A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Sunday newsagency marketing tip: six ways to promote your point of difference this winter

Winter can be tough for some people. It can be tough for retail too as traffic is often down. Newsagents have an opportunity to leverage the season, to make it more enjoyable for you and your customers.

Here are six suggestions to get you thinking abut winter differently:

  1. Reach out to retirement villages and nursing homes. Pack up key items from your shop and tele it on the road – go to those customers who can’t come to you because of the cold.
  2. Offer free delivery. If option one does not work for you promote a delivery service so people shut in can still get their magazine fix or get cards to sent to loved-ones. Be the retailer who goes the extra mile.
  3. Add to your customer service. have somewhere people can place their umbrellas and raincoats when they enter.
  4. Keep your shop warm. Offer hot coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Maybe have a slow cooker with some delicious home cooked vegetable soup using a recipe from a magazine you have in-store.
  5. Have a summer sale. In the middle of winter, at the coldest, have a blow-out sale and call it something like a SIZZLING SALE. Get people warm with great prices.
  6. Change your music playlist. If you’re using Pandora or some other online station or CDs, select brighter, warmer music.

If your shop is in a really cold area consider an outer door to keep the warmth in. They do this a lot in Europe and the US in Winter.

Winter is a seasoning which you can show off your point of difference and get people seeing your newsagency differently.

7 likes
marketing

Join the discussion

  1. June

    Mark, if the local delivery agent sees you going into a retirement village with mags for your customers he will probably sue you for delivering into his area?????????

    0 likes

  2. David @ Angle Vale Newsagency

    June, I wasn’t aware it was possible to “own” customers. If the delivery agent does his job properly, then there would be no market opportunity. If the delivery agent has failed to connect with “his” customers, then they are fair game.

    Supermarkets offer on line shopping, with delivery, and that includes magazines. How many delivery agents are suing?

    I think this is an idea I will pursue.

    0 likes

  3. Mark Fletcher

    My thought is that the opportunity is only there if the local delivery agent has not already embraced it.

    0 likes

  4. Carol

    Now for some cold weather! Perhaps we need to do this in the summer in our area.
    Iced Coffee, Chillingly low prices, Come into the aircon and shill out.

    0 likes

  5. Clive

    Not too sure about the other states but in sunny Qld there is no “distribution area” relating to magazines, only to newspapers.

    So if one wanted to go into a nursing home, retirement village or even convenience store and setup a ‘mini agency’ with no newspapers there isn’t anything stopping one from doing so.

    0 likes

  6. Allan Wickham

    Clive, I’ve been led to believe that distribution agents have a “list” of subbies. I wanted to “properly” supply a nearby business with certain mags but that business was then concerned about what would happen to their paper supplies. I’m in qld too.

    0 likes

  7. Clive

    Allan, there is nothing stopping you from supplying them with the full range of magazines, even giving them a better commission rate and service.

    If the distribution agent got a bit annoyed and started to “penalise” them with late deliveries or no deliveries they could complain to Qld Newspapers. The distribution agent may find they are breaching their newspaper contract and risk other penalties. They could even keep a log of events and over time use that as an argument to change distribution agents or seek compensation (if possible).

    The News ltd distribution contract does not include mags. Nor Fairfax.

    I’m a member of the QNF and they have confirmed that “newspaper boundaries” relate to newspapers only not to magazines.

    0 likes

  8. allan wickham

    Interesting, thanks Clive

    0 likes

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Reload Image