How POS Marketing Material Can Increase Your Sales

How can a marketer influence my choice of a drink at the bar? Well, by using Point-of-Sale marketing. POS marketing refers to all efforts made at the place where the buying decision is made. These efforts increase sales.

POS material gives your customer an extra impulse to buy something. When your product is presented in an innovative and attractive way, it will probably sell faster than a similar product without such presentation.

Let’s start aligning your marketing and communication with some POS material and discover the benefits of POS marketing.

POS material at the bar

Imagine you’re at a bar with your friends. You’re staring at the menu, but you can’t figure out what to drink. You don’t want to drink alcohol, since you still need to drive your friends home. Wine, beer or expensive cocktails can thus already be excluded.

You haven’t made your decision yet, but the waiter is already at your table. At this moment, you order the first drink that pops up in your head: a coke.

What if you could change this answer as a marketer? What if your product comes to mind instead of your competitor’s product?

Of course it’s not always easy to change a customer’s decision. Some customers are very loyal to specific brands and are hard to convince to try something else. But if you know that 70% of all customers sometimes dares to do an impulse purchase at the supermarket, why would it be so different at a bar?

I hear you saying: ‘Then tell me how I can change this’. Well, by using POS material at the bar. POS marketing refers to all efforts made at the place where the buying decision is made. These efforts increase sales.

POS material gives your customer an extra impulse to buy something by presenting your product in an innovative and attractive way.

Marketing project at a FMCG company

I once did a consultancy project at a FMCG company in the food and beverages sector in the Belux region.

This FMCG company is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, with net sales of more than $ 64 billion in 2019 and a global portfolio of diverse and beloved brands. In Belgium they are in the Top 8 of food companies.

During this project, I searched for decent POS material that matched with the company’s products. This POS material was used by the sales team to increase sales at bars. Their goal was to convert bars into promoting their beverages instead of the beverages of their competitors.

Write clear briefings

Before ordering POS material, I always checked the available budget for every kind of POS material. From the moment the budget exceeded a certain amount, I had to call in the purchasing department.

I wrote clear briefings for multiple suppliers with information about the needed POS material. These briefings consisted of the following things:

• Visual of the POS material
• Material of the POS material
• Sample cost
• Sample delivery date
• Question about the lead time
• Delivery deadline of all POS material
• Budget and ordering quantities
• …

Most of the time the POS material exceeded the budget, which means I had to work closely with the purchasing department.

The better the briefing, the easier it was for the purchasing department to look for suppliers. They searched for suppliers from all over Europe to find the right POS material.

Choosing the right supplier

I compared and evaluated the proposals of the different suppliers, chose the best one and asked for a sample. When the internal departments approved the sample, the purchasing department negotiated the price conditions and placed the order with the selected supplier.

Conclusion

You won’t lose time if you write a good briefing. Especially in a FMCG company where everything really needs to move forward quickly.

When the departments approve the sample, processes can go quickly. If departments do not approve the sample, you have to start all over again or select the 2^nd best supplier and wait for their sample.