I love this video from then publisher of Scream. I’d like to see more publishers provide clever and entertaining videos that we can use.
Make your #Halloween go with a SCREEEAM! Get the Scream! and Misty Special from all good newsagents and @Tesco Extra stores now! pic.twitter.com/3gd9bF2UKB
— 2000 AD (@2000AD) October 31, 2017
I was drawn to this shop last week from outside in the mall because of their colour blocking of the stationery items. Thoughtful blocking of stock like this makes for an impactful display and this drives traffic. It is smart visual merchandising, which we can do.
I support the campaign by Oxfam calling on companies to pay their fair share of tax. While it is the campaign against online sales that is getting media attention, there are plenty of businesses, big businesses not paying their fair share of tax. News Corp. in Australia has come under fire on this as have others.
While the Oxfam campaign focusses on the impact on poor countries, Australia would be a better country if big businesses here paid their fare share of tax and if they did not receive the handouts they receive.
Small business does more heavy lifting as a percentage of turnover than big business. That needs to change. It will only change when we have politicians on all sides who stand up to big business.
Growth in the number of likes for your business Facebook page(s) is as important as growth in shopper traffic through your front door.
I see a direct correlation between the two, if you use Facebook well. Of course, if is the important word in that statement.
I have been actively using Facebook for business for many years. It is an excellent platform of reaching new customers and talking with existing customers. It is an important tool in business growth.
HOW DO YOU GET MORE LIKES ON FACEBOOK?
This is simple, provide good content, content that gives people what they come to Facebook for – entertainment, inspiration, a laugh. The more you do this the more your post will be liked and shared. The more likes and shoes the more people you reach.
Growth in likes for your page begins with your content. If your page likes are not growing, look at your content.
While you can ask people to like your Facebook page, resulting likes may not be as valuable as those who like your page of their own accord.
You can also buy likes. That, however, is a waste of money.
HOW DOES A BUSINESS USE FACEBOOK WELL?
Businesses that use Facebook well entertain. This can be by making people laugh, smile, feel emotional or be happy overall. They do it by being human, real and engaged. They do it by not trying to sell. They do it y not being commercial.
Photos are real, not studio shots, showing products in use more so than on the shelves. They show customers, happy customers.
They share something of themselves.
A newsagency uses Facebook well by not writing about products newsagents sell.
HOW DO MORE LIKES OF YOUR BUSINESS TRANSLATE INTO MORE SALES?
Someone engaging with your business Facebook page is similar to someone browsing your shop. Both can lead to sales.
People being on your page and engaging with your page brings them close to you and proximity = sales.
The more people who like your business Facebook page the more people you can pitch and offer to or reach out with an event or product announcement, them more people who will hear what you have to say.
Take Facebook seriously as a key business tool. The benefits are real and valuable.
Australians love charity connected Christmas cards.
I know because of the number of requests I see in0store and through social media. Some customers make card purchase decisions based on the charities being supported.
People want to support charities they know and trust.
While the ideal situation is that suppliers negotiate with charities and promote their support on products in-store, we, at the store level, can engage with charities ourselves and thereby pitch charity support where a supplier has not taken up the opportunity.
I think this is especially important at Christmas where so many boxed card packs have a charity message.
If your boxed cards do not have a city connection, consider partnering with a local charity. For a modest donation they may allow you to include a sticker on each product – promoting their work and your support for them. This is the key element in driving sales.
It does not always have to fall to your supplier to leverage a charity connection. Indeed, supporting a local charity can work particularly well. This can help you be on the front foot with other charities and community groups that ask for money or products as a donation. You can point to your current engagement and suggest they make a submission for next year.
It can be frustrating the number of requests for support. I see it from a retailer and from a supplier perspective., Almost daily there is a request for money or some other form of support, often without a commercial benefit.
The challenge is that if businesses are not profitable they are unable to support these requests. hence the importance of a commercial benefit. This is where supporting a local group or charity could work for a local business in that their members and supporters could be leveraged to support the business.
If you do have boxed Christmas cards offering national charity support, actively promote this in-store and on Facebook. relying on the note on the product to do it is not enough. Be active, talk about the charities supported, their work and your pride in being able to support them.
It is vital you make the most of any charity connection as early in a season as possible.
I noticed this promotion with 25,000 double movie passess on offer in a Coles supermarket on the weekend. It was being promoted on in-store radio as well.
This is a sweet deal. It is being managed by Loyalty Pacific News Corp and Coles. To get in on the deal the shopper needs to purchase using your FlyBys card.
Thinking about it, it is smart marketing as they are focussed on getting the supermarket shopper to add a newspaper, or two, to their basket.
Coles is an easy platform as all stores in their large national network are corporate owned, the whole organisation is KPI engaged and they have platforms for driving this – in-store radio, front of store displays and an integrated loyalty program.
This is your reminder that the publisher of Inside Out magazine has a deal with Coles that makes them look cheap and us look expensive. It’e been going on for years and while my posts here may not change the disrespectful deal, it at least informs newsagents.
Newsagents, and just about any small business retailer, often complain about rent. Many who do complain do not know their occupancy cost. This is the ratio of rent to product sales where product sales include agency commission.
Knowing your occupancy cost is key to every discussion you can have on rent.
Here is the advice I have provided previously on occupancy cost:
Occupancy cost: between 9% and 11% of revenue where revenue is product revenue plus commission from agency lines. Location and situation are a big factor in this benchmark. For example, a large shopping centre business will have a higher cost than a high street situation.
The front of your shop is key in stating the type of business you are and in encouraging those walking past in. These three photos show the first steps of transformation of country Victorian business.
A colleague has asked me to ask folks here how their sales have been for tonight’s superdraw, because their sales show now measurable bump.
Last year, my software company launched Booklist, a cloud based school booklist management solution designed to help newsagents compete with big businesses chasing school book list business. The goal was to provide newsagents a facility through which they can be seen by customers as more up to date and through which they can cut the time it takes to manage booklist orders.
Newsagents have had direct input into the 2018 school year release, which is now live.
Using the site, newsagents can:
In addition to the per year fee there is a small card processing fee, on a cost recovery basis, for payments made online.
Here are the enhancements guided by newsagents:
From this project it is clear there is no one approach to managing school book list sales. The developers sought to address the most common and commercially viable needs to provide a cost effective solution for newsagents.
To access the preview please follow these instructions.
Demo Store URL https://demo.booklist.com.au
Demo Schools https://demo.booklist.com.au/available-schools
Demo Store Backend Login
| Store Login | https://www.booklist.com.au/login |
| Store Username | demo |
| Store Password | booklist |
Any questions, email help@booklist.com.au
If my first job in a newsagency decades ago I packed school book orders. I remember the manual accounting process well. My hope is this cloud based facility encourages more newsagents back into this area newsagents once owned.
We are engaging in-store and out of store campaigns to attract earlier shopping for Christmas, especially for Christmas cards – both single and boxed.
We are using several messages in the campaign, designed to engage in a light way with the early shopping opportunity.
I like the monochrome collateral created by a team member as it sits well against colourful cards. Too often I see colourful collateral with cards, and it is lost.
The messaging in the campaign will change over the next four weeks for what we consider to be the early part of Christmas shopping. The messaging is consistent in-store and online, to leverage the value of repetition.
It is important we evolve how we pitch our businesses. People will pay less attention if our messaging does not change, because it will be the same old.
If you are worried Christmas this year will be the same as or worse than last year, you still have time to change your messaging, brings in new stock and create a different story to what you have done before.
Average results happen in businesses where they do average things.
A newsagent has let me know Gotch contacted them advising their credit card facilities were down this month. Has anyone else heard this?
Newsagents in Western Australia are removing promotional material in-store for Lotterywest online gaming sign up as a dispute with the state government owned lottery operator escalates.
While the newsagent / Lotterywest relationship improved with the change of government earlier this year, recent pressure from Lotterywest for newsagents to promote a service from which they make no money has seen a setback in progress.
How this matter is handled is vitally important given the awful few years in the newsagent / Lotterywest relationship leading up to the change of government.
Watch this space as WA newsagents work together to agitate for fairness.
There is no doubt that Lotterywest needs to serve customers online. They are behind Tatts on this front. However, they need to do it with newsagents, to show a small business partnership can work, to show the Tatts ignorance of and refusal to genuinely respect newsagents is the wrong move.
Newsagents have been the retail face of lotteries in Australia since launch.
Most newsagents see lottery each customer as their customer.
Many newsagents have won and nurtured these customers.
Newsagents have done the hard yards.
Tatts misses these points.
Hopefully, Lotterywest respects newsagents for what they have done and can do for the community owned business.
With NEDS now launched, there is another gambling player that is spending up pitching online versus in-store. While not pitching lottery products it is chasing dollars from the same pool.
Specialisation is more important in independent retail today than ever.
With the lines between retail channels blurred what was a differentiating yesterday is no longer today.
Take stationery. Our channel dominated this twenty years ago. Today, we are not dominant with supermarkets, stationery specialty, online and new stores like Typo, Kikki.k and Smiggle doing this far better than us.
Look at the five pillar categories on which our channel was built – newspapers, magazines, cards, stationery and lotteries – each of these is available outside our retail channel with more purchase outlets being added.
On the upside, opportunities abound for businesses that specialise well.
By specialisation I mean going deep into a niche or product category and serving the interest well through product, knowledge and service.
I have seen newsagency businesses redefine themselves by specialising in a way then had never before considered, often in a category or niche far from what was traditional for a newsagency business. In the cases I am thinking of, they have not fully turned their back on the traditional newsagency offering. Rather, they have introduced their specialisation within their business, as an add on, bringing to the business a valuable additional traffic driver.
Specialisation does not need to dominate the business. However, it does need to be enough for people to be prepared to drive a distance to see what you have or to purchase over the hone or online because of your broad and unique range.
The photo with this post is a wall of playing cards I found in a store I visited recently. It has more cards than I can recall seeing in any other business. This is the type of specialisation I am talking about – affordable in terms of inventory investment, space and management time.
There is no limit to what you could specialise with. That is what is terrific in this consideration. You can specialise with products that stray far form what one might usually find in a newsagency. Your specialisation is an opportunity to create a business within a business, to give a new range of shoppers a reason to consider your business.
While specialisation can be challenging, the benefits can be considerable. Take your time as it could be you need to try several concepts before you find what works in your business.
This is what is important in retail, evoking your business, evolving your focus, reaching new audiences.
Standing still is not an option.
Check out the card and packaging fixture I saw on the weekend in a store that has limited space availability.
Here is a behind the counter tobacco retail unit in a c-store in Denmark, which I saw a couple of weeks ago. I figured Australian tobacco retailers may find it interesting. It is a computerised dispenser with digital representation of packs. Excellent security.
A common question I get by email is for a photo of the front of one of my stores as it currently looks. Here is my Knox store as it looked at the weekend. Each lease line pitch is designed to attract traffic from the mall.
Through my POS software company I have been working with Tyro to make access to Afterpay (buy now pay later) easier.
If you are a Tryo customer, regardless of the software you use, click here to register your interest. Tyro will contact Afterpay for you.
Afterpay has its own sign-up that you will need to complete, but Tyro will kick that off for you.
Click here to learn how you will process Afterpay payments through Tyro. It includes screen shots to guide you. This is the first step approach. It is available now. The goal is for a tighter integration with the POS software but that depends on Afterpay.
Afterpay could replace LayBy in some instances.
Using a video on social media to pitch a product range can be far more effective that still photos. Experts disagree on time and other factors for videos. I have found that for most products I pitch, a video of between 15 and 30 seconds works best. It needs to be not over-produced. It needs to feel it is from you.
Here is an example of a video I used in a Facebook promotion recently, the engagement was terrific, including plenty of shares of the video. Purchases flowed as a result. It is simple, not produced. Those types of videos tend to work better in my experience.
When you order stock, consider being specific about when you want stock delivered. Group deliveries together, so that you may roster the business to make for the most efficient arrival of stock.
If you leave it to suppliers you might have stock arrive each day of the week when a more efficient solution could be to have two days set aside for processing this.
Depending on your competitive situation, you may want to leave deliveries coming as they are and only process the new stock on set days.
I appreciate the value of new product hitting the shop floor every day. However, managing the business for efficient use of labour is key given that labour is usually the second or third biggest operating cost for any retail business.
One option is that you arrive the stock, price it and have it ready for shop floor display on the day you nominate.
At the same time Lottoland wrote to ALNA offering what appears to be a commission to newsagents they engaged a PR campaign, giving the ALNA letter to journalists. It’s been reported in newspapers and online. Lottoland CEO Luke Brill says Newsagents are an important part of Australian communities… So important that newsagents were mocked by Lottoland.
If Lottoland were serious about mending bridges with newsagents they would make their pitch, apologise for the harm they wreaked on newsagents and their families, negotiate their offer and then talked publicly about it. Instead, Lottoland made a somewhat vague pitch and gave it to at least one journalist as the same time.
Lottoland needs to apologise, publicly. They should promote newsagents on TV in a national make-good campaign. They need to do this first, as a gesture of good faith, to remonstrate their their pitch today is genuine. Apologising and declaring they were wrong is the starting point.
Footnote: I remain firm in my view that online overall is the biggest challenge to newsagent lottery revenue. Here in Australia, the lion’s share of online is driven by Tatts. They are the newsagents competitor.
We have not had a fax machine in one of my newsagencies for two years.
There has been no negative impact on customer service or revenue.
Customers who ask to send a fax are offered a lower cost, and easier, email service alternative.
The fax machine is very much yesterday’s technology. It has a limited life before a new machine is needed. Plus, it relies on consumables and often uses an additional phone line.
I can’t see the value in putting a fax machine into any newsagency.
I understand in some locations there could be thought of offering a fax service as a point of difference. To that I’d suggest that you need to understand the break-even point for the capital invested. That analysis may result in the value of offering a fax service being reinforced.
Offering a fax service could pitch your business as old-school to some and that may not match the image you want for the business.
With copiers offering PDF services, it is easy to fill in forms and return them to suppliers. Ideally, however, such forms move online, eliminating paperwork and handwriting.
All of this is about eliminating processes and making our businesses more efficient.
The purpose of this blog post is to get you to think about whether offering a fax service is right for your business and to open a conversation on the topic.
