Working the news to our advantage

The worldwide financial crisis which reached a new peak yesterday is an opportunity for newsagents to restate our position as the best source of print news in Australia.  We have a range many of our competitors do not. Newspapers to these other outlets are just another SKU.  To us, at the moment, they are a core product.  We ought to respond to the financial crisis by reinforcing our position.  We could do this by:

• Making sure everyone on your team is aware of how the financial story is unfolding – arm them with enough information to help sell newspapers.  It is during stories like this that we have an excellent opportunity to up-sell by having better product knowledge.
• Refreshing our newspaper displays, making sure they are accessible and the front pages easily seen.
• Co-locating top selling newspapers.  Try and find a way to have newspapers at the counter – for the impulse purchase.
• Printing an afternoon update from the capital city daily website on the main story and offering this to customers. 
• Have some fun, try a Financial Crisis News, Lotto and Comfort combo – sell a candy bar, a newspaper and a lottery ticket in a bundle.  This brings focus to the situation, makes some fun and, hopefully, drives sales.

These ideas are interested to be starters, think about ways you can leverage the interest among your customers in this story and how you can respectfully work that to your advantage.

Every day thousands of newsagents open bundles of newspapers and stack them for customers to purchase.  That is usually as far as we engage with the product.  This blog post seeks to get us to do more than that.  We owe it to the shingle newsagent to do more.