Simon Frost at our Frankston newsagency executed one of the Valentine’s Day marketing suggestions I posted here last week. He created a window of love on our front window. While the photo below looks a bit scrappy, in person it works a treat!
We have the pens behind the counter. Customers ask for one, write their message and return the pen. This is interactive retail and it’s fun. The buzz at the front of the shop as a result is excellent.
If you’re running a VIP Club or some similar loyalty program in your newsagency you might want to take a careful look at your numbers. A business I have been working with recently was giving away thousands of dollars a year for nothing. Sure, they were growing, but at a rate no better than others around them. They we rewarding average behaviour.Â
A good loyalty program rewards customers for going beyond the average. If you reward just average behaviour you achieve nothing for your business. The alternative is do a Coles and offer little or no reward – that’s what their FlyBys program is, a nothing reward program.
I created the industry’s first magazine category loyalty program in mid 2004. We still run it today because of the growth it drives and for no other reason. We regularly benchmark our performance against our region and state. The moment we’re below a KPI we have set for ourselves we will either stop or change the program. There is no point in being emotional about this. It’s business.Â
Be wary about the claims by newsagents around VIP / loyalty card success. Ask to see the numbers.
Several of us celebrated the New year last night with a dinner at Bok Choy in Brighton. It was wonderful to experience the misci and dragon in the restaurant and the fireworks on the street in front. The photo below does not do the fireworks justice, just after I took this, we were engulfed by noise, flashes and smoke.
Chinese New year is an important season for newsagents. It is not ‘minor’ as we have seen it in the past. While we have ‘played’ in my newsagencies, last night told me we’ve not done enough. Next year we will go bigger, brighter and have way more fun.
I see a Chinese New Year season as embracing multiple categories and including some serious retail theatre in-store to celebrate the season and what the year will bring.
While over dinner last night I learnt about how the Chinese celebrate, last week, I was at a Chinese New Year dinner at a Malaysian restaurant. It was different again. Both experiences underscore for me the opportunity to embrace the various asian cultures and how they celebrate Chinese New Year.
This is about more than selling cards, scratch tickets or red packets. It’s about understanding the culture and how we can better connect.
We’re giving away a thirty six inch tall Hallmark bear valued at $499.95 to one lucky customer as part of our Valentine’s Day promotion. Just about every newsXpress location has this fantastic promotion – newsXpress organised it nationally. It is supported with good point of sale and other merchandising material.
You know you’re on a winner when people of all ages from little girls through to grandmas walk over and look at the bear – often stroking its arm. I saw first hand yesterday that the prospect of winning the bear resulted in sales.
Giveaways like this are an important part of seasonal promotions. A walk around Forest Hill and Frankston tells me our bear giveaway is the best offer.
Beyond the prize, the bear is part of retail theatre, demonstrating that we are not set-and-forget retailers and making shopping more enjoyable.
I’ve been involved in promotions where there is a national or state based prize as well as promotions like this where the prize is for a customer in the store. I like a local prize better since one of your customers wins. You win too.
I noticed the Valentine’s themed Lovatts crossword title so decided to place it with one of our Valentine’s displays.  People buy all manner of gifts for Valentine’s Day so why not a crossword title?
I’ll take every opportunity I can to promote several categories of products at once around a them. It makes sense. For Valentine’s Day we can pitch cards, bags, plush, the Lovatts Crossword title, journals, books, albums, photo frames, even pens.
I’ve owned my newsagency at Forest Hill in Victoria since February 1996 and over the twelve years have been independent, with Newspower and with Nextra – before joining newsXpress in mid 2005. What I looked for in a group was business building strategies as well as excellent commercial terms. While I am biased about newsXpress, since I’m now a shareholder, my relationship with this brand has been the best for my business.
While any of the marketing groups can negotiate brand based deals, it’s the team behind the brand which drives the point of difference. Below is a photo of the full-time team behind newsXpress. From the national merchandise team to the in-store Business development Managers, this team represents an exceptional resource for my business and the businesses of all newsXpress members.
As with any of the marketing groups, newsXpress is not for everyone. It’s for entrepreneurial newsagents who want to redefine their newsagency and fish for new customers and a build a more valuable shopping basket. Chasing above average growth is hard work and not for everyone. But, then, good rewards do take hard work.
I’m glad to have good relationships with many Nextra and Newspower newsagents. Those groups, too, are not for everyone. I am sure their members would be equally complimentary of them.
Key in assessing a newsagency marketing group is to look at its goals for members and the people who will help you achieve those goals. Finding the right group backed by the right people can make your newsagency a truly valuable investment. The team behind newsXpress is a good mixture of hands-on newsagency experience as well as experience from outside our channel which benefits the brand.
The days of the independent newsagent are coming to an end. Without a well-managed brand behind your business it is easy to get lost in the rush to lure new customers.
Disclosure: I am a shareholder in and Director of newsXpress Pty Ltd.
Here is the first part of our two-part Chinese New Year promotion – we have most of our stock coming in this week. In this initial display we have Chinese New Year cards, red packets and Tatts lottery gift pack ideas.
The display is at our main lottery counter. You can see the Herald Sun stand and then an ACP magazines stand to the right in the photo.
The folks at Notebook have supplied this heart as part of the point of sale for the current issue – it connects with Valentine’s Day. While I like the connect, I’d prefer the publisher and other suppliers to work together for seasons like Valentine’s Day.
By the time we bring in our greeting card, confectionery, gifts and other messages it can get a bit confused.
Getting Notebook on the same page as the card company offer as a minimum would make sense and reduce conflicting seasonal messages. This would make it easier to promote Notebook in the broader Valentine’s display as well as in magazines.
HIT THE ROAD is our latest at-the-counter magazine promotion. We have put together a selection of titles offering outdoor, getaway or travel information.
The border is copies of the map of Victoria – we try and create a border which provides a context for the display.
In this display, as we do each week with these themed displays, we bring to a high traffic area of the shop, titles which are only seen by browsers looking in the category.
While the displays always generate incremental sales for the titles we select, the display reinforces to all who see it that we are magazine specialists and offer more than just the popular weekly and monthly titles.
Beyond the role displays like this play in underscoring our point of difference is the benefit is structuring the ashop floor to upsell. I often find this more effective than the traditional over the counter, in-your-face, upsell.
Good to see the Courier Mail story today about newsagent support for back to school stationery deals and their active competition with majors like Officeworks.
It’s good to see Hallmark embrace Chinese New Year with a full range of cards as well as red packets. This range and the accompanying point of sale material helps participating newsagents have an offer relevant to Chinese New Year. My friends who celebrate Chinese New Year tell me that Hallmark have got the offer right in terms of look and feel of the cards.
These smaller seasons are important for newsagents who want to establish their businesses as the go to places for all seasons and not just the majors.
The Hallmark cards, red packets and lottery offers should work well over the next two weeks in thelead up to Chinese New Year.
I am surprised to see News to Business paying Google for their ad to come up people search for newsagency blog when using the search engine. At first, I thought they were paying for the keyword newsagency. However, after 30 or so clicks, I am certain they are paying for newsagency blog. I guess they think that people looking for this place would be interested in what they are seeking to sell to newsagents. I hope people don’t think I am in any way connected with them. All of the ideas, suggestions and comments here are free for anyone to use but not to sell to others.
The Diet Diary on the cover of Good Health magazine this month is sponsored by Baker’s Delight. If you go to a Baker’s Delight store you’ll see copies of the diary being given away to customers.
Newsagents near a Baker’s Delight would do well to strike up a co-promotion deal with them – it would have been good if ACP had put this together as part of the promotion. I’d like Baker’s Delight stores to promote the magazine in newsagencies and newsagencies promote healthy products from Bakers Delight stores – with the diary as the link.
Kudos to Denis Crossman of Crossies Newsagent, Mayfield for helping a 71 year old customer retrieve items stolen from her. The story in the Newcastle Herald does the newsagent shingle proud.
We have been offering 50% off calendars since Boxing Day at or Frankston location but it is only when we took stock from two of our spinners, put it in the box you see in the photo and labeled it Half Price that our customers really started to take notice.
While it’s not pretty, it’s working. The spinners are okay for the leisurely browsers but this side of the New year it’s about the bargain and that’s what the box gets across.
I opened the door to face Matt, a young guy in his early twenties who was visiting houses in my street to announce that he had just taken over the delivery of milk and bread to my area – he promised on time delivery of fresh milk and bread every day and a couple of movie passes and a t-shirt if I signed up today.
Besides that he had taken the time to visit and ask for an order- I can’t ever remember a newsagent doing this anywhere I have lived, Matt was bright and cheery, he believed in his offer and he was dressed in a uniform appropriate to his generation and product which gave me the feeling that he could deliver on his promises.
Now, Matt could have been a paid recruiter who has nothing to do with the day to day business. Who cares? The key is that the shopfront presented well and this made the business offer more appealing. Building confidence is crucial in that first contact. This is why I bang on here about newsagents needing to look at their businesses from the outside in – from in the mall, across the road and even miles away in houses where advertising literature is received. What do our customers see? Are they as store blind to us as we are ourselves? Too many newsagents are living in the dark ages, running set-and-forget retail businesses where nothing changes
The company behind Matt had made sure that the detail was right – that he knew his products, looked good, have a special offer and and was well trained in making the pitch. It is this attention to detail which we newsagents often fail to address. In store, uniforms are often not enforced, name badges missing and the sales pitch across the counter confused. Outside our stores we often cover our windows, clutter our messages and allow suppliers to control how our businesses look.
Being visited by a milkman asking if I wanted milk home delivered was a surprise. The professionalism of the offer was even more of a surprise.
With more national retailers competing with our newsagencies than ever, we need to be energetic, focused and current in our approach to our customers – in-store and outside our bus8inesses. We need to be like Matt and make people take notice and realise that we do have a current an relevant offer. Otherwise, standing still will cause our relevance to fade.
Footnote: I didn’t order milk or bread as it does not fit my schedule.
Four months ago we started rebuilding the stationery department at our Forest Hill location. The project has delivered year-on-year growth of 29% in revenue from stationery for October, November and December.
The growth can be tracked back to immediately after the rebuilding project was completed.
We quit a ton of old stock, reduced range in some categories, increased range in others and focused more than ever on national brands. The net profit benefit of the project is extraordinary – it paid for itself including labour and capital investment in the first quarter.
In undertaking this project we have exerted more management control over stationery, as retailers and not as servants of a wholesaler or any other party. We dis our research and backed our own judgment and it has paid off. Crucial, in my view, to the project was that it was undertaken by someone who was not store blind to the stationery department in our newsagency.
We are now implementing the same strategy at our Frankston location but with attention focused on the needs of that demographic.
I have been pouring over our numbers this afternoon and our decision to bring in extra calendar, book and card stock for our Boxing Day Sale has paid off across each of our stores. Sales in the three departments on which we focused are up more than 300% on last year since the sale started December 26 – and the base was good. There is no doubt that the excitement around the sale has boosted other categories such as magazines.
Two years ago I lamented here about a disastrous year with calendars. Last year was good thanks to joining calendarXpress. This year is good too – again thanks to calendarXpress. The calendarXpress model is driving better range decisions and better margin and turning calendars into a valuable seasonal promotion – considerably more valuable in my Forest Hill store than back to school. This success is, in part, a commentary on the demographic and, in part, a commentary on the different labour and capital investments in calendars compared to stationery.
While I have been a shareholder in newsXpress since 2005 it was only last year that I embraced the calendarXpress side of the business having had a bad calendar experience a year or two earlier. What I am finding now is that the mistakes I made are eliminated and I am archiving a better margin than before. Plus new customers are being attracted to the business. This is because of the 140 or so calendarXpress locations – not all of which are newsXpress locations – and the benefits of negotiating as a group.
I don’t mean this to sound like an ad for calendarXpress because it’s not. People reading here over the last three years will know something of the journey I have been on with calendars at Forest Hill. Having stumbled taking a typical newsagent approach it is good to see the discipline of the calendarXpress approach work for the second year in a row.
We embraced the Boxing Day Sale party with gusto today. At Forest Hill (photo) and Epping it was busy but ordered, in Frankston and Watergardens it was busier and less ordered. In Melbourne Central it was nuts – every person for themselves. In each store we have seen deep baskets with customers buying four and five packs of cards, wrap and other items on site.
Given the publicity surrounding the Boxing Day Sales in Melbourne, we have found to best to wholeheartedly embrace the opportunity by packaging special offers which deliver excellent value. It’s what they are out today for after all. Doing this demonstrates that we can mix it with the big retailers and that small businesses are relevant at sale time. From a pure numbers perspective, our experience is that it’s worth the effort in our newsagencies and our card & gift shops. The key is to plan in advance so that on the day everyone knows what to do.
Fitdeck started selling in our newsagency when the Herald Sun ran a story about Adam Ramanauskas and his endorsement of the fitness product. We sold out of our first shipment in a week and are now working through our second shipment.
Fitdeck is a product every newsagent should sell – complimentary for buyers of Men’s Health and Women’s Health. We have it at the counter in part because it is in the news and people will recognise it and in part because people ask if we have it. I love that the Fitdeck website promotes that it is available at all leading newsagents and bookstores.
If you found this blog post through a Google or other search are are looking for Fitdeck, you can contact our newsagency at 03 9878 2515.
We are playing the Christmas Channel from SKY.fm Internet radio in two of our newsagencies. It’s a great way to bring in Christmas music without having to change CDs.
Some shock jocks. journalists and commentators – and their followers – have been doing their best to take the Ho Ho Ho out of Christmas.
Our experience, behind the counter in our newsagencies, is they have failed.
A common comment from customers when they see the t-shirt (modelled beautifully by jane and Jo from our newsXpress Forest Hill location) is good on you or some idiot wanted to ban that, followed by a laugh.
We are congratulated, smiled at or, if we are lucky, Ho Ho Ho ed at. We often use t-shirts to connect with seasons and this Ho Ho Ho line has received the best reaction I can remember.
We are featuring car magazines in a display at our front counter. The display took ten minutes to execute yesterday. Key to the display is the cheqered flag border – we found the design online in seconds. Without a bold border, the display would get lost in the visual noise of a newsagency. Whit it, the stand draws attention and incremental sales are achieved.
This type of display which promotes a range of titles from the category is more valuable to my newsagency than focusing on a single title since it promotes range.
I am frustrated that magazine publishers reward you for displays built around their titles but offer nothing for a display like this which, in my mind, is more valuable for the health of the channel on which they rely. While there is a place for bold displays around a single title, this simple stand of ours is more likely to drive incremental sales across several titles than a single title display. Plus, it is more likely to drive these sales in my business as opposed to promoting a title which is ultimately purchased elsewhere.
The newsagency channel tends to reward people for being average, doing what the major suppliers want. True innovation is often ignored – because it’s not understood.
With cricket dominating sports news at the moment we have Inside Cricket and the Inside Cricket Special Edition on display above this newspaper stand at the front of the shop.
We tend to change the titles in these two magazine pockets two or three times a week. The photo shows the offering we have up for the weekend. With the cricket titles are less likely to be successful with our weekday customers we will change tomorrow to something more appropriate. Change is the key. Since newspaper customers are regular, a static display guides them to be blind to the offer.
This display at the newspaper stand is more effective for the business and less stressful for employees than having your team ask for the up sell across the counter.