Kudos to the marketing people at triple j magazine for promoting that it is available at newsagents. Check out the ad they ran in The Herald Sun yesterday:
I am sure that newsagents would join me in wishing that more publishers promoted newsagents as the go to location for their titles. Those who don’t promote us are leeching off our traffic. The health of the channel relies on external promotion.
Mark,
I often listen to Triple J, and their ad’s on the air usually mention that the magazine is available at newsagents.
This has been the case for the last few years, I can’t say I took notice before I became a newsagent.
Well done to the editors of Triple J. On another related issue is there any reason why Newsagencies are not included in the list of outlets on the Optus websites as a place to recharge pre-paid credit?
I have been using some Optus pre-paid broadband recently and noticed on the recharge page that there is not a single mention of the Newsagency channel all the major supermarkets get a mention which they really need.
Granted there may be some Newsagents that don’t offer mobile phone recharge but what commercial sense is there in not mentioning one of the largest retail networks in the country i.e. Newsagencies?
Angelo,
From the POV of Optus they need to make sure the information they give their customers is accurate. If they list ‘newsagencies’ and a customer goes to a newsagency that doesn’t offer rechange it makes Optus look bad.
Jarryd, That’s not lost on me so why can’t the words at participating newsagecies be used. There are far more newsagencies than supermarkets. Here is the list from the Optus page on where to recharge:
•Allphones
•Australia Post
•Big W
•Bi-Lo
•BP Express
•Caltex
•Coles
•Dick Smith
•Dick Smith Powerhouse
•K-Mart stores
•NewsLink
•Newspower Night Owl
•Mobil Quix
•7-Eleven
•Safeway
•Safeway Petrol
•Shell Outlets
•Shell Touch Outlets
•Strathfield
•Tandy Electronics
•Target
•Toys ‘R’ Us
•Woolworths
•Woolworths Petrol
•Video Ezy
Why does Toys R Us get a guernsey and we don’t?
It would be easy for Optus to get a feed from our suppliers and to feed this into an addressed based database.
Fair enough Angelo. Although I would imagine that list is going to get very long if Optus started adding generic type in there. There’s bottle shops, video stores, supermarkets, news agencies, pharmacies, convenience stores … And a whole load of others. It may end up listing half the retail industries in the country!
It might get really long if it was expanded to include all. My simple point is why isn’t one of the largest retail channels in the country given a mention. I would hazard a guess that more customers overall visit a Newsagency on a weekly basis compared to Toys or Video Ezy.
I know all of the current outlets mentioned are Mastheads of those companies and readily recognizeable but in my view it doesn’t detract from my point.
Angelo, you might find most of those listed also make more commission per item then we do, I have seen Woolworths offer 10% off optus recharge when we make only 5 or 6%. It’s just how little they think of newsagents.
Becasue we are stupid enough to be individual small businesses we will never get a lookin when it comes to buying power due to the fact that there will always be a few that do not engage and these are the examples the big suppliers use to exclude us from bulk buy ins.
Nothing wrong with them adding “at selected newsagents” then the buyer can contact the local to see if they have it.
Slightly off subject. How does Dick Smith advertise itunes at $40 for a $50 voucher. I make $3 on that value. We are all stupid to be selling cards for such a miserable commission. The Visa cards are the worst wher we have to charge extra for $2. And the time spent explaining to customers what is required on all these vouchers is it really good business for us.??? I am tired of the “it brings extra people into the business” I already have enough peoiple coming into the business what I need is some decent margins to make a profit.