Newsagents need to embrace multi channel marketing
Grant Harrod, CEO of Salmat, writing in the Australian Financial Review on Monday called on retailers to use multiple channels when promoting to consumers.
While much has been made of the rise of online retailing and explosion of new media, the reality is that people have diverse media habits and purchasing preference.
I agree with this and most of what Harrod has to say.
Newsagents are competing in a tough retail marketplace in tough economic conditions. We cannot rely on what we have always done to drive traffic. Just one or two campaigns a year are not enough.
No, we need a consistently delivered multi-channel approach if we are to have any hope of competing with the major retailers which offer what we sell.
In my own newsagencies I embrace the multifaceted newsXpress marketing: catalogues delivered to homes every six to eight weeks, commercial TV advertising, commercial print media advertising, monthly customer newsletter, a fresh flyer out the front of the businesses every month, in-store radio, a social media campaign, a local online yellow pages like campaign and a word of mouth driven campaign.
I see this mix as the bare minimum for any newsagency group. I like the diversity as it means that the business is not relying on one activity to drive new shopper traffic.
For individual newsagents there is a challenge as the costs can be prohibitive. That said, there are some options which could fit into a single store budget, especially in regional and rural areas.
Now more than ever we need to market our businesses and do this via more channels than we used to in the past. Changing times demand we change our approach to so much of what we do, including marketing.
