One Blog |January 24, 2018 | POS Tracking Software

Point-of-Sale (POS) Marketing: Measuring the Performance of Your Promotions

Mark Fullerton

POS Marketing Measurement

Assuming you are a distributor of beer, wine, and spirits (beverage alcohol) — and as well as non-alcohol beverages — you are very likely aware that point-of-sale (POS) marketing programs are no longer exclusively a sales function.

Today, POS increasingly provides a balance of the distributor’s sales and marketing function. The primary reason that POS now shoulders more of the marketing function than previously is the proven fact that POS marketing works quite well when it is effectively executed.

POS marketing’s rise in the ranks of marketing has been helped by “traditional” media’s escalating costs, and the difficulty of measuring its direct impact on sales. Compared to in-store advertising, traditional media’s effectiveness has been declining.

A deeper discussion on this topic can be found in a previous blog: >> Click Here

More Attention on POS

With more attention being paid to all aspects of a distributor’s POS utilization — it’s no wonder that POS has increasingly commanded the attention of many distributors’ General Managers as well as C-level executives.

No longer content to simply see “Sign Shop Burden” on their income statement, top management is interested in knowing not only the costs associated with POS, but also the ROI generated from the expense.

Our observation in the beverage alcohol industry is that POS has moved from a department expense, looked at with a telescope, to an overall business expense that merits being placed under a microscope.

The Rise of POS Analytics

Many distributors have been using “analytics” tools throughout their organizations for well over a decade - (DI Diver, from Dimensional Insights, for example, is popular with beverage alcohol distributors).

Unfortunately, the graphics department or sign shop is unlikely to have adopted the data collection processes required as input by most of these analytical tools.

Over the last ten years distributor consolidation has accelerated primarily due to challenging economic conditions. Over that period there has been a steady increase in the interest in and adoption of analytics in virtually every nook and cranny of a beverage alcohol distributor’s operation.

The interest, for example, in POS return-on-investment (ROI) moves up the list of “areas under scrutiny” every year.

Demand generation is the fundamental strength of POS.

It’s remarkable to note that the measurement of the ROI of demand generation efforts like POS has not previously been a significant priority for most beverage alcohol distributors. In fact, it has been our experience that few distributors have any type of system to track and measure POS marketing. For most, the gross costs of their sign shops (consumables, printers, and personnel) are all that is known about their POS programs.

Measuring the Impact of POS — Effectiveness and ROI

Based on interviews with several of our large beer, wine and spirits distributor customers their performance with respect to POS improved noticeably once they adopted our POS tracking and measuring tools.

Clearly, it is vital that those tasked with marketing — perhaps most especially those responsible for at-retail (POS) marketing programs —learn to use data to determine their programs’ effectiveness. They should do this in order to gain and retain a competitive advantage and maximize the ROI of their spending on POS.

Gone are the days of “guessing” the impact of a given signage campaign, for instance. You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase, “You can’t manage what you don’t (or can’t) measure.”

If you haven’t begun to embrace measuring the effectiveness or ROI of your POS initiatives and getting started seems like such a daunting task, relax, there is plenty of good news.

A Simple Way to Start

One relatively simple approach to getting started is implementing a POS tracking system. Such a system needs to both capture and retain the data required to tell your sign shop and graphics personnel what to create and who to create it for.

Even if top management has not yet expressed an interest in POS measurement it is likely that such an interest will become top of or near-top of mind very soon. The reason, of course is that there are benefits that will accrue to adopting a POS tracking and management tool, including:

Improved demand for your distributor’s products
Ability to determine what works and what doesn’t (effectiveness) and you’ll finally know the ROI of various POS campaigns
Ability to verify that POS campaigns are being deployed at the right time and place
100% of marketing assistance chargebacks will be captured — All cooperative funds available from your suppliers will be able to be claimed
Compression: The time from POS request to the placement in the trade will be shortened
POS work-flow productivity (efficiency) will improve

In addition to these benefits, utilizing a POS tracking, measuring, and managing tool-kit (software) will help your distributor become more focused on marketing at-retail and what practices will grab additional market share.

Now is the time to adopt a digital tool that will allow you and your team to develop and deploy strategies and tactics that will grow your business by utilizing POS as a competitive advantage.

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