Stores: the final frontier.
With the rise of digital marketing solutions, it can be easy to forget about the importance of OG strategies and the consumer playground that is in-store marketing.
As more and more loyal customers are keen to return to shops – despite an uptick in online ordering – if people are going to part with their hard-earned cash they better have an amazing retail experience.
That’s where instore marketing comes in.
In this guide, the Reapp team has shared all their technical knowledge and industry tips, giving you the skinny on best practices.
We’ll also touch on:
- What Instore Marketing actually is
- The 4 main principles of marketing strategies – and how to use them
- How to use marketing tools and software to supercharge your efforts
- How Reapp can help your brand take operations to the next level
- And more!
Your goal should be to acquire new customers and retain the ones you already have, regardless of whether you are starting out with a debut product or revitalising an existing line.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways in which your brand can be marketed in shops and retailers around the country.
In this post, we’ll look at the ins and outs of retail marketing and offer key insights into how you can put them to good use.
Class is in session.
What is in-store marketing, anyway?
In essence, brands can use in-store marketing to promote their products in – you guessed it – brick-and-mortar stores and retail locations. This kind of advertising focuses on interacting with consumers to offer a personalised buying experience, aiming to provide undecided shoppers with excellent customer service and product promotion provided by in-store marketing.
Because who doesn’t love top-quality product engagement cultivated from shelf edge all the way to the checkout?
In-store marketing also aims to engage customers, improve their shopping experience, and ultimately boost product sales by utilising a variety of marketing strategies.
However, it’s important to note that this particular branch of marketing covers a wide range of ‘touchpoints’ scattered throughout the store and pipeline itself, including, but not limited to:
- Display compliance and overall display space
- Shelf labelling
- Inventory and stock levels
- Pricing and trade promotions
Instore marketing pulls all these aspects together with the aim of creating business outcomes that’ll have your accountants working overtime.
Alright, maybe not overtime.
But certainly salivating at all those delicious numbers coming in.
In a nutshell, unlike in online stores, you can capitalise on real-time interactions with your customer base – which is an essential ingredient in attracting and retaining a loyal customer base.
After all, your prospects of selling more goods to customers grow once you have their attention, but just because you’ve got them through the door doesn’t mean that a sale is guaranteed.
Why?
In an ultra-digitised sales environment, in-store marketing strategies can appear one-note, impersonal and outdated. Because of this, it’s never been more important to brush up on your in-store marketing strategies in order to keep the attention of savvy shoppers.
Need inspiration? We’ll touch on the main principles of in-store strategies next.
What are the 4 types of marketing strategies?
It’s all about the Ps.
Yes, you heard that right. In-store marketing (and retail marketing in general) revolves around certain tactics first popularised back in the 1950s by Neil Borden, an advertising professor at Harvard University.
These principles are still used today, known as the “4 Ps”:
- Product. The first element is the product or the physical item.
- Price. It is also important to mention Price, which is the pricing strategy the brand harnesses, such as “buy one get one free” and behavioural biases such as “£5.99”.
- Place. Third is “Place” which refers to the location or platform used to sell products.
- Promotion. Finally, there’s Promotion, which is what brands use to entice sales.
Implementing these Ps as part of a cohesive marketing plan means that your brand should have a clear understanding of their components, making sure that each one works with the other in harmony.
You can manage all 4 Ps with ease by using retail management and field marketing software, which can provide incredible results using freshly squeezed data.
Using Reapp as your one-stop marketing tool
Whatever you want to hone in on with your target audience, whether that’s simple monitoring, conversion rates, or even which methods of payment they prefer, our suite of software solutions goes the distance.
To improve the bottom line our advanced analytics tools take it from the top, picking and digesting delicious data from multiple points in the retail environment and generating them into instant insights.
We know what it takes to turn what’s already on the shelf into serious profits, whether it’s monitoring entire ranges, managing EPOS, or ensuring product visibility – after all, we’ve helped some of the biggest and best brands around achieve truly stand-out results.
As a result, we are able to provide the exact assistance you need, whether you want to improve ROI or grow overall retail sales value. In fact, these numbers can be streamlined and tailored to meet your overall goals and investment aims – resulting in crystal-clear insights that brighten murky marketing.
We can help bring your retailing dreams into sharp focus with Reapp Performance, Analytics, and Rewards.
Why is in-store marketing important?
In-store marketing is essential to sales and market share, but it’s often overlooked when it comes to digital marketing and brand marketing.
However, in order to improve your product offering in-store, sharpening your brick-and-mortar strategies are crucial – especially when you see examples set by Big Dog Brands such as Coca-Cola and Walkers crisps.
Simply put, brands and retailers in the consumer goods sector need to work together in order to meet choosy customer perception.
But that’s not all. If your internal accounts team is sweating, then there’s likely more reason to buck up your in-store marketing offering.
Here are the most common reasons that should prompt brands to take serious action on their strats.
Hop to it, gang.
Is market share tanking?
Your brand isn’t remembered or isn’t engaging with customers if you have a lower market share than your main competitors. Beefing up your in-store presence with engaging shelf-side merchandising, packed inventories, and consistent planogram compliance is the best way to establish yourself in shops.
Market share is there for the taking. It’s just a matter of getting your products front and centre.
Highly competitive product environment?
It’s hell out there.
Well, not literally. But for brands trying to get an elbow in – especially when you’re trying to release new products or shake up an existing line – it can be incredibly tricky to stand out from the crowd.
In-store marketing is all about getting inside your target market’s head and asking the relevant questions.
After all, how is their shopping journey looking when there are so many brands and products available to choose from – each varying in product type and price point?
In-store marketing should bridge the gap between differences in customers and make your product as identifiable as possible. Short of screaming ‘Buy Me!’ from the shelf, ensuring you’ve done your research and know how to tap into your target market’s wants and needs should work wonders.
We’re creatures of buying habits. But it shouldn’t hurt to shake things up a little.
Can’t find your products?
Nobody puts your branding in the corner.
Don’t worry – a lack of visibility is another challenge that can be overcome with in-store marketing. Sure, it’s hard to increase product visibility when there are so many great products fighting for the attention of the shopper.
But combined with field sales solutions, it can help you discern successful actions, such as shelf-side signage, and planogram adherence, and which campaigns are having the desired effect.
If you need to get the public flocking to your stores, sprucing up your physical presence should be a no-brainer.
Sales dropping – and mood flopping?
Customers have been through a lot over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic and the more recent cost of living crisis which is sweeping the nation have led customers to be a little more discerning when it comes to where – and when – they spend their money.
This, combined with the looming presence of online shopping, is enough to tip the scales unfavourably when it comes to totting up internal store sales.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
You can boost upsells and cross-sells through in-store marketing and guarantee customer retention with frequent (but thoughtful) in-store promotions.
Loyalty cards and slickly quick EPOS at checkout can smooth the overall customer journey, which leaves shoppers with positive associations with your brand.
We imagine their train of thought goes a little like this:
‘Wow, I’ve got such a good deal on this top-quality product! And it was so easy to check out and get all my shopping sorted, with some points off my next spend. Love that. I’ll be buying this again – and let John downstairs know where to find his new favourite cereal bars.”
Not that you have to sell cereal bars to get the most out of in-store marketing.
We’re just spitballing.
Essentially, the four Ps of marketing – promotion, price, place, and product – are the most important parts of a wider, proactive strategy.
These elements form the backbone of any solid marketing effort, especially when they work coherently with one another to create a truly stellar bit of strategy that sees your stock fly off the shelves.
But how can you figure out what’s working – or isn’t? Especially when time’s a-ticking and you can’t afford to wait until the end of the quarter.
Software packed to the gills with intuitive data insights can come to the rescue. And lucky for you, Reapp can be just the ticket.
Working with Reapp to transform your in-store strategies
We’re Reapp, the clever-clogs way for brands to learn about what’s occurring at the shelf edge.
Our technology knows no bounds when you need assured facts and figures at your fingertips, providing truly bespoke datasets, dynamic visualisations and other actionable reports that can supercharge your product offering.
Our suite of fantastic software is created to drive your business operations with incredible insights, using over 3 billion units of shelf-fresh data, with each byte directly sourced from your stores around the nation.
Maybe you’re hoping to use our extremely clever audience insights tool to boost all of your marketing efforts. Or perhaps you’re on the lookout for cutting-edge image recognition technologies to gauge planogram adherence?
We have all this and more.
Consider Reapp as the key that unlocks truly incredible consumer insights. Or one of those posh swipey cards everyone is so fond of.
Sounds good? We think so too.
Book a demo with our friendly team today.
