Making POS Marketing Work Takes Three Steps: Track, Measure, Manage

Over the last two years I’ve written about the shift that is taking place with beverage distributors who are moving from traditional print and broadcast marketing/advertising to Point-of-Sale (POS) or Shopper Marketing.

Reach vs. Richness

Traditional marketing is said to provide the greatest “reach” - a quantitative metric suggesting the number of potential consumers that are exposed to a brand message.

POS or Shopper Marketing is said to provide the greatest message “richness” - a qualitative attribute that delivers important and persuasive information to convert a shopper into a buyer.

Generally speaking marketing is either strong in reach or richness, but not both.

A good analogy for reach is a college class where one professor is presenting to 200 students. The professor is reaching a lot of students at one time. An analogy for richness would be one professor presenting the same subject-matter in an interactive form to only 20 students. This latter arrangement offers much greater richness to the students taking the class.

POS Marketing Delivers Both

In the case of POS Marketing there seems to be an exception. POS Marketing does a very good job of reaching a lot of shoppers, and at the same time providing them with a rich buying message - A Win-Win situation. POS Marketing increases sales and builds brand equity, and is often the most efficient marketing medium. And compared to traditional marketing, is less expensive.

Industry Study

A 2010 Study by Deloitte discovered that POS Marketing is growing faster than Internet advertising. In fact this study reports POS Marketing is growing at a compound annual rate of 21%. I’ve said it before, the reasons for this growth in POS marketing spend are well documented and researched, so I’ll summarize: 

• 76% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale in the retail store
• 68% of buying decisions are not pre-planned
• 95% of shoppers are not loyal to a brand
• Multiple studies demonstrate the importance of POS marketing is increasing.
• Broadcast media marketing has become fragmented and expensive: We live in a 500 channel world

If you are like most consumer goods manufacturers, distributors and retailers, you have a strong need to know what drives shoppers to buy your products. Often a manufacturer or distributor simply wants to know “What POS marketing worked or what didn’t?” Or “How did the POS Marketing investment correlate to sales and was there a good ROI?”

But in order to answer these questions and achieve their goals, a company must have the tools to Track, Measure and Manage their POS Marketing initiatives.

There Is A Solution

Fortunately with Point-of-Sale Marketing Management technology you can easily get answers to these questions - right down to the store, aisle and shelf. And it has never been easier to determine what POS Marketing programs work best at achieving the results you want.

To learn more about the tools that are available to support your POS Marketing efforts please click this button: