How can you maximise sales in your biggest selling period?

You’ve paid for additional space for your freestanding display units in-store, allocated marketing and advertising support, and managed your product allocations according to the forecasted volume uplift – so how can you fail to maximise your sales?

Check you’re ready for Easter ‘Peak’

Typically, a ‘Peak’ is the expected dramatic upward spike in sales over the year, characteristically out-of-step with the normal sales run-rate outside the period. For many brands, how well they perform during this accelerated period of sales, may determine how their Year End financial performance will likely turn out.

With Easter fast approaching, in some categories – the obvious ones being Confectionery, and DIY, intensive planning has been underway for many months; for brands in these categories, Easter is pivotal, and getting Easter wrong, is not an option.

Use Free Standing Display Units – More selling space, means more eyes on your product

Attracting customers and driving traffic, stimulating impulse purchases and growing basket spend, are just a few of the levers brands will use to increase revenue. Free Standing display units (FSDUs) are usually secondary sites that act as temporary locations for products – in addition to, or instead of, permanent space within a shelf planogram. To use category management terminology, they are crucial to driving frequency of purchase (fop) and weight of purchase (wop), in line with your chosen promotional mechanics; placement of FSDUs in high traffic areas provides greater opportunity for shoppers to browse and purchase your product

Brands and their customers may also set up agreements to create heightened focus on specific categories.

To ensure they are grabbing their share of increased retail footfall over Peak, brands and their customers may also set up agreements to create heightened focus on specific categories. This is when advertising, marketing and promotional funds known as ‘support’ are activated, often weighted heavily during this highly competitive period of days or weeks. It can be a costly time, with further challenges thrown into the mix for the food and drinks industry, when the HFSS legislation came into force in 2022 – placing limits on how and where retailers are permitted to promote products that are high in fat, sugar and salt. However, the alignment of increased product distribution, with additional funds to target new and existing consumers, means bumper sales!

Use the Omni-Channel approach – symmetry in the online and offline purchase environment

Peak display material may be needed for only 3 – 4 weeks, but whatever display items you use, whether you’ve opted for hanging banners, freestanding display units, countertop displays, or gondola ends – your choice of material should be fit for purpose and fit for your brand. The look and feel of display materials should reflect how your brand is represented online, reinforcing its quality perceptions. We’re here to guide you, ensuring that display materials are specified to withstand the rigours of in-store life and fulfil their objective to boost your sales.

In an ideal world, your product messaging hierarchy and brand experience have symmetry across every touchpoint, allowing shoppers to easily reference product information while shopping instore. Our creative team will work with you to incorporate that recognisable brand essence and clearly communicate your product’s features and benefits.

Understand the impact of poor in-store compliance, there are no winners

Despite all best efforts, the surprise bump in the path-to-purchase, is often the failure to get available stock onto the shop floor. Buyers, Sales teams and Marketers, have shared their frustrations about managing stock efficiently through complex supply chains (their own, the customer’s and any third parties), only for the distribution process to effectively fall at the last hurdle – just short of breaching the store’s warehouse door finishing line.

The cost of poor compliance can be counted in the following ways:

The consumer visits a store to purchase a product they’ve planned to buy (potentially enticed by a hot deal), only to find that the product is out-of-stock in-store.
The brand must pay penalty fees for non-compliance – e.g., for not fulfilling secondary locations under terms negotiated with their customer.
Market Share potentially lost for the brand or customer
Dip in consumer perception
Erosion in the brand/customer relationship

Take steps to eliminate lost sales through low secondary display compliances

As you can see, poor compliance can be costly for everyone involved. We understand that secondary sites are highly prized locations during national bank holidays and winning them is based on structured and detailed commercial negotiations.

The POPAI in-store insights compliance report highlights the top 5 factors contributing to poor compliance:

Vague and ambiguous implementation instructions
Display designs not fit for purpose or in a way that aids compliance
Fragile components that break
Overly complex planograms
Failure to check compliance after installation

For this reason, we work with you to improve and even take ownership of secondary site compliance levels, meaning that stock is where it should be – on time, in full, backed by audits you can trust.

We undertake national rollouts and offer a menu of options from; POP display design, print and delivery to a central location – through to our extensive ‘end-to-end’ POP operations, including:

POP display HSE signoff
POP display transport tests
POP display in-store fulfilment services
POP store briefings and training