One Blog |June 25, 2013 | POS Tracking Software

How to Increase the ROI of Your POS Marketing Investment?

Mark Fullerton

By Linking-In-store Sign, Display, Menu & Sample POS Data to Sales Performance!

The Goal

THE primary objective of point-of-sale (POS) marketing is to increase product sales.

OnTrak’s customers are beverage companies, with the majority of them being beverage alcohol wholesalers. It is critical to our customer’s success to create and implement POS marketing initiatives that will improve retail sales of their beverage products, while controlling costs.

Said another way - Increase the return on their POS Marketing investment (ROI).

Our Approach

Our approach to helping customers accomplish this goal is to develop, implement and teach them to utilize software tools that track and measure the link between POS program characteristics and sales performance.

For example, we work with our customers to collect data on such POS characteristics as:

Type — banners, displays, signs, etc.
Size
Costs — Materials and labor
Supplier bill-back recovery rates
Placement locations
Display schedule — Duration of the campaign
Data — Brands, suppliers, customer and other company specific information
And finally, a correlation of all this data to revenue or other metrics that are important to you, like case or unit sales

The Next Steps

Once the POS data is collected we begin a simple and straightforward process of implementing one or more of the OnTrak products depending on the POS you are developing and want to track - SignTrak, PermaTrak, MenuTrak or SampleTrak. Since there is no hardware of software to ‘install’ at your site, you can begin to receive value and benefits once you have made a decision to move forward with OnTrak.

Here’s the process:

The development of a custom and secure website with all POS, product and company data loaded
The integration of your existing systems and data with the OnTrak products and data
On-site product training of the prospective system users - sales, graphics, print shop and management

When the training is completed, the users can begin to enter POS orders in a matter of days.

Linking POS Data to Sales Performance

Over a period of time our systems collect data regarding your POS process. Then that data is available to the analysis and reporting tools which are included in all our products.

Linking your current financial and business systems (order entry, sales, route accounting, etc.) to the data that is available in the OnTrak systems, (POS characteristics mentioned above), allows you to track, measure and manage campaign costs vs. sales performance and determine if you achieved a good return on your POS investment.

To drive continuous improvements, our software generates performance reports for the sales and print shop organization to identify and adopt ‘POS best practices.’ Once you know the specific results of a POS initiative you can expand the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that don’t.

Are you able to do that today?

An Industry Perspective

As we’ve all learned from several POPAI studies (Note 1), up to 76% of shoppers make their buying decisions while in the retail aisle. Supporting IRI market research (Note 2) has shown that over 50% of shoppers say the display is the number one reason why one brand is chosen over another. According to other experts, “Point-of-purchase marketing materials (signs, displays, etc.) increase “unplanned purchasing.”

Establishing the correlation between POS marketing initiatives and sales performance enables you to identify which POS characteristics will most likely increase sales giving you the ability to create standards for optimal at-retail execution. These standards can then be shared with all members of the sales and marketing teams.

Of course a by-product of standardized and measured POS marketing is gaining an understanding of your target shopper. As performance correlated data is created and collected, it becomes easier to order, produce and place targeted POS messages — messages that will provide beverage suppliers with greater understanding of their shoppers, what POS is most effective and efficient and improved sales performance.

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