Powerful Point of Sale: Impact’s 8 Key Must-Win Moments For Brands
How is your brand cut-through? Do you stand out from the crowd when it really matters? You can engage your audience more effectively with a powerful point of sale presence. A creative on-brand experience will help your audience choose your brand at the sticky end of the buyer’s journey.
Below, you’ll find out why point of sale is important for your brand. As well as how to win this key must-win moment.
What is Point of Sale?
Point of sale is the moment when your customer or client makes their purchase. For marketing professionals like yourself, point of sale is an opportunity to offer a better deal and increase your customers’ spend. You might also use this critical moment to make your brand experience memorable and lock in future sales or increase brand advocacy.
Effective point of sale marketing is tailored to where the sale happens. It could be your office, a physical or online check out, or your tradeshow booth. Consequently, wherever your clients are making their purchase, your brand should be on show.
“Many companies attribute their global success in reinforcing brand recognition, engaging with customers and ultimately driving product sales, to the sustained importance they place on one particular element of traditional marketing – point of sale.”
Impact’s 8 Key Must-Win Moments
What are they?
Over our 20+ years of branding experience, we’ve learned that the most effective brands connect with their audience in key must-win moments. Now, these moments vary across industries, but we’ve narrowed them down to the eight most common.
- Point of Sale Presence
- Events and Tradeshows
- Campaigns and Promotions
- Gift With Purchase
- Educational Campaigns
- Onboarding
- Rewards
- Calendar-Based Events
You may find that your brand focus is just one of the key moments. On the other hand, your brand might find the most success in three, or five, or all of these. Whichever it is, if you can bring your brand to life in these key must-win moments, you can make a meaningful connection with your audience.
Why is Point of Sale one of the key, must-win moments?
When you create a branded point of sale experience, you are ensuring your brand is visible when the money is on the table. Naturally this is a meaningful moment for many brands.
Strong point of sale presence benefits both transactional and relational marketing strategies. For example, your brand may be fighting for your customer’s attention in a high traffic environment. Or striving to build a strong brand/client relationship that outweighs the cost of your product or service. A creative and meaningful point of sale experience engages your customers.
Marketers have the ability to turn their audience’s head at a crucial point of the buyer’s journey. In a study published in the Journal of Retailing, consumers confirmed in-store communication was the most influential touch-point in generating brand positivity and influencing their buying decisions.
So how do you implement an effective point of sale presence? There’s one way that we know.
“It’s the brands’ ability to excite, engage and entice at the very front line of the sales process that often makes the difference between a customer choosing one product over another, and critically one brand over another.”
– Rosemary Chegwyn Marketing Magazine
Boost your Point of Sale presence with promotional products.
Extend branding off the shelf.
The retail space can be tough. Your brand is forced to compete with similar products right there on the same shelf. It can be tricky to stand out from the crowd in this environment. But there is a way. Promotional products including custom displays, aisle signs and floor decals will all grant your brand the attention it deserves.
A simple way to attract attention is to break the right angles surrounding your products. The human brain has developed to recognise patterns and become aware of disruptions to those patterns. It’s a skill that’s helped us survive. Our ancestors could examine the horizon for abnormal shapes that might signify a threat. In-store, shapes that extend off the shelf automatically attract our attention.
Similarly, creative display stands will also draw your audience in. Free-standing displays are an opportunity to amplify your branding with colourful custom shapes. Thanks to the increased space display stands offer, you could also use the opportunity to educate your audience about your product’s features, promotion details or brand values.
Finally, spatial elements like aisle signs and floor decals are more subtle branding opportunities. Underfoot and out of the general eye-line may not be your first choice. However, this in-store exclusive branding is a creative way to direct your audience to your product. Â
Engage walking billboards.
While we appreciate sign spinners, that isn’t what we’re talking about here. What we are talking about are the people who represent your brand every day. Your staff. Employees are the best brand advocates you’ll have. They are your brand’s human face and as such, personify your brand’s values.
We’ve written a blog about why you should invest in staff engagement and corporate gifting. So, you’ll already know why it’s important to outfit your team with branded merchandise. You may have also read our article about how effective apparel is as a promotional product. We’ll give you the TL:DR here, but go ahead and read them to get the full story.
- Your employees’ presentation reflects your brand.
- 90% of employees are happy to wear their employer’s logo in public.
- Branded shirts generate 3,400 impressions over their lifetime at 2/10 of a cent per impression.
- 94% of customers prefer employees in uniform because they’re easy to identify.
Reason enough to put your logo on a shirt and wear it around at the point of sale? We think so.
Create on-brand experiences.
Our 8 key, must-win moments are all about making your audience touch-points meaningful and memorable. What better way to do that than with on-brand experiences. Promotional products don’t have to be the focus of your branded point of sale experience, but they will enhance it.
For example, consider using branded paper straws, or bamboo spoons when distributing taste samples. Otherwise, you might give your audience branded aprons when demonstrating your latest product. Finally, the simple swivel stand or prize wheel will have your prospective clients touching, moving and interacting with your brand at your next trade show or conference. When they’re done, they’ll be ready to sign up, talk numbers or answer your call to action.
A strong point of sale presence can seal the deal for your brand. Your brand must be more visible, engaging and creative than competitors. Even more, you have to connect with your audience. Promotional products can do that. Their effect is felt in customer awareness at the top of the sales funnel through to ongoing customer engagement out the other side. Point of sale is just one key moment where branded products enhance your customer experience.
