Tactical display

This is the impulse purchase placement we had at the left side of the entrance to one of my newsagencies over the weekend.  We were using the Better Homes and Gardens brand along with The Block brand to draw attention to other products.

Better Homes and Gardens always works well when placed in this location, especially on weekends – it attracts browsers and plenty of these convert to shoppers.  With The Block finale on TV this weekend it made sense to cap the ACP impulse stand with this one-shot title – we have been able to get more stock after selling out.

I know from feedback that newsagents come here looking for ideas.  This is a good one.  Choose popular brand titles and use them at the front of your business to attract shoppers.  This tactical placement is far more valuable and beneficial than sticking magazine posters on your window. Dress the front of your shop for the weekend.  leverage of what is popular.

We are promoting the latest issue of Diabetic Living with this tactical placement next to newspapers in one of my newsagencies.  This high prrfile placement is deserved because of the free sachet of Carman’s porridge free with this issue of Diabetic Living.  It’s an excellent free gift – ideal for the target market.

We have been promoting the latest issue of Australian Traveller magazine with our weekly women’s titles since last week.

With women making more travel decisions (between 88% and 92% of travel decisions according to some) than men this tactical placement of Australian Traveller makes commercial sense for us – and all newsagents I’d suggest.

The other reason for promoting Australian Traveller is that it’s an Australian magazine written primarily for the Australian consumer.  We don’t have that many Australian travel magazines.

Since a key point of difference for newsagents is our local community connection, supporting Australian titles above overseas titles ought to be an easy decision for us.

Given the massive interest in the Tutankhamen exhibition at the Museum of Victoria, we have placed the latest issue of National Geographic in a good location in the hope that it can ride off the coattails of this interest.  The Cleopatra cover story should appeal to those who liked the exhibit.  We don’t have enough stock to go overboard, just tactical placement to sell what we have faster than usual – we’d reorder if that happened.

We are promoting Pies savoury & sweet at the main sales counter between newspapers as well as with our food magazine titles.

This new ACP Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook is set to sell well if our sense of taste is anything to go by.

The cover image is mouth watering … customers quickly get what this title is about – hence our impulse purchase chasing placement.

Our plan is to leave the title here for a week and then place it in another tactical location.

This year’s VTAC Guide looks better than it has in the past. The bright and more appealing cover make it and easier product for us to place at the counter. For years this guide looked like a manual produced by the public service, which it was.

Anyway, in one of my newsagencies we have this year’s VTAC Guide at the counter and it is selling well. It’s terrific to see someone come in to purchase something else and add the VTAC Guide to their purchase. Every dollar helps, as they say.

We plan to move this title around, chasing sales, over the next few weeks.

Further to my last post, we also have a stack of this week’s Woman’s Day with the Murdoch family on the cover placed next to the Herald Sun.  It’s a news related cover so this placement makes sense.  We are selling copies from here – that’s the goal!  We’re likely to take this placement down by the end of today.

It is not often that we can place Woman’s Day and Time next to each other but that’s what we have done this week. Kudos to the folks at Woman’s Day for leveraging the News International phone hacking scandal into a topical and interesting front cover.  I hope that newsagents have embraced the opportunity.

The latest issue of Australian Property Investor is another magazine selling well at the counter.  How can shoppers not notice the gold cover?  It is terrific to see them look at and pick up the title.  I’d urge newsagents to place this title at the counter – but make sure that there is clear space around it, so that it can be seen.  Too often displays at the newsagency counter fail because there are too many other displays offers and products at the counter pulling focus.

We have been promoting running magazines because of the Run Melbourne event held over the weekend.  With The Age newspaper the major sponsor, the running event has been getting plenty of coverage.  So it made sense to me that the try and tap into this by promoting running titles.

I like to grab any opportunity possible to connect titles in by newsagency with a local event as this reinforces connection with a diverse range of activities and the range of titles we have in the newsagency.

Yes it is a challenge to be aware of events around which we can promote special interest titles.  It’s what we have to do if we want to call ourselves magazine specialists.  Just putting a broader range of magazines on the shelves than other retailers does not, of itself, make us magazine specialists.  We need to engage with the specialist range.

We have been promoting music magazines and, in particular, Rolling Stone magazine toward the front of the newsagents, at our Ticketek counter.

The Lady Gaga cover shot on Rolling Stone works well at attracting people, especially since she has been in Australia this week.

Music magazines have been doing it tough so it is good to have someone current, popular and in the local news around whom to promote the category.  We ran this impulse purchase display at the front of the newsagency, facing into the shopping mall, for two weeks. We achieved incremental business in music titles as a result.

We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine with this simple display at the counter – along with a couple of other items which appeal to the same demographic.

While not a billboard like display, the real value of this display is the placement.  Every customer making a purchase in our store will be in front of this display.  The newsagent difference is that we give access to this premium space for free.

Since it is premium space, we will give the title three days.  It stays longer if it’s delivering results.  This is the only way to deal with premium counter space.

Last weekend we ran Better Homes and Gardens and That’s Life Reader’s Recipes at the counter in one of my newsagencies, between newspapers.  They sold well!  At least six copies of each from this location alone.  More sales were achieved from the usual location for each of the titles.  This is excellent incremental and impulse business to primarily newspaper customers.  We have ordered more of each title as a result.

We newsagents are better placed to drive this type of impulse business than supermarket, convenience and petrol outlets.   we can be smarter in placement.  We can decide what to promote based on specific covers and what we know about our shoppers.  Our competitors promote titles based on what they are paid to do.  So, we can leverage our individuality to our benefit … as we have done with these two titles.

We keep changing what we promote with newspapers because of the regular newspaper customers we see.  Impulse purchase displays should not remain in place for more than a few days otherwise the sales are not worth it – unless you have a low number of regular daily shoppers.

The latest issue of Australian Property Investor is the flagship Hot 100 issue – with the stand out gold cover.  While it has only been on-sale for a day it is already receiving good media coverage and this will continue including TV coverage.

This is an excellent magazine to have in a high traffic location, like next to newspapers.   This is what we are doing in my newsagencies.

This issue sold very well last year – by newsagents engaging tactically.  So, I’d urge newsagents to engage again and chase incremental basket-building business.  And if the issue sells well in the first few days, consider chasing more stock.

Roger Waters is coming to town and tickets are on sale right now. His show is getting plenty of publicity.  So, it make sense that our team has placed the latest issue of Classic Rock at the counter where plenty of eyeballs will see the Roger Waters cover.

I am confident we will pick some incremental business with this tactical placement of Classic Rock .

We obsess about opportunities like this.  Our music magazine sales are up 115% in the June quarter over the same period in 2010.  This is an excellent result, a terrific reward for conscientious focus by our team and their tactical placement of titles with excellent cover opportunities.

The latest issue of Popular Science magazine is timely given the bickering going on among politicians about environmental matters and, in particular, the proposed carbon tax.  This special issue of the magazine features articles on future energy.  So, away from the oppose everything approach of Tony Abbot and the structural change missteps of Julia Gillard, here is a magazine which is looking at energy alternatives.  As I said, it is timely.  We are promoting this issue of Popular Science with a full face display close to the usual location for the title.  e may give it a crack at the counter space permitting.

We are promoting the latest issue of Melbourne Kitchens & Bathrooms with this half waterfall feature in-location display. As I have written previously, this it a successful title for us, delivering an excellent sell-though within the first few weeks of the on-sale.  The key is to get shoppers looking at the cover – hence the prime placement next to popular titles.

We will also give this title a run on our weekly magazines impulse purchase unit.

We have been promoting the Miley Cyrus one-shot as well as Dolly with Miley on the cover at the counter for the past week in the lead up to her being in town.  While not driving massive sales, we saw shoppers add one or both titles to their purchases on impulse at the counter as a result of this display – proving that newsagents can drive incremental magazine business.

One newsagent I spoke to earlier last week told me he returned the Miley Cyrus one shot because it would never sell.  He never even tried it.  His data showed success for the Hannah Montana calendar but he never connected the two.   This ties back to my post a few days ago about early magazine returns.

Click on the image to see a larger version of the display.

We followed our own advice and put Who magazine at the counter in my newsagencies and saw impulse purchases as a result of the Pink cover story and her new baby.  Nothing complex here – a simple placement so that shoppers can see the full cover at the sales counter … a nice and welcome addition to any sale.