6 ways to stand out (and boost sales) with a festive newspaper

Summer’s only just ended but brands have been bracing themselves for the holiday shopping season for months already. According to Deloitte’s annual holiday retail forecast, festive sales are likely to increase by almost 10% in 2021 compared to last year. As retail revs up, you have a chance to find new customers and reconnect with past ones — and a newspaper can help you do it.

Whether you’re curating the ultimate gift guide or looking to add some festive cheer to your e-commerce packaging, see 6 ways a newspaper can put your business at the top of customers’ wish lists this holiday.

Get crafty

A thoughtfully designed catalogue can be a gift in itself. Artisanal cheese and butter makers Vermont Creamery worked with lifestyle magazine Sweet Paul to produce this zine of seasonal crafts and recipes — which all call for top quality cheese and butter, naturally. They even included a page of labels (pictured above) for readers to cut out and use as gift tags or to label their cheese boards.

“Printing beautiful newspapers with Newspaper Club is so fast and affordable that it's an easy add-on to make a content package extra special,” says Sweet Paul founder Paul Vitale.

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Make it mobile

More than half of e-commerce orders are made from a mobile device these days. After you’ve captured your customers’ attention with a snazzy print catalogue, use a QR code to drive traffic to your digital channels. (QR codes are quick and free to make — here’s how.)

Streetwear brand Goodhood (pictured above) used a QR code to promote a holiday giveaway, but you could also use it to send readers to your online gift guide or boost newsletter sign ups.

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Grab headlines

Throughout the year, jewellery brand Daisy sends a quarterly newspaper with e-commerce orders and they kept the theme going with their Black Friday marketing campaign. To promote a site wide sale, they printed a single copy of a “special edition” digital tabloid  and used it for promo imagery on social media and in their newsletter. A clever way to leverage a brand element (the newspaper) that Daisy’s customers recognise and love.

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Reduce, reuse, regift

Regifting gets a bad rap, but when it comes to your printed material designing with a second life in mind is a smart move. You can spruce up your e-commerce packaging with a marketing newspaper that doubles as wrapping paper, like the digital broadsheets above created by illustrator Sean Suchara. It only cuts down on waste but can extend the reach of your brand when customers repurpose it.

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Print with personality

Championing suppliers from Yorkshire, Keelham Farm Shop is full of local, homemade food and personality. "When it came to the Christmas catalogue we knew we couldn't do the standard supermarket glossy booklet," they say, opting instead to use our 100% recyclable tabloid newspapers. "Newsprint allowed us to shoot our beautiful food on a grand scale, to include recipes, tips and the odd cracker joke. It's a beautiful result." Designed by creative agency Thompson.

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