While newspaper publishers continue to focus attention on driving home delivery subscription sales and chasing retail sales outside the newsagency channel, I have been thinking about tactics which could be used to help drive single copy newspaper sales in Australian newsagencies.
Sure, CDs, DVDs and promotions like the Simpsons stickers drive sales, the incremental sales are more about the giveaway product than the newspaper. We need people to buy a newspaper for the newspaper itself.
I’d like to see publishers invest in the news part of newspapers. Not magazines and supplements which are more ads than content. Enough already. Here’s an idea, focus on the news. Make newspapers appealing for the news.
Once the product is more compelling, engage with newsagents in a marketing strategy to drive over the counter sales. Use the specialist retail channel for the purpose for which it was created.
Here are four newspaper marketing ideas I think are worth trying worth trying in a direct partnership between retail newsagents and newspaper publishers:
- Would you like fries with that? Offer a newspaper for half price with a lottery ticket sale. Very simple offer. Just asking the question will win some business. Kick it up a notch with a coupon for redemption within seven days for another half price newspaper from the same newsagency. The coupon could even offer a discount for each of seven days.
- Upsize Offer a customer buying a newspaper any other newspaper for half price. While publishers may argue about who pays for this, why not try the idea at least and measure consumer engagement.
- Bulk buy and save Pay today for 25 newspapers and we will give you 30. This respects the regular newspaper shopper and locks them into the newsagency. This will drive loyalty from the newsagent back to the publisher.
- Go and play Give participating newsagents, say, fifty extra newspapers a day and ask them to develop their own tactics for selling these. The key is they must sell them for something and to customers who would otherwise not have purchased the newspaper. The feedback could unlock other marketing ideas worth rolling out across the channel.
I know that publishers have considered some of these before. Indeed, I have been involved in such discussions My experience is that they over complicate single copy marketing. They let the glory of a home delivery subscription pull focus from a very different yet lucrative opportunity.
I want to sell more newspapers but I want to do it in a way which builds repeat business and which does not dilute my return from this already slim margin product.
I’d certainly like to try any or all of these ideas and I bet other retail-only newsagents would too.
Mark, I think much of this has to do with how proactive our reps are, as well as how proactive we ourselves are.
Just last week we struck up a deal with one of our main reps, to do a personalised promo offering coffee and paper for an attractive price. The publisher (rep’s boss) actually put this to us some time ago, to think about and work out a good starting time.
POS material is being made up, so we can start this weekend, all going well.
The publisher is not willing to discount the newspapers, but they’re happy to provide collateral to drive the promotion, including signage and bags. It’s just a case of working out how far you’re willing to go in terms of discounting your end of the bargain – in our case, the coffee.
Mark, you’re right in terms of publishers needing to actually give a little more in terms of attracting the retail dollar. Quite apart from being very tempted to actively discourage new home deliveries (did I say ‘tempted’?), publisher attitudes really do have to change. After all they wouldn’t be what they are now, without the channel’s groundwork over the decades, at the (high) risk of sounding traditionalist.
However, while I’d love to see the publisher being willing to stand by their actual product more in the process we’re undertaking in terms of actual product on offer, I’m very happy with the offer of resources at least.
The expectation is that it’ll be a win-win endeavour. And we won’t know unless we give it a go.
Wish us luck.
Is it wise to be trying to promote increasing sales of newspapers when we are trying to be green these days? The amount of rainforests that are being depleted on a daily basis is because of all the paper that is required. We should be encouraging people to move to more envirnonmentally friendly based means of reading news.
There’s some great ideas there.
“I’d like to see publishers invest in the news part of newspapers. Not magazines and supplements which are more ads than content. Enough already. Here’s an idea, focus on the news. Make newspapers appealing for the news.”
– I’d like to see the same too.
I’ve noticed when a local event happens, like a deb ball, AND it’s covered by the local newspaper, they sell like hot cakes. Ordinary people like getting their heads in the paper and family and friends buy a lot more papers to send to friends etc when this happens.
I agree that newspaper reps are key. Publishers, too, need to engage more proactively with the retail channel. We are an underutilised asset.
Sarah.
Most of the newsprint used these days is either re cycled or plantation timber grown exclusively for this purpose.
+1 on more involvement from reps & publishers.
I’d like to see readers buy a monthly newspaper pass like they do for public transport.
By paying, say, $20 they could pick up an Age each day at their local newsagency. (similar price to home delivery intoductory deals). For simplicity, the passes should be done by calendar month, encouraging readers to buy their pass early in the month to extract maximum value. This is easier than mucking around with expiry dates. Each month could have a different/seasonal design – put Leunig cartoons on them – make them collectable.
Ideally, each time I sell a pass, I scan it and Tower activates it and tells the Age to debit me $20. Each time a customer picks up their paper, I scan their card and the Age pays me my 25%. Mark could Tower could send a file to the Age each day like it does stops and starts files? This could be used for sales information and for credits and debits. Would make the system a little more scam-proof.
Each pass could have its own barcode to make sure it’s only activated for my store, and to make sure it can’t be used more than once in a day.
A system like this would be invaluable for increasing foot-traffic in newsagencies. It could be adapted for many other things eg mag subs. I’d love to be selling pick-up mag subscriptions across the counter. Reckon ACP would love to have my staff actively selling them too.
Cameron, I agree. I have had meetings with publishers along these lines various times and when we get close the idea seems too hard for them.
The challenge is that in retail we own the customer whereas with home deliveries they own the customer.
They need to get cer that. Give us freedom and tools with which to win the business.
Didn’t know where else to put this so I put it here…..
Did you notice in todays Herald Sun, the offer that is you spend $5 in Woolies/Safeway tomorrow you get Sunday Herald FREE.
Has this offer ever been given to Newsagents?
Niall, I don’t want this offer in my Newsagency. I already lose money with Newspapers. Every Lotto customer taking a free paper wont help.
I doubt HWT carries the loss for this offer.
Sadly News limited, like other publishers, seems to think that discounting is the only way to grow sales or at least stem the decline and that they can only do this by sleeping with the devil (Coles and Woolworths).
Every day they ignore retail newsagents is another day of lost opportunity.
Ignorance is on show once again.
A 6% decline in the circulation of the Sunday Herald Sun and the devils proposition looks mighty attractive.
Bunnings have a deal coming up in 2 weeks – I don’t know the exact details but they are getting 1000 papers per store
I forget to mention – it is for Saturday and Sunday. We have to unwrap every bundle, manually put an insert around every individual paper, and then rewrap the bundle. And still deliver the paper by 7am.
As we are likely to receive the papers after 5am on both days how do they expect this to happen?
Yeah, the Bunnings deal. Let’s say that the bulk size is 20. That means that I have to take 50 bulk to our Bunnings. Factor safety and general commonsense about not overloading my poor sedan, that means I’ll have to make at least 5 trips. And collect who knows how many returns as well.
Apparently, this is being done for each Vic store. On the Bunnings website there’s about 50 stores listed for Vic.
There’s a 20c per paper payment for putting the paper inside its’ “wrap/cover”, which means 200 dollars the HWT will pay me for the 1000 papers each day.
Why can’t the presses be run as the “Bunnings edition” where 50,000 copies are printed with the “wrap” automatically added? Then contract an extra, professional driver, you know with a proper vehicle for transporting tonnes of newspapers, to deliver them directly to Bunnings? Would my $200 insert fee cover that, I wonder?
Another promotion designed by an executive without any idea of the logistical problems involved.
Hardly seems fair. All that work for just $200 and no commission.
Ted, there is 12.5% commission on each newspaper, so if each Saturday/Sunday paper is sold/given away in the promotion, the agent will receive 412.50.
What I object to most, and why I posted, is that whoever dreamed it up seems to assume that we all have some sort of backup resource pool of time, vehicles, staff, workspace etc.
We diligently carried the extra 500 odd Suns to our Safeway, and Heather spoke to a long standing customer at 11am who said they had done their shopping at Safeway and he had not been offered a Sun. So after closing Heather went to SW to observe for 30 minutes. During that time not one Sun sold or handed to customer. Large stack of Suns but none at the registers. Seems the execution got in the way of the aim….Our rep indicated that Safeway was fired for this promotion and that the N/As seldom offered the opportunity. Now this we we have the 1000 per day Bunnings promo. This week our Bunnings returned 100% mon-fri with 1 sold sat and two sold sunday. They have an opportunity here !!!!! I will have an extra man here both days. If the trucks arrive no earlier than the usual time and that Bunnings open at 8am….they may not get their suns till late morning. However, we are assured that all has been put in place to make this another hugely successful promo. As usual..unlike our Safeway, we will put our all into it.
Sorry…should read ‘fired up’ for the promotion…..
I was not offered a free paper at Safeway last night (outside of my territory) – they had heaps left.
I just picked up about 15 bundles of returns from 1 of the Safeway’s in my territory.
Again a lot of work for not much return.
Not sure how we will cope for Bunnings. I have 2 of them, and they open at 7am. Since we normally get the last drop with this stuff on it at 5am or later, I think they have buckleys chance of getting their papers before 9am, except for a token few.