One Blog |November 16, 2010 | POS Tracking Software

The Power of Marketing at-Retail - Part 1

Mark Fullerton

Part 1

You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure

One of the greatest benefits of using OnTrak Software’s Internet Applications to manage your marketing initiatives is their capability to measure and compare your at-retail marketing efforts against sales results. For a beverage distributor or supplier, this is a highly valuable benefit.

When you measure your marketing efforts, take the time to make necessary adjustments in your approach, and then re-measure the results, you can see the positive impact of those changes on revenues and case volumes.

How Do You Measure?

So how can you measure your marketing efforts? Well, good tracking and measuring is going to take a combination of experience, and an automated Marketing at-Retail system. Between the two, you can easily manage, control and measure:

Point-of-sale (POS) costs, placement, ethnicity, duration, refresh rate and competitive landscape for signs, displays, menus and samples
Product sales correlated to POS type, size, placement, ethnicity, date ranges, etc.
Return-on-Investment (ROI) of Marketing at-Retail campaigns and materials

What Happens When You Measure?

When you are able to measure what is happening at the point of sale, your Marketing at-Retail initiatives can be adapted and fine-tuned to become more specific, targeted, and successful. Even with a great graphics department and a brilliant marketing campaign, there are always improvements that can be made. Measuring, controlling and managing your at-retail marketing efforts can give you the chance for corresponding improvement in sales and profits.

Without measuring the impact of your Marketing at-Retail campaigns uncertainty rules. Your marketing initiatives are little more than a good guess or a shot in the dark. When you add the ability to manage, measure and fine-tune your message, you can become a Marketing at-Retail powerhouse.

I’ll leave you with a quote from perhaps the most acclaimed Marketing at-Retail expert:

"The defining aspect of Marketing at-Retail, and for that matter the moment of truth for all of marketing, is the point of transaction where the customer chooses to make a purchase, takes possession of a product or consumes a service, and pays in real dollars."

The Power of Point-of-Purchase Advertising: Marketing at-Retail

By Robert Liljenwall, Publisher, Point-of-Purchase Global International (POPAI)