Sunday newsagency marketing tip: living your sales pitch

It’s Magical in Hong Kong sells educational and fun products for babies and kids. I recently saw this store at Ocean Terminal in Harbour City Center Kowloon and experienced for myself that they seriously live up to the promise of their name and entrances.

Having a separate entrance for kids is a brilliant, magical, move. From outside the shop it tells me the experience inside will be different. I believed their pitch.

I think about It’s Magical and wonder what I can do to better pitch my newsagencies to shoppers walking past. I also wonder whether my shops accurately connect in-store with the pitch we make externally in our marketing.

Independent retail businesses including newsagency businesses struggle to get noticed because of limited marketing budgets. I suspect some of us don’t help ourselves by enabling a disconnect between our pitch and the in-store experience. We rely on a shingle – newsagent or newsagency – to define us when in fact it probably confuses.

My marketing tip today is to wholly embrace your point of difference, your USP, and ensure it is enticing shoppers into your business. Look at doing this so that those who don’t shop with you at least get what your business is and what you stand for. Achieve this and you’ll be thought of when they do want what you sell.

The challenge is that newsagencies today continue to be general stores, offering a variety of product. This lack of specialisation is good yet hindering us being remembered as specialist in a category.

I remember It’s Magical because of the kids entrance and that the shop itself lived up to the promise of this coupled with the name. I want people walking past my newsagencies to have the same experience.