How has the $30M Lotto jackpot gone?
A newsagent colleague called and asked me to open a post here this afternoon inviting comments from newsagents with lotto on the success or otherwise of the $30M jackpot for tonight’s draw.
A newsagent colleague called and asked me to open a post here this afternoon inviting comments from newsagents with lotto on the success or otherwise of the $30M jackpot for tonight’s draw.
While it is easy for newsagents to complain about the falling traffic generated by magazines, oversupply, inefficient supplier processes or the poor margin, we can leverage magazines for greater economic benefit for our businesses. The best way to do this is through product placement decisions – what we put with magazines.
Placing other products with magazines is easier if you have magazine fixtures designed by a smart shop designer rather than the old school designers who tended to not think beyond themselves.
Check out the photo. The shelf at the top of the magazine fixture allows placement of products. Recently, we used this for jigsaws with excellent effect. Jigsaws are a habit-based purchase, as are magazines.n Enough shoppers purchased jigsaws to make destination magazine purchases more valuable than they might otherwise have been.
Yes, there are people who came in for $5.00 magazine purchased who spend over $40.00 on a premium jigsaw on impulse.
The key to success with placement of products with magazines is the selection of the product. You have to think carefully abut your shopper and what they could purchase. You have to think like them and not like you because what they may purchase on impulse is likely to be different to what you might purchase on impulse.
The next time you find yourself complaining abut magazines, think about what else you could do to drive value from the opportunity of magazine traffic in your business.
A large card and gift shop around the corner from my newsagency started discounting Christmas cards ten days before Christmas. As many of their cards are from Hallmark I was concerned if it could hurt us. While there was a slow down, we did well as it turns out. It helped us having a large range of boxed cards this premature discounter did not have. Plus, we had somewhere to go after Christmas with discounting and they did not.
I prefer to not discount until absolutely necessary and to therefore preserve the maximum margin possible for the business. But when I do scout, I want to go hard to quit the stock.
Happy New Year!
What are your newsagency business related resolutions for 2016? Here are mine:
Goals matter as they provide a target for the path ahead and a measure for when we look back.
Happy New Year everyone.
Boxed Christmas card sales have been fantastic in the newsagency in the five days since Christmas: $10K+. We are at 50% off and achieving more than 50% GP with these traffic generating products. We have them on the lease line to attract shoppers – who easily purchase other items on sale.
We have run this type of post Christmas sale for boxed Christmas cards for years and each year we have seen growth – rejecting the concern that discounting boxed Christmas card sales this year hurts Christmas card sales next year.
Sitting in the lunch room or a cafe or on a park bench with employees in your business can be enlightening, especially you are busy eating and listening.
In this situation of being part of an everyday lunch you have an opportunity to hear opinions that could be more enlightening than you would hear in the business environment. And that is what you want – more honest an useful opinions.
The more you eat lunch with them the more you learn, the more lunch makes you one of them and not the boss.
Lunch discussions are more likely to be off-guard and beneficial to you and the business. Off-guard for you and for them. Yes, this is a two way opportunity, one to be embraced with joy and openness. At the very least you will get to know your team members better … and they you. That has to be good.
Try it. It may take a while to win trust. It will be worth it if you can gain insights that otherwise may not be shared with you.
It’s like when you are on a train or a plane and chatting with someone you just met about business. The talking can lead you to insights you might have otherwise missed. It is a thrill when this happens.
Sometimes the most valuable insights in business come when you are not looking for them. This is never having lunch along is good advice as is having lunch with co-orkers in your newsagency business.
Newsagents in Queensland received The House of Wellness launch issue with their papers today. News Corp sent out the notice to explain the free magazine hours after the papers arrived. This is appalling communication.
‘What is even worse is that the launch issue is from last year. This freebie to be given away with The Sunday Mail on January 17 is of questionable value as it is old content.
News Corp. is paying newsagents 20 cents a copy to hand the freebie out, store it in the meantime, put up posters and other collateral and manage this promotion. Given what is expected of newsagents, News Corp. should be paying at least a living wage – five times the 20 cents paltry fee.
This looks like lazy marketing to me. Someone found spare stock in the warehouse and thought lest send this to newsagents for a promotion. They have the stock because they could not move the stock the first time around. Newsagents provide them a low cost distribution channel, unfortunately.
Recent moves by the Woolworths supermarket chain in Australia have highlighted the sham that is major retailer loyalty programs.
Having to spend $300 and more on very specific products to get the right to request a $10 voucher that you have to spend in-store is cumbersome and not good value. It is not a reward for loyalty.
It has resulted in plenty of news stories about the Woolworths and other programs that work off points and that are more about basket analysis by the retailers than genuine shopper loyalty rewards.
Some reports have labelled points based programs old-school, yesterday’s loyalty. I agree with this assessment. That would not be a surprise to regulars here. In February 2013 I started using discount vouchers in my newsagency and I have not looked back since. Double digit growth year on year. I can track the start of it to the implementation of the discount vouchers.
Some newsagents have been late to realise this while the early adopters on of new loyalty have been benefiting for a while.
The points based programs look and feel like big business programs. Me too marketing rarely works for small business. Small business retailers need something different, more immediate, more easily understood. This is why I think the discount vouchers work well. They are simple and effective. From a business perspective the cost and the liability are easily managed.
A well structured and professionally implemented discount voucher program can pitch your newsagency business differently to those with whom you compete. It offers genuine reward for loyalty and this is what drives shopper engagement and delivers the growth I write about.
I was talking with a retailer last week who is transitioning off a points based program because they have realised that their offer is not that different to the big retailers. Having a point of difference when it comes to loyalty is vital.
Footnote: I was talking to the new owner of a newsagency recently who had not allowed for rewarding loyalty accused while the business was under the previous owner. The previous owner refuses to fund the liability that had accused under their watch. They did not disclose the liability to the purchasers. The matter looks set to go to court as the new owner is quite aggrieved – and rightly so.
Regardless of the loyalty program you use, it is vital you track it as an asset and a liability of the business. The data must form part of what is sold with the business.
The double load of magazines newsagents received yesterday raised discussion, again, about unfairness in the magazine destitution model.
Rather than two days of delivery this week, the magazine distributors cut back to one day, a public holiday, and in doing so presented newsagents with more resourcing challenges for managing the load on a day with more than double the labour cost.
The move looks inconsiderate, ignorant and selfish.
Four newsagents I heard from told me their December 2015 magazine bill is equal to or more than December 2014 while their sales year on year are down between 9% and 13%. It does not take much to work out why they are angry.
The report in The Age yesterday about Pandora acting on their retailers taking on a competitor product is relevant to newsagents with several of our suppliers asking / demanding / pressuring us or some of us to be exclusive with them.
I have spoken with plenty of retailers who have or have had Pandora products. The complaints are similar – exclusivity is demanded yet the company opens other outlets nearby that impact sales.
Any supplier asking for an exclusive relationship needs to be as prepared to commit as they expect the retailers to commit. I think this is what could have frustrated some Pandora retailers.
This issue goes the other way too. Newsagents ask for exclusivity but too often do not respect it with full support for a supplier or a brand. One order does not cut it. Nor done a few small orders.
The exclusive relationship needs to work commercially for supplier and retailer. Demanding it is not enough just as getting it is not enough. Exclusivity needs mutual respect, mutual nurturing and mutual trust. It also needs honesty to acknowledge when it is time to move on.
Social media is quiet right now between Christmas and New Year. This is when publishers ought pitch new issues and newsagents as their go-to retailers. Tweets, facebook posts, Instagram and other social media posts are more likely to be noticed in this less busy time.
Magazine publisher marketing being on a break is a missed opportunity. the last magazine to promote newsagents was Ride Cycling Review on December 23.
If these days between christmas and New Year are quite and if you have not planned anything to kick start sales, here are eight tips that require little planning that you could use right away:
Don’t be bound by these seven suggestions. Challenge yourself. Do something.
It is easy to do nothing and say these days are quiet. Make it not so. Make your own noise. Have some fun. Change your business.
While the UK newspaper marketplace is very different to here in Australia, some trends are followed here. I am watching with interest the move by some UK newspaper publishers to cut cover prices. With many newspapers available, price as a differentiator is important to them. here, not so much.
I feel for UK newsagents confronting these falling prices as it impacts gross profit. If sales do not spike sufficiently, the return on floor space, return on labour and return on inventory will be down, making one question the value of the product.
The best way for any newspaper in any marketplace to increase sales is for it to provide relevant content unavailable elsewhere. A lower price for content that is not interesting, current or relevant will not result in an increase in sales. Indeed, dropping the price looks like you are giving up on differentiating your product.
I bought an item from a newsagency last week that had a price abel that had to be at least five years old. It made me wonder what the policy in the business was about old stock.
My challenge today is for you to touch everything you sell. I expect that through the process you will touch items you throw away rather than put back on the shelves.
Talk to your local high school, tertiary college or university to see if they need businesses to work with for case studies, IT development, marketing planning or other areas from which your business could benefit. Being a business case-study partner for students as they work on a project could bring valuable fresh ideas through which you can grow your business.
How many times do you promote your newsagency business with message similar to other retailers?
For example, promoting back to school when Officeworks, K-Mart, Big W, Staples and others are promoting Back to School means your little voice will struggle to be hears.
Promoting back to school before them or after them and you will be heard more.
Or, promoting something non back to school related during the back to school season for be even better.
This is what Renée Mauborgne, W. Chan Kim talk about in their excellent book, Blue Ocean Strategy.
Your marketing message will be more easily heard if the message does not have many competitors. I urge newsagents to think about when and what they promote, to do so in a way that is fresh and stands out.
Yesterday is done. The Boxing Day Sale begins. We set the shop at the close of business Christmas Eve to make today easier. We have excellent deals that offer terrific margin for us. Plus we are clearing out stock to make way for the new.
The next few days will be massive as we work through product and make the most of the extraordinary traffic the Melbourne Boxing Day sales bring in.
We will add to sale stock over the next few days, to provide a fresh look for people who visit several times between now and New Year. It’s what we do every year – it works a treat.
We are also promoting the Boxing Dale Sale online – but not crazy as everyone else in centres are doing the same thing. we are staying within budget. Plus we are being tactical.
If we follow tradition, the Boxing Day sale will run two weeks.
The bonus traffic also leverages Valentine’s Day opportunities – yes, that season has started as has, sorry, Easter – with some items in-store already and selling.
It’s an annual ritual to pay homage here to the last minute Christmas shopper. They are a delight: usually happy, spending big, relieved that you have good stuff to buy and ready to make quick decisions. They are usually male, between 25 and 40. The only thing better is two or three of them together, usually brothers. We leverage the opportunity by helping them – with pleasure … because they spend without thinking.
This Star Wars robotic talking, moving R2D2 droid has been a hit with last-minute Christmas shoppers with nine being snapped up in a couple of days.
We brought it in once we knew the majors had sold out, leaving us with a blue ocean opportunity. Plenty of shoppers have been relieved to find it in the newsagency this week. Our social media marketing helped attract people who have not shopped with us.
Selling gifts at $200 and more is easy with the right product. Our most expensive item sold this Christmas cost $500. The customers are thrilled.
Harpers Bazaar have sold out thanks to the Coles ban. The publicity helped and that there are two Coles in our centre helped more. More prude decisions please Coles.