We have been promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine since it’s on-sale with this display at the entrance to the women’s magazine aisle. We also have a double half waterfall at eye level in the usual location for Dolly – half way down our women’s magazine aisle.
In the last round of Newsagency of the Future workshops I urged newsagents to develop their Unique Selling Proposition as I saw (and see) this as vital to the future of any individual business. I subsequently wrote an article published in the latest issue of National Newsagent magazine.
Here is the article. I urge newsagents and those who work in newsagencies to read this and develop a USP for their business:
Developing the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for a newsagency is one of the most important steps you can take in business.
A good USP will frame every decision you make. It will also define why you are in business for it goes to the heart of your passion. It feeds from your mission, your reason for existing.
Yes, a USP must reflect passion for this is what drives your love of your business … and you do love your small retail business don’t you?! This is where small retailers like newsagents are different to big retailers. Where they get lost in KPIs, share price and other metrics, small business retailers think in personal terms, often with emotion.
So how do you create your USP? Here are some tips I have found useful when working with newsagents on developing a USP…
1. Take your time. You will be done when you are done. Getting your USP right is more important than meeting a deadline.
2. Think. Try and get time away from the business to think about your USP. A good location I have found works is siting on a seat across from the entrance to your retail business, watching your customers.
3. Love. Work out what you love about your business and / or what you want to love about your business. Next, think about what you want your customers to love so much that they will tell their friends.
4. Differentiate. Think about what’s special in your area or marketplace about your business.
5. What do you stand for? If someone says who are you? you will probably answer with the facts. If they say, no, I want more, what makes you special? you will probably, hopefully, take them inside what makes you tick. So, you need to know, what does your business stand for?
6. Define. Try and put into words your passion and what is special about your business. Brainstorm ideas in ten words or less. Get as many down on paper as you can.
7. Would you be missed? It is said that people often define their view of themselves by wondering if they would be missed. Think about your small retail business in this way. Would you be missed? If so, how and why?
It might take a few goes, working through these ideas. The result should be something close to a USP for your business.
Your USP needs to be succinct, passionate and unique, something that explains why your business is different and why people should shop with you.
A big challenge for newsagents is the diversity of the typical business. A USP is unique yet so much of what newsagents sell is not unique. So, a USP may start with one part of the business, getting you known for that.
If you think you are close, test it with your employees and family. Test it with yourself too by asking what you would change in the business with this USP in place, what decisions would be different?
A good USP will guide business decisions and provide a framework through which you navigate change in the business. But most important of all, it defines why you are in business.
Change is inevitable. Yes, your USP can and will change as the business evolved.
So, get started. To help you along, here are three ideas that focus on passion and evoke emotion:
1. Gifts you’ll be proud to give
2. Cards people love
3. Where customers are friends
You can discuss your USP ideas with Mark Fletcher on 09418 32 1338 or at mark@towersystems.com.au.
The Australian Financial Review weekend edition covered a page on news story with an ad for one of its magazines. It was the story about James Ashby and the allegation of a conspiracy to damage the reputation of the speaker, an important story.
Why do I keep posting about this? There are college students in the US and high school students in Australia who ask me about this as they study changes in newspapers. The appreciate the photos.
Here is how one of my newsagencies is promoting the latest issue of Donna Hay magazine.
The column-based display is facing the mall and can be seen by shoppers as they pass by the business. You can click on the image if you want to see a larger version of the display.
I love the professional look of the display and the use of height.
Check out the subscription promotion for M2 magazine on living social. They are selling an annual subscription at 68% off the cover price and they are copping the cost of postage on top of that.
While I understand the need for subscription in the mix for publishers, I do not understand why they need to discount at this level and create a dual speed supply proposition for people who could engage with their title.
Nuts.
My newsagency software company is adding a role to the help desk. If you know of someone with good IT skills, excellent communication and newsagency experience please get them to email me for details of the role.
In New Zealand this week I checked out Warehouse Stationery, part of The Warehouse group. Their stationery offer is excellent, better than Officeworks. Their website offer is event better. They have been in business for twenty years and operate from 50 stores up and down the country.
Any Australian newsagents visiting NZ should visit several Warehouse Stationery outlets to see competition up close. You will see and excellent operation showing how to do stationery professionally.
Stationery is one of the most challenged categories in our channel yet it is a category over which we have the most control. We fail to take a more commercial approach with stationery at our peril.
ACP Magazines is using corporate stable mate Ticketek to promote subscriptions of TopGear magazine. The 53% discount for is sure to entice some to switch from over the counter to subscriptions.
I was back in Auckland yesterday and took a photo of a newspaper stand I have often admired. I like that it’s promoting magazines, drinks, candy and newspapers. It’s something now being used in most corporate transit newsagency situations in Australia. I though some non-transit newsagents might find it interesting.
I am not planning on this stand for any only my newsagencies – I prefer more flexibility with what I place with newspapers. Also, I have my newspapers deeper into the store rather than on the lease line as shown in the photo. This works well for us.
Regulars here will be surprised to read that I didn’t mind the ad stuck on the masthead of The Age newspaper on Thursday. Okay, it as covering promotion of an AFL Hall of Fame story. However, that it was promoting the newspaper itself and the colour – it was not as distracting a many of the stuck on ads are. While I don’t like that they use shelf space in my shop to take sales from me, I can understand why they do it. It’s the world we’re in. I am not fighting to retain major newspaper sales, I am more interested ingrowing foreign language newspaper sales.
It’s good to see four new partworks heading for newsagents:
All are being distributed by Gordon & Gotch. All will be supported with TV campaigns. Allocations have been done by Gotch on the basis of sales of similar titles. Stock will be sent with A2 posters. There will be limited floor stock for newsagencies sending sales data through XchangeIT.
Based on the UK experience, Dora The Explorer – Little Cooks Collection is expected to be the top seller. It’s hitting at a good time with food continuing in popularity on TV and in print.
Each of these partworks is a terrific opportunity fore newsagents as the TV advertising and other marketing will focus on driving traffic to our shops. Yes there will be some who wonder about whether this is about driving subscriptions. Maybe, maybe not. The reality is the TV will drive traffic just for us. It’s not often we see that. This is an opportunity to embrace.
We are promoting issue #3 of smith journal magazine with this placement with men’s fitness titles as well as placement in what we call our thinking man’s magazine section plus our usual location for frankie magazine. We have found that multiple locations work well for us for smith journal with each ovation working equally well in our business.
smith journal is a terrific new magazine title. It is generating important sales for the men’s magazine category. Newsagents who didn’t give it a good run early on should have another crack and look forward to sales.
We are promoting diabetic living magazine with our weekly magazines and with this placement in the usual location for the title. Note how we are using a simple placement in an acrylic unit above the usual placement for the magazine. This top-of-stand display is the only one shoppers see as they walk down the aisle, it acts as a terrific beacon for diabetic living – showing off the current issue and reinforcing where the magazine can usually be found. Sometimes the simplest ideas work best.
Click on the image to see the placement in detail.
We are promoting the latest issue of Weight Watchers magazine with this behind the counter promotion, placement with our weekly magazines as well as prime placement in with our health titles.
The new look magazine looks terrific and the activity around the launch is a good reason for newsagents to promote the title differently to usual, to give it extra attention.
we have found that placement of Weight Watchers with weeklies works a treat. we pocket count and therefore know what sells in this position with the weeklies.
We are promoting the launch issue of SHAFT magazine from Morrison Media with full cover placement in our men’s magazine area, next to sport, fitness and personal training titles. This is adjacent to our trucking magazines.
We plan to give the title a few days with newspapers next week to get it in front of more eyeballs.
I am happy with my relationship with magazine distributor IPS, they are a welcome addition to the magazine distribution mix. I like the flexibility in selecting titles. I also like that their model is forcing publishers who use Gotch and Network to look at their engagement with newsagents. I like that I can order what I think I will sell and access top up stock the next day if needed.
When IPS launched I noted that they will be an agent for change. I think we are close to seeing this play out now. With 4,000+ newsagents with IPS accounts, they have distribution critical mass to benefit publishers.
I met with some of the IPS management team a week back and with their permission publish a summary of IPS achievements so far:
I am confident that the more we as a channel engage with IPS the more Gotch and Network will change their model in response to greater competition.
Check out what the Little Friends bundle pack from ACp looked like yesterday. Inside the sealed pack is an old copy of the magazine with a sticker from the previous newsagent. Someone, I am guessing at Network, put a line through the price and the barcode. They damaged the cover in doing this. It would have been easier to remove the sticker as it has a non-damaging adhesive.
I can’t sell this copy of the product – it is not compliant in my view and is being early returned.
I complain about oversupply here so it’s appropriate when supplies are increased with justification. I’m thrilled with the bump in supply we received for My Weekly magazine and their royal jubilee feature. we are supporting the opportunity with stock in the usual location for the title as well as with placement next to our weeklies like Woman’s Day and New Idea.
This is the display created by the team at my Watergardens store to promote marie claire magazine and their partnership with GET Up! in promoting marriage equality. They created this store-front display inspired by what has been created by the team at one of my other stores.
Shopper reaction to the marie claire campaign is excellent in terms of comments and sales.
We are promoting Zoo magazine with front and centre positioning because Sophie Monk is on the cover and her TV wash your balls ad for Lynx is getting plenty of attention on social media and around the water cooler. The TV ad is fun, a real piss take as they say.
We have our display for Take 5 up as well as placement of the magazine in a second impulse purchase location as well as the usual allocation for the title. With the sales decay for Take 5 and That’s Life falling away once we hit Friday (that’s a good thing by the way – not a complaint) we expect to have the main display up for three days.
I was pleased to see the announcement from the Reserve Bank yesterday banning excessive EFTPOS related fees. While the regulation is not as simple as it should be, it is a start. My concern is that it is open to interpretation and you need to complain for an issue to be resolved.
The RBA also announced a process of consultation on the future regulatory framework of EFTPOS Hopefully plenty of small business representatives make submissions, particularly around the control the big banks in Australia have over current arrangements. You can access a paper outlining the thinking of the RBA on the future framework here.
I was in Auckland last week and got to get another look at the bookmarque store at the Auckland airport. I love because it’s different to the usual airport magazine / book shops. It’s funky, presents products well and attracts shoppers for a good variety of reasons.
They have good coffee, a good selection of snacks, an excellent range of books, funky gifts travellers will like and a good range of magazines well merchandised. The store is well zoned. It is also designed and laid out to draw you in.
bookmarque is the kind of shop which could only work in a classy shopping mall or a premium airport shopping situation like I saw in Auckland. It would not work in a b-class mall with sub-standard shops around nor in a high street situation. That said, there are some learnings to take away for trying in a newsagency situation.
What was particularly interesting to me was how they blended a cafe, bookshop, magazine shop and travel gift shop together without disrespecting each of these categories yet connecting them.
I’ve seen bookmarque plenty of times in recent years but only looked at it from a retail layout and management perspective this trip.
Click on the image to see a much bigger version.
The media coverage of the news that Kerri-Anne Kennerly has been diagnosed with breast cancer has been considerable. Without wanting to look crass (but we are retailers after all) we placed copies of the magazine at each sales counter position. The placements served as a reminder to customers about the high-profile cover story. It is driving impulse purchases for us.
Nothing beats getting the right product in front of shoppers at the right location in-store.
We have been supporting the latest issue of Australian Traveller magazine and a selection of camper and 4WD titles with this display in a pillar facing shoppers as they enter the store.
The idea here is to bring a category out from the usual location to the rear of the newsagency and show shoppers who shop the front of the business to see them. I chose Australia Traveller as the headline title because of the cut through of the collateral and that the proposition of the title is easy to get by a browser.
Regulars here will notice that we have done several of these category specific off-location displays. They are working, achieving additional sales for us. Magazine sales are up 12% comparing the last four weeks to the same four weeks a year earlier. I think this is in part due to this off-location support.
Click on the image to see a bigger version.