I love the cover of The Chaser Quarterly and the tag: Can this man increase our sales figures if we put him on the cover! I hope so. I have placed the magazine with our newspapers, with the Herald Sun actually as people buying it are more likely to be drawn by a Trump cover. As for the issue itself, it’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed reading it.
This latest issue of Australian Stamps Professional is one to get out in the spotlight thanks to the Robert Menzies cover shot. Browsing the title yesterday I felt the title would appeal to people who might not even know Australian Stamps Professional exists. So, I chose it as a title to promote on the business Facebook page to try and reach people who may not usually shop with us.
We have AFL cards at all counter locations in the newsagency to drive pulse purchases. This is one print product that is not showing any signs of slowing, thankfully. We are helping encourage interest with out of store marketing.
We are promoting the Candy Crush puzzle magazine from Puzzler with our weekly magazines rather than in the puzzle section as people will not be looking for the title as it is new to us. It does look like a puzzle title people who do not regularly purchase puzzle titles might consider.
70,000+ people reached with this tweet promoting newsagents:
I love this type of local newspaper promotion and their social media pitches in support of newsagents.
Well done to the folks at the Geelong Advertiser for putting this together.
Look at the bags into which you place customer purchases. What do they say about your business/ What do you put in the bags to entice customers back?
If your bags are generic, not of the brand of your business then you are not marketing your brand effectively. If the bags only have the purchases then you are missing an opportunity to entice shoppers.
If you are concerned about declining traffic and or revenue, managing bags as a marketing activity could help you improve your situation.
Fewer businesses offer a fax service today than a year ago. This increased scarcity coupled with increased rent and labour costs are reason enough for newsagents to review pricing.
My suggestion is you check the pricing of your nearest major competitor and peg your price slightly above theirs. In several newsagency businesses I have discussed this with recently, they would increase their priced by a third or more. As long as volume is maintained, that is a nice bump to the bottom line.
Providing a fax service costs time and money. It needs to be price and run as a profit centre for the business.
I have been asked by several newsagents to raise here their frustration with processes implemented by Tatts for handling the scanning if instant scratch tickets. When you scan the first and last tickets of a book it presents problems when people scan a free ticket I’m told. My understanding is the changes will result in apparently inactive instant scratch tickets being in circulation.
Let others know what you think about the situation.
More and more I am using photos of parts of magazine covers in marketing of magazines for the newsagency. Rather than all the text and masthead pulling focus from the hero of the cover, the food dish or the icon, such as David Bowie, I am finding it more effective in attracting interest in a niche title by decluttering the image.
While most retailers promoting magazines online use the full covers, I am finding the use of tight shot photos of part of a cover works better. I say this based on feedback. It is certainly a point of difference at the moment.
This David Bowie photo from a magazine in February is a good example. The image is stunning, haunting. It is more effective in this form for online marketing than on the full magazine cover.
If you are promoting magazines on social media you need a point of difference to drive attention. Doing what everyone else does dilutes your effort.
Click here for a comparison of ratings given WH Smith by a bunch of stock analysts in the UK. regardless of what one may think of their UK stores, they are growing in their presence in Australia and as a new business here they are leveraging the freedom of that to reinvent their model. The analyst ratings speak to their strength and the risk they pose for us.
I put out a all this morning to newsagents for year on year sales comparison data for the January through March quarter of 2016 vs. 2015. I am hoping to have the analysis done by mid month. It is terrific to see newsagents engaged in this quarterly project. I already have data from thirty five stores.
While rent and labour costs for newsagencies increase 5% year on year, magazine revenue continues to fall. Newsagents are responding by cutting space allocated to magazines. Publishers can’t complain as they are making their own arrangements in this rapidly changing world as this tweet shows for Ride magazine. They are doing what they must for their business. As should we by cutting overheads for magazines, such as reducing the space allocated. Publishers can encourage our support for magazines is – get out of all retail channels except newsagencies.
Fairfax today announced the closure of two regional newspapers and changes for others.
Under the plan, print editions and websites of the Cooma-Monaro Express and the Summit Sun at Jindabyne will be discontinued, The Queanbeyan Age will be relaunched as a free weekly newspaper and the content and distribution of the Braidwood Times will be extended to serve the growing community of Bungendore.
Fairfax also announced the Canberra Times is to be redesigned into a compact format.
None of these moves should surprise newsagents who have been focussed on the future. There is no upside for print newspapers if they remain focused on news as the news is well and truly old by the time the presses start to role the night before we get the products in-store.
While I understand publishers need to promote and in most Australian cities justify production, this is now a rapidly changing space. Whereas publishers were asleep for decades, two or three years ago they started to act and moved on cover price and cut operating costs. It is too little too late in my view. Now, they need to act ahead of the massive wave that is building out in the ocean, so they are not drowned.
Today, we have newspapers that are too thin to justify the higher charge. Ask any newsagent and they will have stories of customers complaining about poor value for money some days.
I think we are close to seeing one or more capital city dailies moving away from seven day production schedules. I don;t want that but paid circulation and falling ad revenue make it inevitable.
We have to run our businesses expecting falling newspaper traffic and revenue otherwise we will be in shock when it stops and wonder what to do, and by then it will be too late.
Today’s announcements by Fairfax are announcements the company needed to make. Our challenge is to respond thoughtfully and appropriately for our own respective futures. Hopefully, many newsagents reading this started acting long ago.
While newspapers remain important to many newsagencies today, business growth can be achieved without them. This is where our attention ought be.
Newsagents need to be chasing new traffic, shoppers who do not come to the business today. This is hard work. It involves you being a retailer and not an agent. This is a fundamental mindset change, but one many have made with terrific success.
It frustrates me when I hear of a newsagency supplier using the same barcode on multiple products. Retailers cannot adequately track sales in such a situation. Suppliers who do this deny newsagents the opportunity to understand what is happening in their business.
How do you understand the performance of your card department with, say, 800 different designs, where a barcode is shared with fifty to one hundreds designs? You can’t! Only the card company can analyse performance in such a situation.
This is poor service of the retail newsagents by the supplier, the card company in my example above. It is disrespectful and not best practice.
While newsagents can produce their own barcodes for cards, they should not have to as doing so would be an extra cost and take extra labour.
We need to be more demanding of our suppliers on these matters.
The more suppliers help me more easily understand the performance of inventory in my business the better for me and for them, and the better for my customers.
We are not cottage industry retailers. We are a strong national channel competing with many national retailers. One way we can effectively compete is with data and business tools of a standard equal to our competitors.
We have the Hallmark Batman vs. Superman stand on the lease line to leverage interest in the franchise following the release of the movie and the extraordinary publicity surrounding it. The stand is working along with products from other suppliers. The best way to leverage licenced product is to go deep across several suppliers. Range matters in the licenced space.
If you have the stand, place it at the door, in the window or on the lease line.
This is another good news story for engaged newsagents: leveraging a popular current licence through a range of suppliers to drive new traffic for our businesses.
How is this for a tweet to re-tweet? I love it, especially in relation to the government owned post offices – retail businesses they should not operate except from offering basic postal services.
Peter Ford has 10,000 Twitter followers. I responded to him as did others at the time of his tweet.
I would not be surprised to see Australia Post rethink its approach to retail as we have seen the ABC do in recent months. If they do, there will be more opportunities for newsagents.
Why are post offices selling so much crappy stuff these days? My answer is – because they have lost their way, they no longer know what they stand for. That is reflected in their broad an disconnected range of food.
Further to my post yesterday, the question do you think a newsagency is a good business to buy? is one I am also asked regularly.
Any newsagency is a good business to buy to the right purchaser, the person most suited for that business.
The answer really does come back to the purchaser because they may have skills ideal for a specific business. Equally, they may lack skills essential to a particular business – making them not the right purchaser.
The question demands an answer thoughtfully considers and takes into account who is asking, their skills, their resources, their experience, their fitness, their desire and their hopes and plans for the future.
While the business they are asking about is important, I see the answer as relying more on the person themselves. This is why I say any newsagency can be a good business to buy and often is.
I have a lot of confidence in the channel even though what the channel stood for in the past is changing rapidly, faster than ever before, to the extent that the channel is not the channel. But all of that is good in my view for I love change and the opportunities in change.
So, for the right purchaser, yes, a newsagency is a good business to buy.
Where it is not is if you are not interested in retail, not prepared for change, not appropriately resourced and expecting an easy ride. Yes, if you are lazy, a newsagency is not a business for you.
I say all of this as someone keen for more new blood in our ‘channel’. But it has to be good blood from energetic and optimistic retailers … because it is you who will help give us a terrific future.
Now is a great time to buy a newsagency if you want to participate in a time of great change and great opportunity that comes with great change.
I like the ANZAC to Afghanistan Medallions – Commemorative Coins promotion announced to Victorian newsagents by News Corp. last week. All News Corp. metro dailies are engaged in the promotion from what I understand.
I expect the promotion will be a hit because of the demographic of newspaper readers, the theme, each coin being legal tender and the connection with the Mint and Legacy.
One of the most common questions I get privately from people who find me through this blog is what should I ask for when looking at buying a newsagency?
The question itself, when asked, indicates how green a prospective purchaser is when it comes to purchasing a business.
Here is a list of data I suggest newsagency business purchasers access from the vendor or their representative:
This is good basic information that will enable any purchaser to undertake reasonable assessment of a business.
A good business will shine through the numbers just as a business with upside achievable by new owners will shine through.
My advice to newsagents looking to sell who are concerned about this list is: think about it now and focus on your business so the data I have listed looks good.
Every day you make decisions in your business that impact many of the data points listed.
This is why I say every day is your pay day. Run a smart, lean and profit focused business and you will have a good pay day today and a good one when you come to sell.
The most appealing businesses are those that are easier to run and are making money.
The time to focus on that is now.
Sure a purchaser can turn a business around. They should get the rewards if they are expected to do that for your business.
The price you can sell your business for will be based on what it is making now.
Getting the data ready for the sale of the business could, of itself, help you improve how you run your business.
I have received six to eight over the last ten days emails from The New York Times promoting digital subscriptions. One email is okay but I now have so many they appear desperate. The US$2 a week offer for digital access does not feel like good value in that I can access few news from plenty of sites. Paying US$2 a week for their opinions is not appealing. This is the same reason I don;t pay News Corp. a fee to be told by their opinion writers what to think.
I love this display of pens that I saw a couple of days ago. The bottom two photos show an approach to colour blocking and organisation within the fixtures that makes the display work.
Maybe when the shop is closed one night or early morning and with the lights off so people cannot see you, get on your hands and knees and crawl through your business to see what kids see.
I am serious. Try it. What can kids see?
Kids are shoppers, important shoppers. Their pester power can help drive sales.
Supermarkets and other retailers obsess about what to put at a height level for kids to see, engage with and pester parents about.
I am encouraging you to crawl through your business because it is cheaper than bringing in a retail expert to provide you with advice.
When you are on your hands and knees, probably picking up rubbish and rearranging the shelves as you go, think about product placement for your youngest shoppers. This is especially important near the counter.
What new products could you bring in for kids? What products could you move from elsewhere for kids? What can you change to improve the value to you of kids shopping with parents in your business? This is business after all.
Yes, you will feel odd. Give it a go and see what deliberate changes you make. Track the results. Hopefully they are such that they get you on your hands and knees again.
The success of your retail newsagency depends on you having the best people working in the business, including you. Rate everyone, including you. If they are not the best, if they are not what you need, your challenge is to address this. No one else will, it is up to you.
Once of the best displays at the Toy Fair from a retail perspective was this display of Hawthorn AFL merchandise at Korimco. Putting all hawthorn product together like this tells a better story to hawthorn shoppers than leaving the products in each product stand with all other AFL teams covered in each product group. Small steps honing in with a narrow focus can create a better impression. This image reflects what telling a story can look like.
I have been working with a newsagent on addressing the cost of shopper theft in the business. Here are tips they found useful:
While there are other steps you could take, these seven are most valuable from years of working with retailers in a range of retail channels:
The more likely people are to be caught the less likely you are to experience shopper theft.