Point of Sale Marketing: 6 Strategies for Better Profits
So you want better sales. OK, you have to change your point-of-sale marketing. Point-of-sale marketing?
Use Signage
Using big, colorful signs is a no-brainer. Let’s say you’ve got a great product on the floor. You can hide it on a shelf or build a display. Displays with a huge sign that show the price and the major benefit to the customer tend to sell well.
For example, let’s say you’ve got a good deal going on batteries. You could build a display in the store using batteries and then hang a large sign over the batteries that reads "Battery Sale: Give Your Electronics 30% More Juice For Only ________," and list the price.
Get Customers Involved At The Counter
Companies like Walgreens have a brilliant upsell strategy. When you check out at the register, they ask you if you want to buy additional items like nuts or candy or something small - it’s a small purchase but adds to the total of the order.
This is really easy to do with custom cloud based iPad Point Of Sale software solutions
. You can even use newer flipping rigs that turn the iPad screen over when needed, so that the client can sign for his purchase without you having to hand the customer your iPad and without you buying a separate peripheral so that they can sign for purchases. What’s cool about these POS systems is that you can show one or two different related offers (think Amazon "related offers") that the customer can automatically add to his order before confirming his credit card payment.
It’s a simple strategy, but one that pays off.
Place Sale Items In High-Traffic Areas
Where do your best sales happen? Answer: at high-traffic areas throughout the store. So, put the products you want to sell in those high-traffic areas throughout the store. For example, let’s say you run a cigar shop. Your best-selling cigars aren’t the most expensive ones. They’re not the cheapest ones either. Your best-sellers are priced just higher than the cheapest ones - so put these in an area of the store that gets the most traffic.
But, be rational about this. Let’s say the front door is where most of the action happens. You don’t want to crowd people at the door so maybe an advertisement here would be bad. But, there’s high-traffic at the back of the store. Put an ad here, with a display.
Do Your Research
Research your products. Maybe gum sells well at the checkout, but maybe it doesn’t. Just because large grocery stores put it here doesn’t mean it’s going to work in all stores. What you’ll have to do is perform a split test. Put two different types of products that you suspect will sell well right at the front cash register.
Monitor sales of these items. How well do they sell? Which one outperforms the other? If you’re using an EPOS system, you can automatically track sales and know which one you should be selling more of and which one you can probably pull.
So, if you pit gum against a particular candy bar, and the candy bar wins, remove the gum from the checkout area. But, don’t stop there. Keep testing the candy bar against other items to see if you can do better. And, don’t rely on just unit sales. If your gum costs less than half of your candy bar, more gum sales could still not add up to the total dollar amount of the candy bar sales. Even if the candy bar sells fewer units it could bring in higher profits.
Use Your Vendors’ Insights
Vendors are an excellent source of information. Use them. They’ve probably already done a lot of research on their product - they have an incentive to. So, ask them where their product sells best, and under what conditions. They’ll be able to tell you.
If you own a clothing store, for example, and you sell accessories, you may find that these don’t sell well at the register. Instead, the vendor may be able to prove that the best sales come from placing them next to the clothing that they are intended to be paired with. This kind of information could save or make you hundreds, or thousands, of dollars so pay attention to others’ experience and data.