If you have been a retailer for over 10 years you know one thing…This was the king pin to generate traffic and sales. Due to the abundance of demand, the cost of freight and the success of the newspaper it was an easy to produce, cost effective method to tell your story. It was a no brainer to do an 8 page flex catalog or an 8 page tab because you knew it would drive the results.

As for today? It cost a lot to print. Freight is really expensive. The newspaper is not as successful and as a result the have jacked up their prices for insertion. What does that leave us? It cost us more to even try to get the results we used to get and we all know we ain’t getting the results we used to get.

How do we maximize this eye catching vehicle the most cost effectively way possible that will deliver us results? Let’s take a look at some stats first:

This is actual data from two retailers that we work with. This shows their daily website traffic over a 30 day period. Take a look at the circled spikes in traffic and what happened on those days in the local media to help increase:

What happened on those days where traffic increased? The best and worst part about this? There was no intention or purposefulness to drive them to the website. It just happened that way. Imagine if we would of used this vehicle to reach our audience to drive them to an online portal where they can get more than a 4 page tab or single sheet?

Could we:
• Capture Email Data?
• Show more product than we could imagine?
• Increase our social media presence?
• Give them an additional offer and incentive to buy?
• Used less space but get a bigger result with a solid call to action?

So, how can this drive results to the retail level? Two Ways:
1. A more concise message and call to action will then lead them our our virtual store. This lead in will help tell our story in a more cost effective manner than ever before while still capturing the customer.
2. If we drive them to the website we can track the effectiveness of our campaign which in turn allows for accountability and adaptation to occur. Those two “a” words in themselves allow retail to get better and sales to climb. You can’t change what you don’t know. How good was your last insertion? You got numbers to prove it?

With all of these great things there are some serious pitfalls that must be taken into consideration:
1. Do not just insert in what you used to insert. There are multiple vehicles available today that can allow you to distribute to a more targeted audience for a smaller cost investment than the paper. As mentioned during QR Codes, if the newspaper is still a draw, use the newspaper. If it is not a draw…don’t think you are going to be the magic bullet that makes it draw again.
2. It has to help the consumer. Just because you can get website traffic to justify your cost what are you offering the customer when they land on your website or landing page? Is there value for the customer or is the value for you to show numbers. Choose wisely. The customer will choose you only once.
3. The creative must be good. The language must be concise. Your message must stand out from any other message in your marketplace. And there better be synergy between what they see in their hands and what they are going to see on the screen.