If your newsagency closed, would it or you be missed?
One way to reflect on this is to consider what you could do to ensure it would be missed since doing those things could make it more useful to those you serve.
Halloween is a fun season. It helps you reset the business into Christmas. It is an excellent opportunity to let your hear down in the shop and in the community.
No, this is not a pagan season, something to upset religious people. It is also not a season to scare shoppers away. Done well, Halloween is a season with which you can show your business as being a fun and safe place for all – yes, including the whole family.
Even if you do not have much stock – as it is too late to buy now – you can still embrace the season.
Here are some marketing tips with which to have fun on October 31.
These ideas are to get you thinking. Go on, have fun. Boo!
If you have a website for your business: How often do you check what it is achieving? Do you check the business it generates? The traffic it attracts? Its ranking compared to similar sites? Keyword activity?
These and other KPIs need to be tracked regularly so you understand the usefulness of this resource. Having a website is a business activity. It needs to be managed as you would any other business activity.
There are tools you can use to track your site and steps you can take to improve the stickiness of your site. Not tracking and feeding your website is like sending a marketing flyer out and not worrying whether it has had the desired effect.
A business website needs to be fresh and relevant to the business and to the world in which it exists. As a rule of thumb, it ought to be replaced every 18 months or so. If your website is more than 18 months old it is probably not working for you.
I am writing about this today as some newsagents paid to have websites done that are ow out of date and generating no benefit for their businesses.
Shame on those at News Corp. involved in the decision to place an ad promoting the Courier Mail over the top of the heart wrenching page-one story of the parents who gave up their one for adoption. What is more important – news or a newspaper promotion? Sure, it is a chicken or egg question. However, since News Corp. invests millions in preaching to Australians on a range of matters, telling us daily what to think, it is reasonable to expect their own behaviour to be better than this. Shame on those involved.
The life of the peak of the adult colouring craze is being extended by the launch of premium licenced product such as the Harry Potter Colouring Book. This takes the art / craft craze to a new audience while enhancing the experience for the existing audience. While we already have some licenced adult colouring titles, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Harry Potter is a mega brand, one that ought to appeal more widely.
Looking in detail at the Harry Potter book, it has been done with thought and care – online some of the more rushed adult colouring titles.
I am re-thinking the longevity of peak interest in adult colouring. This is interesting to watch, most exciting.
I heard about this latest book from the WH Smith blog (the source of the images) and from there tracked the supplier.
Newsagents are pitched as the go to retailers for the latest issue of Inside Sport magazine. It is a thrill to see our channel promoted.
We are promoting three Frankie products together in-store, in our magazine department – the magazine, the 2016 calendar and the 2016 diary.
I love how the colours work together. I also love being able to bring three separate products together like this under one brand.
Footnote: note the pyramid look of the display … visual merchandising 101.
The growth in populatiry of Marvel and other movie franchises is fuelling interest in related magazines. The best way for newsagents to leverage this is to have the magazines placed so full covers are on show. This way people can browse based on the cover story and not just the masthead.
Check your placement of entertainment titles – make sure you have them working for you.
Newsagency suppliers can play a role in promoting the newsagency channel to others and encouraging optimism within the channel. The size and business volume achieved in newsagencies is one angle the creative team at my newsagency software company took when I challenged them to develop a video promoting the size and strength of newsagency businesses. Here is the result:
With some newsagents feeling overwhelmed by the adult colouring products coming from magazine publishers, here are my tip tips for pushing the opportunity to squeeze every possible sale from your business before retreating:
Engage beyond being a retailer, engage as a specialist and show how buying from you is different to buying elsewhere.
While I could have published a longer list, this list reflects the ideas I have seen generate the best interest. Give them a go.
We are pitching the latest Better Homes and Gardens in four locations in this launch week to make the most of the opportunity: at the front of the business (see photo), next to newspapers, in the usual location for the title as well as next to weeklies.
While the wooden Christmas decorations bagged with the magazine are a key traffic driver, the adult colouring wrapping paper is also something to promote. Our plan is to do this on social media.
This issue of Better Homes and Gardens is one we can use to drive magazine specific traffic and impulse purchases. There are shoppers who look out for this issue specifically. Newsagents are better placed than any other retailer to tap into this opportunity.
Did the prudes shut down Zoo Weekly or did lack of interest kill the magazine? If you believe the cover, the prudes killed the title. Audit results tell a different story.
But hey, never let the facts get in the way of a good cover – and the cover of the last issue is a ripper.
We are making the most of it by lacing the full cover on show so everyone entering the magazine aisle can see it.
Mumbrella today reports Pacific Magazines is to release three new adult colouring titles prior to Christmas.
While smart newsagents prefer the book titles off of which they make double the margin, the magazine titles play a role in the adult colouring space of any store.
Click here for a FAQ doc. from News. It answers some of the questions being raised following my earlier post. The image is from a letter sent with a contract termination letter.
The move by News Corp. in Townsville is real, it has a timeline and the first steps of implementation have been taken.
Newsagents at the newsXpress national conference in Sydney Monday got to spend an hour in a Q&A session with David Hogan, head of Gordon & Gotch.
The planned thirty minute Q&A extended to an hour as David and newsagents talked through allocation processes, partworks, Gotch profitability, US title pricing, the damage of ignorant early returns and other topics.
Nothing was off limits and all questions were answered.
On early returns, one example was given where hundreds of newsagents did themselves out of guaranteed revenue because of early returns.
The conversation was interesting as it provided context to challenges around circulation such as with the partworks model where Gotch is as much a victim as newsagents when faced with a runaway success such as Art Therapy. I know many newsagents in the room were surprised by the lead time.
It was good to have a magazine discussion based on facts. For example, one newsagent wanted to know how to stop a magazine for more than a few months. David shared the answer. The newsagent wanted a guarantee to never get the title again. David explained why that is not ideal.
There was no yelling at each other, no anger – just a good professional discussion looking for mutual benefit.
There was a good discussion, too, about floorspace allocation for magazines in newsagencies and work being done by Gotch to drive efficiencies that should benefit newsagents.
With several newsXpress members engaged in the MPA trial there were some questions on that – with ensuing discussions helping more in the room understand what is happening.
What was fascinating was a discussion led by some newsagents into the type of magazines newsagents feel they could sell. This discussion flowed from comments about adult colouring books. With Mychelle Vandenburg, the Retail Sales and Group Marketing Director for Pacific Magazines, in the room, newsagents, the head of Gotch and a senior publisher representative had a terrific three-way discussion about ideas to help everyone benefit not only from this craze but to explore how similar crazes could be explored cooperatively. I found this discussion specifically valuable.
What happened at the conference is an example of what newsagency marketing groups can do outside what is usual for a marketing group.
I am grateful to have been a participant in this discussion.
With magazines continuing to be an important traffic driver for our channel, it is important we explore ways to transact with the category more profitably. Achieving that requires respectful and engaged publisher and distributor relationships.
Footnote: I reached out to David while he was overseas at a distribution conference and he accepted the invitation immediately. He arrived back in Australia on the weekend and was with us on Monday.
The Rolling Stone article Rupert Murdoch Is Deviant Scum is a must-read for any Murdoch or US politics watcher.
It is disappointing to see a house ad from News Corp. stuck over editorial content on the front page of the Herald Sun today. The newspaper is celebrating 25 years. Today’s front page is not a glorious representation of the publisher’s respect for news.
My POS software company has created a new role for a high school or uni student to work from around 3pm to 6pm Monday to Friday. The work would be like paid work experience in IT support. If you know someone this could be suitable for, please pass only details.
A note from Touch Networks re Vodafone:
Please note that the Vodafone product range is currently unavailable for sale and Touch is working on a solution to restore this as soon as possible.
We will let you know as soon as we have more information.
It would be appreciated if you could let your stores know via your internal communication channels as soon as possible.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience.
Every day a different community group or charity makes contact asking for funds, products for prizes or some other support. While I have not tracked the data, it feels like more requests are coming in now than a year ago. They also feel more demanding.
I received one request this week saying that young lives were at rick if my business could not help the group raise money. The pitch was emotive and passive aggressive. I responded indicating that the business makes its giving commitments at the start of each financial year and that we were not in a position to give on top of these. The follow up email was unhelpful to their cause.
In addition to email requests there are letters, phone calls and walk-ins to the shop. As I noted at the start, weekly – indeed, often more than one a week.
Owners of shops, no matter how small, are often treated through these requests as if they can afford to agree to every request.
Saying no is challenging, especially in close-knit country towns and regional situations. I often hear from newsagents of them making donations they cannot afford.
I do think the best response is to decide on a couple of charities at the start of the year and maybe agree on a limited amount you would donate through the year on impulse – this at least gives you the ability to respond to some requests that come through.
I’d love to hear what others do in response to the constant streak of requests for assistance, especially those seeking cash or products for prizes.
Coles supermarkets have introduced a new range of adult colouring titles from harlequin prices at $9.00.
I had a good look at them last night. Based on what we have in the newsagency these books are, in my view, not worth $9.00. They appear to have been developed to meet a price point with little regard to what people into adult colouring look for. Newsagents in the adult colouring space need to be aware of what Coles is doing.
