While newspaper publishers continue to focus attention on driving home delivery subscription sales and chasing retail sales outside the newsagency channel, I have been thinking about tactics which could be used to help drive single copy newspaper sales in Australian newsagencies.

Sure, CDs, DVDs and promotions like the Simpsons stickers drive sales, the incremental sales are more about the giveaway product than the newspaper. We need people to buy a newspaper for the newspaper itself.

I’d like to see publishers invest in the news part of newspapers. Not magazines and supplements which are more ads than content. Enough already. Here’s an idea, focus on the news. Make newspapers appealing for the news.

Once the product is more compelling, engage with newsagents in a marketing strategy to drive over the counter sales. Use the specialist retail channel for the purpose for which it was created.

Here are four newspaper marketing ideas I think are worth trying worth trying in a direct partnership between retail newsagents and newspaper publishers:

• Would you like fries with that? Offer a newspaper for half price with a lottery ticket sale. Very simple offer. Just asking the question will win some business. Kick it up a notch with a coupon for redemption within seven days for another half price newspaper from the same newsagency. The coupon could even offer a discount for each of seven days.
• Upsize Offer a customer buying a newspaper any other newspaper for half price. While publishers may argue about who pays for this, why not try the idea at least and measure consumer engagement.
• Bulk buy and save Pay today for 25 newspapers and we will give you 30. This respects the regular newspaper shopper and locks them into the newsagency. This will drive loyalty from the newsagent back to the publisher.
• Go and play Give participating newsagents, say, fifty extra newspapers a day and ask them to develop their own tactics for selling these. The key is they must sell them for something and to customers who would otherwise not have purchased the newspaper. The feedback could unlock other marketing ideas worth rolling out across the channel.

I know that publishers have considered some of these before. Indeed, I have been involved in such discussions My experience is that they over complicate single copy marketing. They let the glory of a home delivery subscription pull focus from a very different yet lucrative opportunity.

I want to sell more newspapers but I want to do it in a way which builds repeat business and which does not dilute my return from this already slim margin product.

I’d certainly like to try any or all of these ideas and I bet other retail-only newsagents would too.