We have tweaked the placement of our top three gardening titles to try and increase sales beyond the growth we are already seeing.  Each title is getting time at the front, so that the full face can be seen.  Putting this next to english weekly titles and before me move into home and living gets garden titles seen by more shoppers than if we left it in the usual location.

We have Gardening Australia, Burke’s Backyard and Your Garden in these prime three pockets as they are our best performers at this time of the year.

This is the time of the year to promote garden titles, to make the most of the springtime seasonal opportunity.  Sales are excellent.

We are promoting the new kids’ cakes cookbook title from ACP at the sales counter.  The cover is terrific and is bound to draw good attention.  We are also giving the title a run in the ACP stand at the front of the newsagency – chasing sales before people focus on Christmas shopping.

Check out the editor’s letter from the latest AdNews …

Magazines are dead. Really? It’s all too easy to bemoan the overall circulation decline across the consumer magazine industry as a portent of an industry in perennial decline. The truth is more complex. The reality of the situation also happens to be more positive than some of the doom-sayers would have you believe.

Be sure to read the whole thing.  It’s a positive pitch for print citing Famous and frankie.

On Monday newsagents have an opportunity with the release of Hot Boys of TV, a one-shot from Pacific Magazines as a brand extension TV Hits.

Only available through newsagents and Big W, our channel ought to make the most of the opportunity.  Pacific is promoting the title through social media and this is bound to drive interest and traffic to our channel.

My plan is to promote this title at the front of the newsagency – in a high traffic location – as well as with teen magazines.

There is considerable social media buzz about the launch on Facebook and Twitter.  This is being driven by Pacific Magazines and encourages people to go to their newsagency to pick up a copy.

We are promoting the Christmas issue of Family Circle magazine with placement at the counter as well as placement out the front of the newsagency facing into the mall.  This is NOT a title to stick in magazine shelves hoping that customers find it.  You need to chase them and let them know that the Christmas issue is out.  We did this last year and sold out, twice!  Get in early and grab sales from the supermarkets.

We are promoting the new ACP cookbook: The Cooker Cookbook with placement with our food titles as well as in an impulse location at the entrance to our women’s aisle, opposite our weeklies.  With these ACP cookbook titles we get our best results by going out immediately they come on sale, before other retailers get the title and grab sales.  We move new titles around, leaving it in a set place once we see it selling particularly well from a location.

Further to my post on the weekend about suggesting titles those browsing a specific title may be interested in, here is an example of more personal magazine promotion by our team.  In this example, Tessa explains why she recommends the UK Hello magazine.

We are not directing the magazines to be promoted or choosing the words they are to use.  I think it’s important that team members giving a recommendation have the freedom to make this a genuine recommendation.

I like this idea because of the personal nature it.  I also like that it shows that we engage with magazines ourselves.  You’d never see this in a supermarket.

We have been promoting Time Out Melbourne at the counter over the last few days, next to our Ticketek counter actually – probably the best place in the shop for the title.  In addition to the magazine itself, the team has placed a pitch for this issue.

While I am happy that we have done the work to promote Time Out Melbourne, I think that the publisher could do more to help drive over the counter sales of the title.  For example, at their website they could list stockists for the title.  This is something all magazine publishers should do – support the retailers who support you.