Retail competition is at an all-time high. Now, having to compete with online sales too, in-store marketing has never been more important. Good store design draws the eye and entices customers inside, but one area often overlooked is the Point of Sale display. This is marketing material and displays placed near the final destination for a customer – the point of sale, checkout, or “till”. It’s a vital source of last-minute purchases and you can increase ROI without spending a lot of money.

Choose the Right Strategy

Your point of sale display can only work if you know what you want it to achieve. Before you spend any money, think about what you would like the POS to do. Are you looking to sell store cards? Encourage impulse purchasing? Advertise a special event? Showcase a special offer? Each of these requires a different strategy, different promotional material, and different items from your range. You should (ideally) have at least a basic ROI figure from previous promotions to work with before you begin.

Choose Quality Over Quantity

A good point of sale display focuses on the nitty-gritty of the sale. Too often, retailers overload their POS with too much material, distracting customers rather than drawing attention and leaving the store with information overload. To use a well-worn phrase, less is more. The fewer items you have, the less volume there is, the more you are able to accomplish at your point of sale. And, of course, the fewer items you have, the cheaper you can produce the display.

Interactive Displays

The ability to touch, taste, and smell, will encourage people to buy products. As well as using the excellent visual merchandising material, you should use actual products. For example, if you’re selling a new range of sauces, a large printed board showing what a customer could make with the sauce will whet the appetite, but the key to selling is allowing customers to taste the sauce. Cakes are displayed at the point of sale in coffee shops, using smell and aesthetics to entice customers to buy.

Change Up and Reuse Printed Materials

Your printed marketing material is a one-time purchase, but not necessarily a one-time use, especially for seasonal point of sale displays. So long as the material is stored where it will not get damaged, is kept clean and away from direct sunlight that could lead to fading, there is no reason you can’t reuse high quality printed marketing displays. Sometimes, all it takes is to switch around existing displays for the stock, changing the order or switching over other elements of the point of sale. The marketing material will continue to complement the display.

Use In-Store Lighting Effectively

There is always wisdom in using assets you already have. In-store lighting is one of them. It’s important for POS promotional and marketing displays to be in the right place. Close to or at the POS is, of course, correct. But the precise location should be somewhere the display is well-lit and will stand out to customers. This will come at no extra cost as you’re already paying the electricity bill although some moving around of the visual merchandising may be required for maximum exposure.