newsagency marketing

We have been producing an in-store newsletter for years.  We have it at the counter as well as on a stand at the front of the store, on the lease line.  Customers love this newsletter, we often receive complimentary comments.  What is even better is the sales impact we can usually track with products and services promoted in the in-store newsletter.  We connect promotions in the newsletter with promotions in-store.  As A5 version of the newsletter is sent with accounts and slipped into customer bags a coule of weeks of the month.

While the in-store newsletter we use today comes each month from the newsXpress newsagency marketing group, other newsagents can easily product their won using Word or any other document production tool.  I’d encourage newsagents to produce a monthly newsletter.  It deepens the consumer connect, works with in-store promotions and gives the business a marketing tool for attracting business customers and proactive suppliers.

It is Chinese New Year this coming Wednesday and we have had a range of cards and red packets (for giving money) available for some weeks.  Our Asian customers appreciate the service.  It taps in well with lottery sales too.  Chinese New Year is a good seasonal opportunity for retailers, newsagents especially, since it is all about luck and hope.  In past years, when we have had more space, we have dressed the store with traditional Chinese lanterns and other items.  The customer engagement demonstrated the value of retail theatre.  This year, with limited space we have cards, red packets and some news and coverage in our customer newsletter … and a greeting for this Year of the Rabbit.

Kids are loving our Halloween colouring competition and entries have been flowing in.  They brighten the shop and bring in families to look at the art. This type of interactive competition is ideal for newsagencies in that the majors find it too hard to run at a local store.  We get a kick out of looking through the entries – the detail on some is amazing.

I have been asked by a newsagent to look into their situation with a marketing group which they want to leave.  Their reasons for wanting to leave are not central to this blog post except to note that in my view they are legitimate.

Like many newsagents signing for something which sounds like a money spinner (remember Bill Express?), they signed the marketing group contract without reading the detail.  It turns out that they have a five year contract and a further year during which they cannot be part of any group.

This store is in a shopping centre which requires them to be part of a marketing group.  So, they cannot leave as they aree required to be part of a national group.  The only way out of the marketing group is for them to sell their business.

I have suggested that the newsagent take the matter up with an appropriate department in their state as well as with the ACCC.  I suggested the ACCC as the contract is not fair in its handling of this situation.

They have apparently been told by the marketing group that they can leave is they buy their way out by paying the marketing group tens of thousands of dollars.  I suspect this is the amount of money the marketing group would have made off the newsagent.

Even if they stay with the group under sufferance thinking their time is up at the end of 5 years and they can then move on, it still all falls to pieces because of the one year of being required to bot belong to a Marketing group, they then find they cannot debrand or leave the group as some landlords will not allow a non branded Newsagent in their centre especially for 1 year.  This is a year of no marketing and no branding – I’d expect sales to be lost as a result.

Plenty of newsagents are happy with the marketing group in question.  My concern is what happens if someone is unhappy.  Why the need to lock them in?  It is not as if this group is investing any money in the business.  Bill Express locked newsagents in and look at what that cost the channel.

Newsagents looking at any marketing group need to read the contract carefully.  Do not believe the sales pitch, believe only what is in writing as it is this which will dictate the terms of divorce should it come to that.

The friends I am helping will know in a couple of weeks whether their latest efforts at divorce will work.

Disclosure: I am a shareholder in and a Director of newsXpress, the newsagency marketing group serving 175 proactive newsagents around the country.

Talk about engaging the community! newsXpress Riverlink started offering lottery syndicates based on the leaders of the two major parties in the lead up to the election.  Customers could purchase based on their preferred leader.  Given the status of the election result, they are continuing with the offer – and sales have been good.  This is a terrific idea, leveraging the community connection in a newsagency compared to what does not exist in the national retail chains.

I love that this idea is fun, good for business and good for customer interaction.

It’s kind of fun watching Mother’s Day shoppers on Mother’s Day.  They are short of time, often stressed and prepared to buy almost anything.    And so it was today, this morning at least.  Great card, book and gift sales again today.  Your see the occasional shopper which is grumpy that you don;t have a bigger range available.  Most know they have left it to the last minute.

We have made a decision to advertise our newsXpress Forest Hill store on community radio for the next three months. This is in addition to considerable letterbox flyer and other marketing activity we undertake. The community station we are supporting, Golden Days Radio, connects with our demographic and is strong in our region.

Our plan is to run a different commercial each month with an offer for their listeners. We are starting with a commercial about magazines and our unique value proposition. We decided on magazines because of the popularity of the medium among older customers.

We will be on air three times a day seven days a week for three months plus some other promotional activity with the station.

We continue to send out flyers to thousands of homes to promote our ink, books and other offers.  We also promote inside the centre as I have discussed here before.  While advertising on commercial radio would be interesting, we felt that a community radio campaign was worth the investment because of the demographic focus and the community connection.

We are using our display window to promote Mother’s Day gifts and cards. Next to this, just past the window, shoppers in the centre can buy from an even bigger range of cards, gifts and Darrell Lea Mum’s Bags than in the window.

Mother’s Day is tracking well from what we can see – not only in our own stores but others too. We already have empty card pockets and while this is not ideal, it is better than full pockets.

From a gift perspective, we have been conservative in our buying this year, keeping to below $20 for most items and carrying stock which will work in the gift department beyond the season.  The centre has eight gift shops and majors and deep discount stores with gift offers so it is a department we take care with.

Yesterday, it was terrific hearing Anzac Day recognised and those who have fought for Australian recognised in information broadcast in our in-store radio. While newsagencies playing any commercial radio station would have heard similar packages, what made ours special what that it was connected back to us since it was on newsXpress Radio and therefore provided a personal connection to Anzac Day coverage. This connection between our brand and the broadcast personalises the connection.

In-store radio is not widely used in newsagency channels yet our major competitors use it very well.

We are promoting our latest ink offer through a two-page catalogue in thousands of letterboxes as well as in the shopping centre and some other external marketing initiatives.  The result is a terrific sales spike.

You know you have a catalogue which works when customers bring it in with the items they want circled. In-store we connect with the promotion with flyers as well as shelf compelling price labels – as shown in the photo.  This whole of business approach to a category pays off as we are seeing at the moment.

Too often, newsagents will engage in one tactic – an external ad or a flyer or a display in-store – without using this as one of several tactics to form a campaign. As we are seeing with ink right now, we can convert shoppers visiting for something else into an ink customer while at the same time attracting new customers because of our external marketing.  Operating on multiple levels and attracting business from different customers makes it an efficient campaign.

Ink responds very well to marketing investment. There is plenty of market research around to indicate that consumers think newsagencies are expensive. We use it to promote that our newsagency is not expensive in this competitive category.  Once we win a new customer on price they are highly likely to stay with us.

Click here to see a copy of our March 2010 in-store newsletter. We distribute this from a stand at the front of the shop as well as to customers when they shop with us. The newsletter features products which are promoted elsewhere in the business – either in catalogues or on the in-store radio. It covers various categories – key to balancing the business.  We also have a version of the newsletter which we use for email marketing to our database.

We started producing an in-store newsletter many years ago. We have found it to be a useful part of our marketing plan.

We ran our first trial last week of delivering a marketing message for one of our newsagencies by text message.  We have a good mobile phone database which we would like to use in promoting a range of products and offers using this technology – if we can see the return.

The mechanic was that the customer had to bring in their phone and show the message to redeem the reward – in this case a $1 scratchie with the purchase of aspecific magazine at full price.

While we were not swamped with responses, we did have customers come in, show us the message, make the required purchase and get their reward.  Some said they would not have made the purchase otherwise.

Newsagents need, more than ever, to promote outside our four walls – to new customers as well as to existing, and past, customers.  Text message marketing is more about an immediate, almost disposable, offer, it’s the nature of the technology and how it is used.

We already use email marketing so trying text messages was a logical step for us.  We have several more messages in our plans before we take time to analyse the results.  Our feeling is that we need to run a trial over several messages as the delivery method may appeal to some an not others.  This is what we want to find out.

Kudos to Newspower for this brilliant poster which they sent to their stores as part of their Back to School collateral.  Their promotion of the Education Tax Refund program is smart.  It shows participating Newspower outlets as adding value by reminding parents that a tax break is available for approved expenses to qualifying taxpayers.

Their Newspower pitch is a terrific point of difference given that the majors are not pushing this – from what I can tell.

If you are a Newspower newsagent you ought to have this poster in a high-profile location.

The only issue I have is with the government website.  It reads as if the refund was for last year.  The ATO website provides more clarity on this however.

Our January customer newsletter – on display out the front of our newsagency – is promoting back to school, great ink deals, our card range and three sets of branded product deals.

The newsletter evolved considerably over the last year.  It’s current form is more outcome focused.  This allows us to use it in a wider variety of ways to promote the business.

We now start to plan content for each newsletter three weeks out, considering other promotions on at the time and ensuring that we have it produced and ready to go out on the first day of the month.

Our team at Forest Hill has setup a small display promoting Australia Day at the aisle end in our card department which is nearest our main newspaper stand – i.e. great traffic location.  (Click on the photo to see a larger version.)  We will add magazines to the display which feature Australia Day on the cover as well as newspapers on the day.  I have seen plenty newsagents do a great job promoting and connecting with Australia Day – it is part of a good community connection.