Australian Newsagency Blog

Marketing outside your newsagency is essential to growing the business. Too often I see newsagents rely on existing traffic or natural growth to boost sales. The latest Create Art flyer from newsXpress will bring new customers looking for quality art products at good prices. Some of these new customers will stick. […]

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Even though the year is barely half over it will be a challenge to beat the launch of Top Gear. This is the best launch I have seen in a long time.
The marketing collateral is excellent, supplies good and the word of mouth around the new title fantastic. These elements make it easy […]

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Like most newsagents we have the guide to the 2008 Tour de France. We have taken the opportunity to co-locate this title. It is in our bike category as well as above The Age for the next week.
Choosing titles carefully to display above newspapers can drive excellent additional sales.

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I am often asked by newsagents where they can access good training in marketing without signing up for a long course. While there is no fast way to develop good marketing skills, I have found an online marketing course, Marketing 101, at Smallbizu which looks good. It’s free and from what I can […]

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Our Sophie Randall shops were featured yesterday in the Domain section of The Age, in a report about the popular Cow Parade range.  The first we knew about the coverage was when customers visited our Melbourne Central location asking about our cows.  Their seeking us out as a result of the story is  reminder of […]

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I have put together a magazine workshop for newsagents which looks at retail and online trends and presents strategies newsagents can use to grow magazine sales. The goal is that by the end of the workshop each newsagent has an action plan of changes in how magazines are managed and marketed in their business. […]

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The Chat branded crossword titles are not good sellers in any of our newsagencies.  We are giving them a final chance by placing them away from the crossword section and with the Chat weekly magazine.  With our crossword category growing more than 20% year on year and these Chat titles going nowhere this latest move […]

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4 Ingredients is one popular cookbook, according to our customers. Every couple of days we are asked if we have 4 Ingredients in stock. The question leads to a sure sale.
Once we realised its popularity with our demographic we moved 4 Ingredients to the counter from our cookbook area to try and shake out […]

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At our Frankston newsagency we are promoting renovation magazines at the counter. The stand carries twelve to sixteen different titles from the category - all titles which would not usually be promoted at the counter.The idea behind this type of display, besides selling magazines, is to showcase that we are a local business - […]

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Sex and the city is the hot movie this weekend. We now have four magazines with Sex and the city themed covers and, I am sure, more on the way. One of our stores is on the prowl for a mannequin to bring Sarah Jessica Parker to life in-store.

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We have Melbourne Formal magazine in our Forest Hill and Frankston stores. It’s a challenging title to locate. While it looks like it would be more at home in with wedding magazines, we have placed Melbourne Formal with the higher volume weeklies since we suspect this is closer to the market for the […]

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We are giving prominence to the BBC Top Gear magazine in advance of the launch of the Australian edition by ACP Magazines in a month or so. This week, the imported edition of Top Gear has been featured above the Herald Sun. Next week, it will be another high profile location. Our […]

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The team at or Frankston store have gone wild in creating their BIG BOYS TOYS magazine display. Surrounding the stand with Street Machine, Motor, Wheels and other magazines, they have stuck on models of toys - cars, motor bikes, boats … all manner of big boys toys.

Our approach to this type of display is […]

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Check out the video produced by the Periodical Publishers Association in the UK to promote Magazine Week.

Magazine Week (Sept. 29 - Oct. 5) this year links with The National Year of Reading in an effort to boost literacy.Magazine Week is a great initiative. It boosts attention on magazines and the literacy connection underscores value […]

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It’s great to see Pacific Magazines getting behind Who magazine with a major TV campaign. This gives us something to play in-store to draw attention to the title and connect with what consumers will have seen on TV.

Who is an important title not only for the product itself but also its Friday release. […]

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We have an arrangement with The Flower Hut, a florist in Frankston.  They have provided a nice display for our counter as a prize for a lucky customer.  In return we promote their business in a good location in-store.   A prize like a bunch of flowers for Mother’s Day is great.  It’s practical.  Also, being […]

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Like everyone involved in the title, we’re concerned about the future of Australian Women’s Weekly. While no one will talk about it publicly, sales are in a slump. Customers tell us it’s because of the product itself, people say it has lost its way with its key demographic.
AWW remains the most redeemed title […]

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We are promoting Australian Women’s Weekly at our counter this weekend - buy the magazine and get a free Darrell Lea chocolate bar.  We’re funding this ourselves to promote the title as well as the Darrell Lea range.   While we have some some through the promotion, it’s not setting our customers on fire.
 

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Girlfriend is featured as Magazine of the Month in our April customer newsletter. We also promote our refreshed card and wrap offer, Annette Sym’s Symply Too Good 5 and other products we’re glad to get behind.
This newsletter is simple to put together. We use Microsoft Word. Some of it is corporate but […]

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Here are some sales/marketing tips for Easter which I put together a week ago for Tower Systems users - I share it here in case some visitors find the ideas useful. Some are old chestnuts and others are, well, different.
Egg Hunt. Invite families in to hunt your store for eggs on one day. […]

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Easter is close and we have our Darrell Lea range out including this Thomas The Tank package. It includes an activity as well as the egg which is good. I’m curious about the management of brands such as Thomas since we access the eggs from one place, cards and bags from another, books […]

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We are experimenting with category based aisle displays at our Frankston store.
While this does not serve individual titles well and will frustrate some publishers, it allows us to showcase a category of titles and thereby, hopefully, introduce customers to dept of range they may not have seen before.
This type of display, covering several titles in […]

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Here are some free Valentine’s Day marketing tips for newsagents included in the Tower Systems weekly email bulletin sent yesterday:
Kissing booth: raise money for a local charity, $2.00 a kiss;  Make sure it looks like an old style booth.
Red lips: paint some big red lips on the side of your face for the day […]

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Newsagents wanting to really get behind Chinese New Year this year ought to check out www.chinatown.com.au - it’s an excellent source of products to support in-store displays as well as products to sell such as the popular red packets. You need to sign up in order to access the site as a retailer.

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