We have been promoting music magazines and, in particular, Rolling Stone magazine toward the front of the newsagents, at our Ticketek counter.

The Lady Gaga cover shot on Rolling Stone works well at attracting people, especially since she has been in Australia this week.

Music magazines have been doing it tough so it is good to have someone current, popular and in the local news around whom to promote the category.  We ran this impulse purchase display at the front of the newsagency, facing into the shopping mall, for two weeks. We achieved incremental business in music titles as a result.

We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine with this simple display at the counter – along with a couple of other items which appeal to the same demographic.

While not a billboard like display, the real value of this display is the placement.  Every customer making a purchase in our store will be in front of this display.  The newsagent difference is that we give access to this premium space for free.

Since it is premium space, we will give the title three days.  It stays longer if it’s delivering results.  This is the only way to deal with premium counter space.

Last weekend we ran Better Homes and Gardens and That’s Life Reader’s Recipes at the counter in one of my newsagencies, between newspapers.  They sold well!  At least six copies of each from this location alone.  More sales were achieved from the usual location for each of the titles.  This is excellent incremental and impulse business to primarily newspaper customers.  We have ordered more of each title as a result.

We newsagents are better placed to drive this type of impulse business than supermarket, convenience and petrol outlets.   we can be smarter in placement.  We can decide what to promote based on specific covers and what we know about our shoppers.  Our competitors promote titles based on what they are paid to do.  So, we can leverage our individuality to our benefit … as we have done with these two titles.

We keep changing what we promote with newspapers because of the regular newspaper customers we see.  Impulse purchase displays should not remain in place for more than a few days otherwise the sales are not worth it – unless you have a low number of regular daily shoppers.

The latest issue of Australian Property Investor is the flagship Hot 100 issue – with the stand out gold cover.  While it has only been on-sale for a day it is already receiving good media coverage and this will continue including TV coverage.

This is an excellent magazine to have in a high traffic location, like next to newspapers.   This is what we are doing in my newsagencies.

This issue sold very well last year – by newsagents engaging tactically.  So, I’d urge newsagents to engage again and chase incremental basket-building business.  And if the issue sells well in the first few days, consider chasing more stock.