I will be in Brisbane on Tuesday and Cairns on Thursday for Newsagency of the Future workshops. Participation is open to anyone and its free. Come along and join the conversation about the future of our channel. Book online here.
The OzLotto jackpot last night to a $50 million first division prize pool for next Tuesday sets us for an excellent bump in traffic. Here are some tips on how to leverage this traffic:
This jackpot is happening at a great time for us, make the most of it.
A smart publisher would send newsagents samples of a title they want to push – with a space on the back for newsagents to stamp the sample as coming from their store.
A smart confectionery company would send newsagents boxes of free samples to give out to lottery customers.
We are promoting crossword magazines to shoppers as they walk toward the car park. The simple display attracts sales we would otherwise not have achieved. We do this with crosswords two or three times a year and see a lift in sales as a result.
As the photo shows, we primarily support Lovatts and Puzzler. This is logical as they deliver most sales.
The display will remain up for a week.
While speaking about crosswords, they account for between 6% and 7% of all magazine sales in our Forest Hill store. It is important to us that we maintain this as we strive for a balance across magazine categories. There is a danger too much business coming from one or two categories.
While I am happy to achieve good sales for weeklies, it is important that they do not dominate magazine sales. The weekly magazine shopper is more fickle, in my view.
We are promoting Diabetic Living in an aisle end display as well as at the counter and in the usual location with health titles. In this high-traffic location Diabetic Living is seen by men and women entering their respective magazine aisles.
Diabetic Living is one of those titles which is easily purchased on impulse. Hence our multi location commitment.
We expect to leave this main display uop for a week.
The copy of the Sydney Morning Herald I picked up in Sydney today has an ad for GIO stuck over the word Sydney in the masthead. What do the brand experts think about this? What do newspaper journalists and editors think about this? Or is the masthead worth that little that it is okay to cover it up in this way? Maybe they should sell the name off – the ANZ Morning Herald, the Telstra Morning Herald … hang on, that’s what they are doing now with these stuck on ads.
The announcement yesterday that NDD is to close will see two main magazine distributors. While there are other players, it would take extraordinary expansion for them to compete with Gordon and Gotch and Network Services.
The magazine distribution model newsagents currently have often fails us. We are supplied at a level which makes the magazine department loss making or break even for more newsagents than those who make a profit. This is not healthy for us for publishers.
Despite what magazine distributors say, newsagents do not have fair control over the stock they receive. They are denied the opportunity of making business decisions on what titles they carry and the volume of each they receive. Yet we are held accountable for paying magazine supplier bills on time. This is grossly unfair since we are not given control over magazine cash flow.
In the next week or so I will publish a post here on magazine cash flow in newsagencies, based on fresh evidence. In one store, supply from Gotch and Network has been cash flow positive only three months out of the last twelve. Yet this newsagency has had to find the cash to pay the magazine bills or not receive stock.
Gotch and Network are doing what they need to do to serve their respective business models. Just as IPMG has made a decision about NDD which serves its business model.
It is a pity that newsagents have so little control over this vitally important part of their business.
The closure of NDD reduces choice and has the potential to see newsagents face tougher magazine supply terms.
I will NDD’s innovation, they we always at the forefront of range analysis and, in recent years, more flexibility for newsagents in controlling supply.
We are promoting Men’s Health next to our main newspaper stand for the next two weeks. Why? Because it works! Our experience is that we sell more copies of Men’s Health from this small stand than in the usual location with men’s fitness titles. Simple tactical moves like this are vitally important to driving above average magazine sales. It is important to know which titles such moves work for un your newsagency and to be obsessive about leveraging the opportunity.
Go try it with Men’s Health. Put it with your newspapers, even on the flat next to your biggest selling daily. Count how many copies you place there and check sales each day. Let sales data drive your actions.
In this marketplace with so many retailers selling magazine we need to fight for every single sale we can get.
We are supporting the new look Vogue Living magazine with a display at our main sales counter. This display will remain up for a few days, longer if we see sales from this location. Our Notebook and Real Living sales are growing so I figured we should achieve more with Vogue Living. Doing more to support the new look title would have been a challenge since we received just one poster.
We are promoting Cleo to shoppers as they leave our Women’s magazine aisle this week. This is in addition to two half waterfalls in the usual location for the title. Our Cleo sales are volatile so we are playing it safe with this promotional allocation. I decided to leave our Good Food display up for customers as they enter this aisle as sales have been okay from there.
NDD has announced today the winding down of its business:
As a consequence of a recent significant reduction of distribution volumes, IPMG (NDD’s parent company and shareholder) has reluctantly taken the decision to wind down the NDD business.
It is NDD’s intention to manage the process in an orderly fashion as magazine product in the system works its way through the retail channel. newsagents and supermarkets have been advised of the decision today.
We would like to assure you that NDD and its parent company IPMG, will continue to collectretail sales proceeds on your behalf and will guarantee any publisher payment liabilities in accordance with contracted terms.
We make the commitment that all NDD distributed magazines will be delivered in accordance with on sale schedules until a completion date is determined and notified. This will ensure the timely reconciliation and finalisation of your trading account with NDD.
Sally Jackson of The Australian interviewed me last week about the Newsagency of the Future workshops I am running at the moment. Sally’s article is in today’s newspaper and can be found online here.
I hope that the article encourages more newsagents and specialist newsagent suppliers to think about and work toward the future. While we have seen dramatic change coming for years, the iPad appears to have delivered the moment when newsagents get that print will not be the core traffic generator forever.
As the discussion following my Visual Merchandising post on the weekend shows, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to modern day retail practices.
This ,the Newsagency of the Future workshops will be held in Sydney, Canberra and Hobart. Next week we hit Brisbane and Cairns. For a list of dates and bookings, please click here. We will be adding another date for Melbourne and shouuld have this listed by the end of this week.
We appear to be getting more of these oversized magazines, like Classic Rock. As the photo shows, these titles encroach on the space of other titles. While I can understand the preference of publishers for using the packaging to carry gifts, the don’t do retailers and other publishers and favours. I hope that this UK trend does not take off with Australian publishers.
Being on Facebook can help a newsagency build its profile in its local community and beyond. Facebook is about connecting people who know each other and with common interests. There are several newsagencies already using facebook with terrific success. The photo shows how newsXpress Gympie promotes their Facebook page out on the street in front of their store.
A good business Facebook page:
Each of these goals and activities can be achieved through wall posts on the business page. It is simple – as Facebook itself is. Once you start a Facebook page, however, you need to work at it, keep it going. People join to find out more and if you stop providing this they will soon fade away.
To build your Facebook friend numbers you will need to promote your business page. This is done in a variety of ways:
The best way to grow your Facebook presence is to become friends with others. This broadens the pool accessible to you.
The best use of Facebook is to tell stories about the business for it is through well written stories that the narrative of the business is expressed.
Tell stories about your people, special events, seasons… anything which provides a more complete picture about the business, its points of difference and why it is a good place to visit.
Don’t overwrite, keep it simple and keep it personal. The better people get to know you the more they will feel connected to the business. Don’t try an sell stuff.
Newsagents should embrace the Facebook opportunity and be prepared to learn more about your business and your customers along the way.
We are promoting the latest issue of Mad magazine on our main newspaper stand. The cover send up of the Underbelly TV series will hopefully drive impulse purchases. This is a good example of where a cover of a magazine gives us an opportunity to leverage appeal beyond the regular customer. By co-locating stock away from the comic section we get Mad magazine it in front of plenty more eyeballs. Sure we may only sell one or two copies more but that’s our job – to seize opportunities like this as we see them.
Princess Mary on the cover of the latest issue of Royalty magazine is enough of a reason for us to co-locate this title at our main newspaper stand. While the title sells okay in with our British magazines, a cover with an Australian connection is sure to have broader appeal. We plan to maintain the co-location for a week before we assess.
Electronic invoices from Network Services will now be released at 3pm the day before magazine supply in-store. This means that Monday’s invoices will be available from 3pm tomorrow (Sunday).
I appreciate that this change will frustrate many newsagents, particularly for the Monday delivery.
I was talking with a newsagent yesterday who was complaining that their customers don’t notice their displays and the items they have on special. Their view was what the customer was to blame.
I asked whether the business itself was to blame. Were there too many displays? Were the displays close together? Were displays left up for too long? What else was competing for attention with the displays.
If customers are not noticing your displays it is likely that the problem lies with the business and not the customer. Observe customers as they enter and browse the store.
Answer these questions and you start to develop a feeling for the effectiveness of the visual noise in the store.
Sometimes in retail less is more. I saw an excellent example of this in one of my shops last week. We decided to quit a line of products and move them to another store. The smaller stock had been taken down and a customer noticed the two larger items remaining and purchased botch at close to $90.00 each. They thought we had just got them in. In fact, they had been on the shelves for more than six months.
Customers tell us a lot by their actions. I take their lack of attention to a display to be a message to the business to fix it rather than a fault on the part of my customers.
Our team at newsXpress Forest Hill put together a terrific display promoting the OzLotto $40 million jackpot this week. It starts at the front of the store and reaches deep inside, almost to the back room. Every shopper passes a promotion point or two and then at the counter they are offered a ticket. The team has every reason to be very proud of their efforts.
This display, coupled with the great range of syndicates and the counter offer make selling an Oz ticket a nice shopping basket extension.
The Oz jackpot has hit at a good time, in the winter retail soft spot.
The Subaru ad stuck on the front page of The Age newspaper yesterday damaged the product in my view. One some copies, the work Age was almost covered. On other copies the ad covered promotion of the coverage of the World Cup in the newspaper.
Why a newspaper publisher would be happy to be paid to cover up their brand or editorial content on the front page is beyond me. But what do I know?
With the challenges newspapers face today it does not make sense that a publisher would be happy to disprespect their brand in this way.
Forrester Research is predicting that there will be 59 million tablets, like the iPad, in the US by 2015. Now that is that you call a distribution channel.
I am often asked by newsagents about the role they can play in the iPad space, selling devices and selling apps.
The only role for newsagents is in selling iTunes cards and mobile phone recharge for the 3G devices. This is why I bang on here so much about the technology. We have to understand the implications so that we can build our own solutions.
I think this number will be proven to be low given the extraordinary early sales of the iPad and the everyday affordability of these devices over the next four years. Think about what happened with the iPod and similar devices.
The 3G enabled iPad I have had on order for so long is in stock and being picked up this morning. One retailer told me that the supply block has been significantly relieved this week.
I will be keeping the 3G device I will keep for myself. The WiFi unit I got last week is for use by the Tower Systems Point of Sale sales team, demonstrating to newsagents.
Travelling with the iPad has been interesting this week, plenty of people, older businessmen mainly, came up to me asking about the device. In Perth yesterday I shut the iPad down because of the interruptions.
A week on, I am more convinced than ever than this device has set the scene for a revolution the extent of which we can barely grasp today.
Newsagency shoppers love to browse food titles. Sometimes they are looking for inspiration while other times they are comparing titles before making a purchase decision. Stand in any newsagency watching browsers of food titles and you will see this, right across the country.
I am surprised, therefore, that ACP appears committed to keeping Good Food bagged and unable to be browsed. It’s a good title with plenty of compelling photos. I expect sales would be better if it could be browsed like almost all other food titles.
The bagging of the magazine to hold the free gift they include each month seems hardly worth it since the gifts are usually small cookbooks – smaller than similar ‘gifts’ stuck to many other magazines.
Check out the food magazine section in any newsagency and see how many titles are bagged and how many are not. Of the top ten local food titles today, only Good Food is bagged and I expect this to be hurting sales.
I acknowledge that browsing is not important in all magazine sales situations, trasit for example. It is in newsagencies.
Now before anyone at ACP groans about this blog post, I want what you want, more sales.
In addition to our counter display promoting Women’s Health, we are also promoting the title in our main women’s magazine aisle.
As the photo shows, we are not only promoting Women’s Health but also using it to promote other well known brands around the title. This gives us more value from the space allocation. Yes we want to sell Women’s Health – our ideal is that we sell at least one more title from the category with it.
This display will be in place for at least a week and probably two.
I expect to see sales of issue #2 of Master Chef magazine up 50% on issue #1 in my own newsagencies this month.
In a move reminiscent of moves by music publishers years ago, magazine publishers in the US are coming together to fight piracy of online content. Lakestar media has more on this.