer today.

Take stationery. Our channel dominated this twenty years ago. Today, we are not dominant with supermarkets, stationery specialty, online and new stores like Typo, Kikki.k and Smiggle doing this far better than us.

Look at the five pillar categories on which our channel was built – newspapers, magazines, cards, stationery and lotteries – each of these is available outside our retail channel with more purchase outlets being added.

On the upside, opportunities abound for businesses that specialise well.

By specialisation I mean going deep into a niche or product category and serving the interest well through product, knowledge and service.

I have seen newsagency businesses redefine themselves by specialising in a way then had never before considered, often in a category or niche far from what was traditional for a newsagency business. In the cases I am thinking of, they have not fully turned their back on the traditional newsagency offering. Rather, they have introduced their specialisation within their business, as an add on, bringing to the business a valuable additional traffic driver.

Specialisation does not need to dominate the business. However, it does need to be enough for people to be prepared to drive a distance to see what you have or to purchase over the hone or online because of your broad and unique range.

The photo with this post is a wall of playing cards I found in a store I visited recently. It has more cards than I can recall seeing in any other business. This is the type of specialisation I am talking about – affordable in terms of inventory investment, space and management time.

There is no limit to what you could specialise with. That is what is terrific in this consideration. You can specialise with products that stray far form what one might usually find in a newsagency. Your specialisation is an opportunity to create a business within a business, to give a new range of shoppers a reason to consider your business.

While specialisation can be challenging, the benefits can be considerable. Take your time as it could be you need to try several concepts before you find what works in your business.

This is what is important in retail, evoking your business, evolving your focus, reaching new audiences.

Standing still is not an option. 

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Newsagency management

Newsagency marketing advice: use videos on social media

Using a video on social media to pitch a product range can be far more effective that still photos. Experts disagree on time and other factors for videos. I have found that for most products I pitch, a video of between 15 and 30 seconds works best. It needs to be not over-produced. It needs to feel it is from you.

Here is an example of a video I used in a Facebook promotion recently, the engagement was terrific, including plenty of shares of the video. Purchases flowed as a result. It is simple, not produced. Those types of videos tend to work better in my experience.

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marketing

Campaign promoting no minimum on card use

This Mastercard campaign promoting no minimum for card use to pay for a purchase will further educate shoppers to seek out retailers with no minimum.

I like the benefits for retailers that they list at their website:

  • In addition to missing out on up to 40 percent of their business if they impose restrictions on low value transactions, retailers will find that cashless payments are quicker, cleaner and safer: Quicker: With options such as MasterCard contactless technology, payments are virtually instantaneous meaning faster queues and the ability to serve more customers
  • More hygienic: Not exchanging money means bills and coins with germs don’t change hands, that is especially important in the food service industry
  • Safer: Card transactions reduce the volume of cash handling and the amount of cash exchanging hands, being transported or in the till therefore decreasing the risk of theft

I agree with all of these.

Check out this video illustrating customer engagement with a no minimum:

We have had no minimum in my stores for ages. It makes sense.

I understand the challenge for low-margin product, like agency product. However, for the benefits noted above I suspect I would also offer no minimum and for any agency line where it was not viable I’d stop supporting the agency line.

What I am after at the counter is less friction. To me, a minimum or a surcharge is friction. It is you giving your customers a reason to shop elsewhere. That does not make sense.

If you have a card minimum or have a card use surcharge and you are concerned about declining revenue, consider changing immediately to remove the friction of the current practice.

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Newsagency management

Successful diary promotion on Facebook

This simple and colourful post on Facebook worked exceptionally well for us. In addition to terrific online engagement, we saw action in-store as a result. What I love the most is that the product gave us a way to pitch diaries in a way that was more engaging, more successful.

The post is from over a week ago. The engagement data shows it to be one of the most successful promotions in months.

Simple is best when it comes to social media.

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Diaries

A personal shop local pitch cuts through more

Small business retailers love to call out for people to shop local and save jobs. Often, such pitches consist of sharing art created by others. I think a more personal pitch is more likely to get better engagement.

Make a more personal pitch by using your name and telling more of a story.

Here is a pitch I saw in front of a coffee shop recently. That I noticed it shows some level of cut through.

Here is a close-up of their second sign. I am sharing this as it is an interesting type of engagement – shoppers donating to get a tattoo for the business owner.

This shop is in Copenhagen so there may be local interests and culture at play here. Jack wasn’t there so I couldn’t find out.

I guess my point is that we all have to find our own way on how we engage to pitch shop local. Sometimes it is easy. Other times it takes a few missteps before we find our way.

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marketing

Make the most of terrific Better Homes and Gardens Christmas gift offer

Newsagents who are part of the Pacific Magazines nexus program have a terrific marketing opportunity to this week thanks to this Christmas-themed gift with purchase with Better Homes and Gardens magazine. These cake pans will be popular – but you need to be onto this right away.

Placing the display unit at the front of the store, where every customer entering the business can see it, will increase sales. This is not a hope, it is fact based on the sales results from last year. Comparing the performance of stores with a gift with purchase offer in a stand like this placed in the best location versus those without and those who did not leverage their stand.

My advice is if you are part of nexus, go out with this stand right away, in the best location. Plus, promote it on social media. This is a traffic generating opportunity as it differentiates your business from competitor businesses. Understand the value of being able to say shop here for this limited-edition gift with BHG that it will be hard your you to find in other retailers.

Yes, I have said here before that promoting magazines on social media is usually not worth it.l This is different in that you have something to promote that others do not have. That is why I say go for it!

If you compete with supermarkets, c-stores, petrol outlets and similar, actively leverage this offer as they will not have it. This is your moment to distract from them.

How well we as a channel engage will be watched not only by pacific but by other publishers. This is out opportunity to show we can do national differentiating promotion well.

While the gift with purchase pack does have a slightly higher cover price, the increase is considerably less than the value of the gift.

Note: retain these bins as the December issue of Home Beautiful will be supported with another NEXUS only GWP that is also themed around Christmas and is a bakeware.

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magazines

Using Google AdWords to pitch to those looking for a competitor business

 

You can pay Google to have your company listed if people search for a competitor. In a real-life high-street situation, this is like putting a billboard up directly in front of a competitor business location, so that everyone heading for that business saw your billboard first.

This is a common form of online advertising. Google advertisers pay Google for each click on the ad.

Newsagency software company POS Solutions recently complained a competitor of theirs, Retail Express, was doing this to them.

This week POS Solutions has been doing it to my POS software company. This is a reasonable form of paid advertising allowed by Google.

Landing people on your business website naturally, without having to pay for the click, is the most valuable landing you can have. It is free and the click to the page is purposeful as it was a sought-after destination.

The best way to achieve this, to land the people you want on your web page is to have fresh and valuable content. Google has smart algorithms for assessing this. Their determination shows in the natural search results, those listed after the Google ads, the entries that say AD. AD means the position has been paid for, the positioning is not a natural result based on content.

I do not use Google AdWords for any of my businesses. Rather, my focus has been and continues to be to ensure fresh, relevant, trusted and enjoyable content on each website with which I am connected. The high Google ranking of each of the websites, more than twenty in number, reflects the value focussing on these points: fresh, relevant, trusted and enjoyable content really does matter, to Google and to people searching online.

If your site is not ranked in Google search results where you want it, work on the site before you start spending money with Google to get it placed ahead of competitors. By work on the site, I mean: ensure fresh content, on-point meta data, regular SEO work and more to ensure Google sees your site as offering value to the Google ecosystem. Paying for ranking is an option but searchers do see this as an ad and not as a natural result.

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Management tip

Newsagency marketing tip: bring warmth to your shop layout

Best practice in retail layout and fixtures today is to no longer use traditional built-for-purpose fixtures. The more everyday warm furnishings you use the better, with different colours, shapes, sizes and textures. Real life used is even better. Sorry traditional shopfitters.

No longer does everything you use to display and hold product need to look the same or connected.

Here is a good example from a leading US fashion and homewares store I saw recently. Their use of the cupboard is exactly what I am talking about.

Click on the image for a larger version.

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marketing

An excellent example of terrific visual merchandising

Here are four photos showing terrific attention to detail in a small Halloween themed display in a bookshop I visited earlier this week.

Not only is the display eye-catching, it makes excellent use of a small amount of space and it pit shed products from a range of different categories. In fact, I count six different product categories represented.

This is a smart display, especially for the space it takes. Rather than the old-school big and bold aisle end display newsagents bare still encourage to create, here is a small format display in a tight space. It is a display that represents ts a narrative and this is another reason I think it is smart.

I hope you find it as inspiring as I do.

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Newsagency management

Nothing like AFL Grand Final week to drive newspaper sales

That Richmond is in the AFL Grand Final this coming Saturday is appreciated by all newspaper retailers in Victoria as it is delivering a welcome boost in sales.

Victorians love their AFL football, especially if Victorian teams are in the Grand Final.

Had this been a Greater Western Sydney / Adelaide Crows Grand Final newspaper sales would almost certainly have been down. But it is not, and that is good.

That it is Richmond makes it even better value for us because of their battler status. They are not a rich or strong club like Collingwood, Carlton, Geelong or Hawthorn. Richmond is a local suburban club with roots back to the 1880s. That is at the root of the passion.

Engaged newspaper retailers are supporting Richmond this week to make the most of the supporter opportunity. This is a no-brainer. Posters, colours and other things in-store show an engagement that almost all Victorians will appreciate.

News Corp. is leveraging the opportunity well for newsagents:

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newsagency marketing

Newsagency marketing tip: don’t promote competitor businesses

I don’t understand why newsagents share on their Facebook page a post from another newsagent’s Facebook page where they have no commercial or group relationship with the other newsagent.

If you like what they have done and you have the product in your shop too, write about it yourself.

Sharing can be lazy posting. It is okay sometimes, but often not.

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marketing

newsXpress TVC is driving in-store traffic

It has been hard for Foxtel’s 2.2 million subscribers to miss the newsXpress TV commercial running over the last week. Funded by newsXpress and supported with a strong social media campaign as well as in-store marketing, the TV campaign has been successful at driving net new traffic.

Basket data indicate valuable engagement beyond the basic buy 2 get 1 free pitch. Plenty are buying more of the promoted Beanie Boo product. Plenty are buying other products while in-store.

Landing new shoppers in-store is tough work. newsXpress is doing this at a national level for its 243 retail locations and doing it through a product that historically was a toy shop and national retailer product. The campaign is part of a long-term and integrated strategy that has recast the focus of newsXpress to new traffic areas while not disrespecting traditional newsagency shopper traffic.

To those who say the buy 2 get 1 free deal is nothing special – you’re entitled to your view. This is the second year running this promotion for a reason.

To those who may want to mock Beanie Boos, a country town newsagency with a population of 5,000 selling $23,000 in Boos in a year and achieving the best return on floorspace of all products in-store from Beanie Boos is one example of many success stories. In the city and country, Beanie Boo and associated exclusive products are an excellent new new traffic driver product.

To those who want to criticise newsXpress for any reason, that is your right. However, criticise with facts. The facts here are, this campaign is a terrific commercial and new traffic success.

To those who may say not all newsXpress members participated, yes, that is true. I think those who chose to not participate are dills.

To the other marketing groups who say I should not write about newsXpress here, remember, there is an open invitation for you to share your success stories here.

Note: I am a Director of newsXpress.

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marketing

Choose social media images carefully

This painting of a cat is on a card form Hallmark. I have more success with this photo on social media than a photo of the whole card. People like cats, and dogs (I guess). If they see a nice image of a cat they may pause. That is the first step to achieving engagement with on social. Try it. Your card department should have opportunities like this.

Oh, and this is up to you and not your card supplier.

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Greeting Cards

Marketing tip: smart use of social media

The folks at Tims garden Centre in Campbelltown use social media well to connect with the local area and to compete with big retailers. This post from them showing off the performance of their potting mix compared to that from a big retailer is a perfect use of social media. They market by showing. The evidence speaks for itself in terms of the superior products they sell and in terms of people who engage with their Facebook page.

Social media posts need to entertain, inspire and / or help people feel good. What they do at Tim’s Garden Centre is ideal.

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marketing

newsXpress seeks out new shoppers with unique t-shirt product

Newsagency marketing group newsXpress last week launched Chalk-Apella t-shirts through its retail locations.

Sourced direct from the product creator at an international gift fair months ago, newsXpress is helping members launch the products in-store with stunning displays, a professional (A1 printed both sides) poster and a locally made marketing video.

newsXpress sourced the t-shirts direct from the supplier. It has managed the launch inn Australia: providing marketing posters, producing videos, creating best-practice displays and supporting the launch with a massive social media campaign and backing it all with a terrific website.

Here is an in-house produced video launching the product:

Here are a three of the in-store displays:

Here is newsXpress collateral provided in digital and A1 format for in-store use:

The reasons for sharing this are to show the launch of a product that is different to what you might expect to see in a business from the newsagency channel and to show how the new product is being launched in-store.

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Management tip

Newsagency mareting tip: preference suppliers who promote you

Before you take on a new supplier, ask them what they will do to help drive shoppers to your business. Specifically, ask if they have a link on their website to their stockists and whether they would add you to the link.

If there is no link then the relationship will not be as valuable as it may be – especially if the brand is well known and sought after.

The more suppliers linking to your business the better.

In terms of existing suppliers, check out how they promote small business retailers compared to big business. If they favour the latter over you, have a conversation with them.

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Management tip

Value add is a better marketing move than discounting

Discounting is lazy marketing, unless it is an end of line discount to move the last of stock you have or unless it is an event related discount.

Everyday discounting is what I am saying is lazy marketing, discounting being done so you can say you are cheaper than other retailers.

I say discounting is lazy as it is easy. It is easy to copy or beat, making it risky.

In my experience, a better approach is to change the conversation, to change how people view a product. You can do this by bundling the product with other items to create a hamper or package that is unique to your business. You can also do it by creating a multi-buy offer of a price for a single or a better price when, say, three are purchased. You could also create something unique in your business as a value-add for the product, something that the customer will appreciate, that they can only get from you.

There are other approaches you could consider too where a product is seen as being a better offer from you even though you are not discounting as such.

My point is, discounting is easy to do and easy to copy. Shoppers buying only on price are not loyal. Add value is some way and you are more likely to be remembered by a shopper.

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Management tip

Pitching magazines on social media drives traffic for the newsagency

Facebook is a terrific platform for pitching products that may not be top of mind and products people can purchase as gifts. This is true for magazines, especially niche titles, like train magazines.

The image shows a post I did on Facebook this week pitching train magazines. Without mentioning Father’s Day, it is one of several posts pitching dad friendly magazine titles.

When doing a post like this that is designed to show off a unique and carefully selected range of magazines, I boost it for one day for $2.00. It works a treat. Posts like this have resulted in feet through the door.

4 likes
magazines
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