On Friday last week we created this display of a small selection of Lovatts and Puzzler crossword titles in front of our photocopier and next to our main newspaper stand to drive impulse sales.

We have added close to $100.00 in sales in four days – from this stand.

While we cycle other categories through this display, the performance of crosswords is particularly strong. I think this is because the category lends itself to impulse purchase with our core demographic – older, heading to retirement.

We selected Lovatts and Puzzler since they are brands crossword consumers know the most. Our experience with impulse displays is that you have to make it easy for the consumer. Brands are key to this.

We will leave this display run for two weeks before replacing it with another category.

We are trying something new with the magazine display at the front of our shop by including a column of health magazines between Australian Women’s Weekly and New Idea.

We already do this in our main magazine display with great success – see my earlier post about how this approach has helped us find amazing sales for a gardening magazine.

Note – the photo shows the magazines on a movable stand which we push to our lease line in front of our main lottery counter.

We will create a column like this every couple of weeks – to demonstrate the depth of our range for people who buy on impulse from the front of the newsasgency. Our health theme this week will become, maybe, family history, next time.

It’s important that newsagents use the high selling titles to drive impulse purchases of less popular titles. The key is to tell a story – such as the column of health titles. If we had a mixture of categories covered the column would not work.

As with everything we do like this, we will measure the results and change the approach if there is no traction within a few days.

Here is an example of where online beats print hands down. Cycle Sport which arrived in-store three days ago boasts on its cover an up to the minute form guide for the Tour de France. Hmm, the Tour ended a few weeks ago. The cover is out of date. While regular purchasers will not be worried about the out of date cover, first timers and intermittent purchasers are less likely to give the title a second look.

I guess selfishly, the cover makes my shop look out of date.

In a bid to drive subscribers from print to digital / online, the publisher of supply chain magazine, Managing Automation, has pledged to donate US$1,000 to the American Forests Organization for every 1,000 digital subscribers. They say that $1,000 will plant between 75 to 100 trees. This is a compelling pitch to lure people from print.

Mag Forum is a great resource for anyone wanting to find out more about the magazine market in the UK. Given the influence of UK titles on the Australian marketplace – OK!, Zoo to name two recent titles, the reported arrival soon of a local edition of Nuts and the many imports: Heat, Chat, Pick Me Up and Look, researching the UK market can provide some interesting pointers to local trends.

Since newsagents are magazine specialists – by virtue of the considerable range we carry in each of our 4,000+ locations – we owe it to ourselves to be across overseas trends.

On the one hand today I have posted links here about bad news regarding magazines and their closure. Then this post with links to reports of categories with growth.

To me, it’s about engagement. The more newsagents engage with the category and become demanding of their distributors the more successful they will become in the category.

Magazine Death Pool is a blog about magazines which have closed or are predicted to be close to closing. The blog is an interesting chronicle and appears to stick to the facts rather than talking down magazines.

While some reading here would ask why provide a link to the blog? – I’d say, yeah, ignorance is bliss.

ACP Magazines has a fantastic prize on offer if you subscribe to any of six magazines in the lead up to Father’s Day at magshop. The choice of titles – Wheels, Money, The Bulletin, Wine, PC User and Inside Cricket – is excellent.

Research must indicate to ACP that this promotion will help boost sales, otherwise they would not invest in the promotion through online and print activity.

I wish I could offer the prize for the same commitment in my shop. With putaways so well managed from a technology perspective including the ability to handle a one year commitment and provide ACP transparency of this, the prize would be sure to boost my sales – plus regular putaway collection visit – and boost sales of ACP titles. The technology can even provide ACP with details of when the customer collected the putaway if the newsagent and ACP want to share such data.

Practical promotions such as this for Father’s Day would work in a newsagency. Newsagents would embrace it since it extends the Father’s Day offer beyond the traditional cards and candy offer – this is why we created our own Father’s Day pitch earlier this week.

Putaways are unique to newsagencies and loved by most of our customers. I’d like ACP to work with us to leverage putaways to their advantage. While newsagents can create their own offer, having a $64,000 car as a prize would help.

Working with newsagents on these promotions and not just online through magshop would certainly boost sales of ACP Magazines and deliver a great win win.