subject: Boost Sales With Point Of Purchase Advertising [print this page] According to recent research by Point-of-Purchase Advertising International (POPAI), up to 75% of purchase decisions are made in-store. With so many potential sales at play every time a customer walks in the door, most retail businesses incorporate point of purchase (POP) advertising in their marketing strategies. If you haven't, you'll find plenty of evidence below to persuade you about this powerful sales tool.
To learn how POP advertising works, you need an understanding of the mental processes behind purchase decisions.
In its book The Power of Point-of-Purchase Advertising: Marketing at Retail, POPAI describes the influences that govern purchase decisions. There are four steps in the process behind the decision to buy a particular item:
A customer enters a store with a need.
The motivation to satisfy that need, say with a snack from your convenience store, drives the customer to act.
The customer takes cues from her surroundings to decide what to buy. The true value of advertising is found in this step. The right cues can guide a customer to a higher margin item or persuade him to buy additional items.
The customer is then led to the final step - action.
Advertising is about creating the right cues to sway a customer at their time of need, which is when they are most likely to respond. Any kind of point of purchase display has the potential to influence a customer.
Anyone who has been to a retail or fast-food outlet has seen point of purchase advertising. Coupons on a grocery store shelf, posters at the cash register, window signage - all of these are examples of traditional POP advertising.
Digital signage is a more recent entrant into the POP advertising market. It has become popular because, unlike static posters and coupons, it offers motion and sound, which make it much more effective as a sales tool. Just look at some of the studies cited in the POPAI book:
New merchandising at a leading U.S. grocery store resulted in a 90% increase in the number of people who interacted with the display. When motion was added, sales increased by an average of 44% over sales from the static version of the same display.
A leading clothing retailer in the U.S. did a comparison between digital and static signage and found a 23% increase in traffic at stores using the digital signs. Traffic was not the only thing to increase - sales jumped by 56% in just nine weeks because of digital point of purchase advertising.
Because digital signage is electronic, it can be updated quickly in response to changes at individual outlets. With this technology you can tailor digital displays to create point of purchase advertising that aims squarely at specific customer segments and provides timely cues to influence purchases.
Consider the possibilities. A department store in an area facing a sudden snowstorm can quickly highlight its selection of snow shovels, brushes and ice scrapers. Using digital signage the store could easily cross-sell anything from road salt to gloves to ice skates.
Point of purchase advertising allows you to create a strong desire for your product at a time when the customer is largely undecided about what to buy. POP advertising is everywhere because it works. With the added power of digital technology, you can create point of purchase advertising that gets attention and offers an even greater ROI than conventional in-store advertising.
