An effective platform for growing store traffic and sales per customer transaction
Customers Buy Experience
Every Retail Executive faces the challenge of growing traffic of shoppers in their stores while their local base is assaulted by online and traditional competitors. Coupons and flyers are not as effective as they used to be when the consumers are looking for an exceptional Customer Experience, not a $2 discount.
Savvy grocers love product promotional events because they draw foot traffic with a different experience of entertainment and education that engages all five senses. At the time, they sharply increase the sales of high-margin products. While Retail Industry research shows a 150% boost in the same day product sales*, Food & Beverage product demos often report over 400% sales increase. Consider an additional 90% – 120% residual boost in item sales over the quarter following the store demo event, all paid for by the vendors, and it becomes very easy to understand why smart grocers want more demos.
The insights below are distilled by analyzing thousands of event post-sales reports conducted by dozens of CPG brands in hundreds of US supermarkets over the last few years.
Help Vendors help you bring more people to your stores
Most supermarkets do not have dedicated coordinators whose prime responsibilities are to schedule and coordinate promotional store sampling events with vendors. More often than not, it is handled by a person who already has too many “hats” to wear, some with specific measurements of performance. So it is not surprising that her attention is not focused on the number or effectiveness of the vendor’s in store samplings.
That leaves Vendors with the very unpleasant task of multiple calls to the same store, and the pain in the neck holding the phone while waiting for the “right” person who can give them an availability date for their product promotion.
The more difficult and unpleasant it is for the Vendors to set up the in-store demo event in your store, the more likely they will spend their budget funds at a store of your competitors.
Ask And You Shall Receive
Brand managers, who control promotional budgets, frequently have no idea what stores carry the products they would want to promote. Many products on supermarket shelves are sold to buyers by brokers and distributors, who often do not have access to the brand’s marketing budgets.
Proactive requests from the store management, communicated directly to a manufacturer or via your store demo agency/partner, often brings a surprising number of events and shoppers with very little effort. Very often these events introduce consumers to higher-margin products, generate higher sales per customer transaction, and convert shoppers into loyal recurrent customers.
Money, like water, flows where it meets the least resistance.
The supermarkets that welcome promotional store sampling events in their stores, i.e. make it easy to set up and execute:
- receive far more promotional funding
- get better profit margins
- offer their customers continuing outstanding experience that begets Word-Of-Mouth Marketing around the stores’ demographics
