A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Selling pigs on Valentine’s Day, Marketing Tips for newsagents

valentine_pigs.JPGValentine’s Day is a short yet intensive season for Australian newsagents and retailers more generally.  Making the most of the season means planning a multi-faceted attack well in advance.  Here are some left-field marketing tips you could consider to supplement the traditional approach around greeting cards, plush and chocolates.  It is not too late to engage and pushthe boundaries this Valentine’s Day:

  • Heart wall.  Get customers to submit heart themed art.  Stick it all up on a wall.  Have a small prize for the winner.
  • Romance graffiti wall.  Put up a white board or butchers paper have invite customers to write anonymous notes of romance on the wall.
  • Romantic poetry competition.  Invite your customers to submit a romantic poem.  Invite the local school English department to adjudicate.
  • Papier mache heart competition.  Newsagents are the best place to source what you need to be creative at home.  This idea is about creating a worthwhile activity and connecting with the season.  Put them on display and award a prize.
  • Romance vouchers.  Create a sheet of vouchers which could be given with a Valentine’s Day card.  The vouchers could be for a home cooked meal, a back rub or a day at the beach together.  This idea connects with a do-it-yourself approach for the cost conscious.
  • Have good gifts.  Don’t rely just on cards.  Create a good gift offer beyond the usual chocolates, flowers, plush and balloons.  Consider cuff links for men and a gift voucher to a local spa for women.
  • Do some good.  Connect with a local charity and offer donation to them from each Valentine’s Day sale – promote the connection.  Charity cards do well at Christmas so why not Valentine’s Day?

There are plenty of other ideas.  Keep thinking.  The keys are to have fun, engage with your customers and be unique.

Click here to see the tips I published last year.

And the pigs?  They are part of the Valentine’s Day range we have for our Sophie Randall businesses.  They are different and something different is what gift customers like to find.

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marketing tip

Appealing back to school stationery

young_stat.JPGI have been contacted by several newagents about my post on Tuesday about funky looking back to school stationery.  The Spencer Burford range is proving to be very popular with primary and secondary students.  It is well priced and gives newsagents carrying it point of difference over many others in this back to school space.  Newsagents have tended to approach stationery in a conservative way.  This product breaks with that tradition and makes is seem ‘with it’ and connected to today’s BTS consumer – a crucial challenge in retail, today especially.

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Stationery

Optus the stand out for mobile recharge

Optus is the stand out brand in the mobile recharge business in our newsagencies.  In one of our stores it accounts for more than 40% of all recharge product sold – twenty five vouchers last week.

I am tracking this because this is the business we lost for a time when Bill Express and related businesses collapsed last year.  Optus recharge is an important traffic generator.

Some newsagencies I see are still winning lost customers back, others have passed previous numbers.  Optus is the key.  It is a brand consumers know and trust.

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Bill Payment

Good Valentine’s Day sales already

val_swing.JPGSeveral newsagents I have spoken with over the last  few days tell me that Valentine’s Day card sales are good even though the big day is three weeks away.  I prefer to go out early with seasons like Valentine’s Day because it shows customers who like to browse that you have the range.

The challenge is to balance seasonal space allocation such that it does not distract from regular card sales.

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Gifts

Where IT compliance helps newsagents

Newsagents received an Off-Sale Date and Return Method Changes Notification from Network Services last week.  This is the first of what we expect to be many.  The newsagents operating according to industry standards did not have to do any extra work.  Newsagents not following industry standards or not using compliant software have had to engage in manual processes to deal with the three pages of magazine return changes notified by Network Services.

These change notifications are coming through weekly as Network Services moves to its weekly returns model.

To newsagents who wonder about the value of up to date industry-standard software, the time saved for many in handling these Network Services notifications is the answer.

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magazine distribution

Blocking newsagents from magazine direct supply

There are several battles being waged at present around which businesses can get direct supply of magazines.  I know of newsagencies selling more than $8,000 in magazines a week which are being denied direct supply access while a small supermarket nearby selling considerably less is given a direct account without challenge.

There are some who would say that the distribution newsagent must be protected.  These same people do not fight when a new supermarket or convenience outlet opens and gets a direct account – because newsagents lost that fight years ago.  They only fight when a newsagent (subagent to them) wants to go direct.  They do this because the magazine distributors will probably agree with them – the individual newsagent wanting a direect account is not as powerful as, say, IGA, Coles or Woolworths.

In situations of which I am aware right now, goot retail newsagents are being blocked from accessing direct supply of magazines.  This will encourage them to reduce focus on magazines.  Publishers will be the losers.  I wonder if they know how magazine distributors are managing the representation of their product in the changing newsagency channel.

I agree it would be difficult to let go of revenue, especially from a business you have helped grow.  However, competition policy is on the side of the consumer.

Behaviour I have seen recently shows that some playing in this area do not understand competition law.

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magazine distribution

The timing of magazine returns

I was surprised to learn that there are newsagents who continue to process magazines at the end of the week (for weekly returns) or at the end of the month (for monthly returns).  In our newsagencies we scan the magazines as they come off each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  We do this regardless of whether we have the electronic returns file from the distributor – the software will allocate to the right form once it has been received even after we have scanned the titles.

This approach of scanning magazine returns daily saves considerable time and space.

A newsagent I know who made the switch to the daily returns approach last year, after changing software, is saving at least eight paid hours of labour a month – $152 a month or $1,824 a year – plus on-costs.

I cringe when I see stacks of loose magazines in the back room of a newsagency.  This is like leaving cash for anyone to pick up or saleable stock to go missing.  I prefer to see tied or strapped bundles of magazines which have been scanned – ready for collection and return.

Too often, software companies fail to train newsagents on proper processes around tasks like magazine returns.  This is where the Tower Systems online Magazine Management training works – it is being run by someone who managed this in his own newsagency for years.

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magazine distribution

Promoting Australia Day titles

fhn_australia_day_2009.JPGWe are promoting Take 5, That’s Life and New Idea out the front of our newsagency.  They all prominently feature an Australia Day connection.  On either side we have maps of Melbourne and Victoria – getting out and about and seeing part of Australia is behind Jason’s idea here. We pulled the flags off the Internet and created the display in around ten minutes.

The display looks more effective in real life than the photo.  We are confident it will generate good results for us.

We stayed away from balloons because we have those for the OzLotto$20 million jackpot next week and for our Valentine’s Day window.

What I like about this display is that it promotes titles from more than one publisher.  Too often we get caught up in single title or single publisher displays and this does not help our business as much as it helps the publisher.

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marketing

Timely Obama cover on Women’s Weekly

dsc06028.JPGWe have placed copies of the new issue of Australian Women’s Weekly with Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover in front of our newspaper stand today.  With the inauguration front page news today the placement makes sense – AWW ties in perfectly.

We will leave this small display in place until the weekend, longer if the sales are there.

The stand is a recycled unit we had in the back room.  What the photo does not quite show is that the stand holds ten copies of Women’s Weekly.

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magazines

Living in the dark ages

I am working with a group of retailers in a country which is behind Australian standards in the handling of magazines.  While here in Australia we are able to handle arrival of invoices and document unsold stock electronically and quickly, the group I am working with lives in a completely manual world – manual pricing of magazines, paper based invoices, paper based returns forms and paper based requests for additional stock.

This manual world condemns retailers to a higher labour cost and restrains them from being able to provide good customer service.  It hurts publishers because of lack of sales data.

While I think the Australian magazine distribution system is in urgent need of overhaul, my recent exposure to worse practices overseas is a reminder of how far we have come in recent years.

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magazine distribution

Newsagency management workshop

5ways.jpgThere is good interest in the 5 WAYS TO KICK START YOUR NEWSAGENCY workshop planned for early February.  This is a two hour workshop packed with business building ideas. The workshop will run in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. It is free to attend. I promise a valuable session packed with good business ideas. The session will concentrate on opportunities available for optomistic and focused newsagents in 2009.  While I will continue to document challenges here, I see a tremendous opportunity to leverage these for a bighter future.  Click here to download the flyer with dates and booking details or book online.

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newsagency marketing

Finding new Back To School customers

sbg_bts.JPGThe cool designs of the Spencer Burford range are attracting new Back To School customers.  It is good to have a range which visually appeals to the students compared to notebooks newsagents have sold in the past – fashion sells after all.  While there is a place for traditional designs for school and university notebooks, these new-look products position us with the generation newsagents often struggle to reach.

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Stationery

Canadian music magazine goes paperless

Chart, a successful Canadian music magazine has announced that its December issue will be its last print edition.  The publisher said the move was necessary because of falling advertising, competition from free sites online and increased print and related costs. 

Newsagents considering a shop fit need to ensure that magazine fixturing is flexible and can be easily reconfigured for other products.  Newsagent shopfitters are not a fan of this approach because they don’t get to build such fixturing.

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magazines

Not a big year for partworks

I have been told that 2009 will not be as big a year for partwork launches as 2008.  I am disappointed if this turns out to be true. as partworks are efficient for newsagents: Partwork customers are more committed to a specific newsagency and they are more likely to spend more.

While the partwork distribution process has some challenges, once you have proven your interest is is easy to ensure eyou have the supply you need for your customers.

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partworks

The year of the Ox

ox.jpgChinese New Year falls on January 26 this year.  This is the start of fifteen days of celebrations.  Cards and red packets will sell up to January 26 and rarely beyond.  I am reliably informed that besides money, in a red packet, a cow would be a good fun gift. The City of Sydney website says: people born in the Year of the Ox are placid, patient and have great physical stamina. They are born leaders who stubbornly defend their opinions against any argument. 2009, the Year of the Earth Ox, brings additional straightforwardness and solidity to the Ox making them loyal and focused, with honesty and kindness. 

There is good information on Chinese New Year at Chinapage and Wikipedia.

All of this is important to newsagents in support of Chinese New Year cards as well as lottery products as gifts.

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newsagency marketing

Promoting Melbourne Wedding & Bride

frank_wedding.JPGClick on the image to see a larger version off the display created by our Frankston team to promote Melbourne Wedding & Bride.  As well as the magazine, the display promotes wedding albums, confetti, horseshoes for the bride and wedding invitations. 

It is disappointing the title was delivered without marketing collateral.

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magazines

Recycling unsold magazines

helathyfood_jan09.JPGThe latest issue of Healthy Food magazine trumpets the free magazine which comes with it  Turning the pack over you see it is the October issue of Healthy Food.  I see little value from including the old issue of the same title.  Also, bagging the magazine stops browsing and for food titles this is important.

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magazines

Promoting the New Idea Australia Day special

fhn_ni_jan19.JPGWith counter and other premium magazine promotional space tied up, we are promoting the New Idea Australia Day special at our main newspaper stand. 

While we usually have magazines in pockets above the newspapers, this is the first time we have so loundly promoted a magazine in this space.  We will watch sales with interest over the next few days. 

I did this display myself.  It looks better in-store than the photo reflects.

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magazines

Reconfiguring retail magazine space

booksale.JPGAs part of our consideration of a reconfiguration of magazine space at Forest Hill, we have stopped using the two display shelves on the perimeter wall around the magazine department and above around a third of our magazines for discount books.  This space used to be used for magazines.    We have been able to accommodate the magazines into the traditional magazine fixturing below.

While there are issues with introducing another product category above magazines, books were the most logical choice in this period of transition. 

We are proactively adjusting our magazine space useage as part of a broader business plan.  The alternative is to not change and give magazine distributors continued control over how much retail space we allocate to the department. 

Magazines have prime position.  We can continue that and release some fringe space from the department for new categories.

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Book retailing

Red packets for Chinese New Year

fhn_cny09_packets.JPGIt is not too early to put red packets (or red envelopes as they are known in some places) for Chinese New Year at the counter.  We did this Friday, at our main lottery counter.  Given that the tradition has a lot to do with luck, it is worthwhile remembering that the preference for the value of what is inside the packet ends in an even number.  A lottery syndicate ticket would be a good idea – printed on red paper and with a Chinese New Year theme.

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Lotteries

Super Food Ideas sell out

superfsellout.JPGWe sold out of Super Food Ideas as expected Friday morning – thanks to our counter promotion.  Instead of removing the display, we decided to shift product from our Frankston store until additional product arrives from the distributor.  As the sign promised, we had stock on Saturday (yesterday) and sales took off again. 

We find ourselves doing this more, shifting product between the stores.  We have suggested to magazine distributors that they need to be able to receive electronic advice that we have done this so their records can be adjusted accordingly.  I get the sense that it is too hard for them.

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magazine distribution

Newspaper home delivery worth more than retail

age_jan17.JPGBeyond the trashing of the mastehad of The Age newspaper today with another of their home delivery subscription offers is the frustration of this type of campaign for a retail newsagent.  They are prepared to give their home delivery customers a 50% discount yet their regular retail customers, who have a lower distribution cost, no reward for loyalty.  And they wonder why I will not actively promote their online businesses or subscription offers in-store.

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Newsagency challenges

Where is one of these N newsagents?

I saw a Papermate TV commercial last night and at the end they tag key retail partners.  Newsagents are represented by the N which the ANF replaced in May last year. Not that the N represents a retail channel – it was originally developed to support the home delivery model.  Given that home delivery does not have franchise and marketing groups, it would be more appropriate that the N, the new or the old, was used for that activity and that retail was left to the brands which already promote themselves on TV and elsewhere. 

Maybe I am wrong but I think the N at the end of the Papermate TV commercial achieves nothing for newsagents.  The N is not a retail brand.  It is not used consistently.  The N artwork changed in May but there is no discipline around achieving this.  There is no way to find N newsagents.

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newsagency marketing
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