The idea seems simple at first. You place a number of smaller items on the counter next to your till that you hope customers will pick up as your cashier rings them up. Low in cost, but high in appeal, these items should be a sure-fire marketing tool. Instead, you discover that many of these items remain unsold, taking up counter space that could be better utilized. Everything you read on the internet says that this idea should have paid dividends. Instead, you have a glut of small items that are not selling and really do not have an organic place in your store. That’s why you need to find some better point of sale marketing ideas for retailers.
Understanding your customers so that your marketing ideas are conducive to a personalized shopping experience is the key to POS marketing success. This goes hand-in-hand with your POS solution, as you will need to take advantage of the data you have acquired, and determine if there are additional data points you need to capture as part of your checkout process. Modern POS solutions provide a variety of data capture options, such as email and customer loyalty programs, that make this easier. Doing so sets you up for marketing success, especially with the following marketing ideas.
Using Your Point of Sale Marketing Ideas to Their Fullest Potential
The most vital information you need for precision POS marketing comes from the data gathered from customers at the time of checkout. Matching the products leaving your shelves to individual customers gives you deep insights into what is trending in their minds, and allows you to develop granular marketing efforts to reach them. Additionally, this information gives you a strong foundation upon which your inventory management strategy can be based. You will be armed with the data you need to make accurate and long-lasting predictions around product and service offerings.
Using Receipts and Transactions to Develop Concisely Targeted Events
Information, primarily emails and cell phone numbers, are critical must-haves in today’s marketplace and need to be included in your point of sale marketing ideas. Gaining emails is still an effective market strategy, and are easily obtained at the time of checkout. Digital receipts, promises of specials and sales, and customer rewards programs are all great ways to obtain customer email addresses. The use of phone numbers can be of great use as well, allowing you to send text alerts regarding items on sale that are of importance to particular customers.
For example, let’s consider the upcoming holiday shopping season. You have a small group of male customers that purchase perfume from your store. Using the reporting available in your POS solution, you determine that 90% of your perfume sales to these customers occur in the two weeks leading up to Christmas, and typically on weeknights and during the evening rush. Knowing this, you sort these customer’s emails and cell phone numbers and send out an email with a barcode for 20% off of any bottle of perfume on the shelf. Additionally, you can utilize today’s geocaching technology to send cell phone text alerts with the same barcode if they are within two miles of your store.
Receipts can also be used to present coupons and discounts focused on products related to the individual customer’s purchasing habits. Examples of this include the always present discounted cookie on a Barnes and Noble receipt, or the lengthy receipts that CVS Pharmacies are known to hand out. Customer rewards programs, such as points per dollar or buy ten get the next free are some other creative ways that receipts can be used as a marketing tool. The data gathered in any of these cases will give you an accurate measurement of what products align to which customers, giving you a useful marketing tool while providing you tighter inventory controls.
Display Popular and Impulse Buy Items in High Traffic Areas
Keeping inventory controls in mind, let’s look back to the scenario presented at the beginning of this post. With your point of sale marketing ideas giving you accurate insights into your customer’s spending habits, you can reverse the above scenario and turn the tables in your favor. Equipped with this information, you will understand which items are best for sales counter or checkout lanes, but only if this suits your customer base. Ask yourself this question: is the checkout counter or lanes really the best place to display applicable impulse buy items, or would you be better served placing these elsewhere?
Product displays, end-caps, and sales counter merchandising options all have their rate of success based on how and where your customers browse your store. Understanding exactly how your customers browse your shelves, interact with products, as well as the likelihood of making a spur of the moment purchase at the register, are important items that a modern POS solution will help you in seeing. Do your customers use floor displays, or do they have a cumbersome, cluttered effect? Do your shelves allow for shelf-talkers, i.e. small signage near a product, or do you offer QR codes for easy access to in-depth product abilities or ingredients?
These and other small informational nuances inside of your walls will assist you in formulating a specific marketing plan for your store. There are many common-sense factors in developing the traffic flow and product visibility needed to promote sales, such as the ease of a customer’s line-of-sight to see your offerings and maintaining organized shelves. However, we have reached the day where a retailer cannot afford to miss out on the technical advantages that an innovative POS solution can deliver to aid in marketing itself.
Advanced Data Mining Broadens Your Point of Sale Marketing Ideas
Your point of sale marketing ideas are only as good as the information you use in developing and implementing your marketing plan. Knowing what your customer expects and staying ahead of them in trends and product line changes is important, but so is the creation of a personalized, enticing shopping experience. You want a technical solution in place that can take advantage of real-time reporting so that you can create targeted product marketing campaigns and flash sales that instantly show the customer on the other end that you know and understand their product interests.
Retaining an expert in point of sale marketing ideas is an important aspect of long-term success. Your POS system requirements must include a wide range of customizable and flexible features that improves the way you market yourself and your products. At talech, we dig you’re your business to understand exactly what your loyalty program needs to accomplish for your business. Reach out to us today to sign up for a demo and to learn more about how talech can be your valued POS partner.
