As part of our perpetual magazine relay – we love change – I moved wedding titles on Saturday, placing them below magazines for women (teens through thirty or so). While one has to reach down to pick up a magazine here – it places the titles closer to where the target shopper.
The days of a set and forget approach to magazine layout are long gone. We have to approach the department with a hunger to compete with supermarkets, convenience stores, petrol outlets and other newsagents.
By constantly changing magazine placement we learn more about the titles we sell as well as about the habits of our magazine customers. The sole goal of this work is to increase magazine sales. Think of this work as marketing activity.
While I still think a whole of department magazine relay is vital annually, tweaking the layout regularly is equally important and rewarding. See: How to do a magazine relay in your newsagency.
Morning Mark,
How’d the sales go with the move?
Cheers.
Aaron I’d usually wait for at least a week, maybe two, before checking. I made the change mid way through Saturday.
We do a Friday magazine relay for the week-end customers. We move our weekly magazines into one row and move them down from prime positioning. As we are heading into spring we will move our House and Garden section into the weeklies space with a few crossword books and cookbooks.
Depending on ‘seasonal’ week-ends (Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Boat Show, Bathurst etc.) we will use this space to increase sales of these categories.