Whether you have a grocery business or some other type of retail business, it’s important to remember when planning marketing budgets that getting customers to the store is only half the battle won. As you plan out marketing budgets, note that while most businesses have a smaller budget for in-store advertising, this is not because other forms of advertising are more valuable. It simply that in-store marketing, such as a last minute promotions, are cheaper to budget for. Here’s what you need to know about your in-store signage.
What It Can Do
Your in-store signage can have a profound effect upon your customers. Some of the things that you can do include providing valuable information that can help your customers make purchase decisions; introducing new products that might not make much of a splash in an Internet advertisement but will attract customers when they are able to see and feel it in the store; triggering a recall in the mind of a consumer about a product that they enjoyed previously; and promoting a special sale item that you may not even have mentioned in outside advertising. This is particularly effective in grabbing those impulse purchases, which six out of every 10 purchases in a store are. in fact, since shoppers tend to make 82% of their purchase decisions once they are in the store, it really matters what your in-store signage is telling them.
How Can You Plan a Strategy?
As you factor in-store signage into marketing budgets it’s important to do this in a systematic way. You want to control messaging across your advertising platforms. This means everything from coordinating your in-store signage with other advertising outside the store to designing where you will place racks, signs, platforms, and information in order to grab customers in the highest traffic areas. It also means designing effective signage that communicates your message quickly and in a compelling manner.
How Can I Make a Printed Sign More Effective?
There are a number of great ways to get and keep customer attention with your signs. The more of your customers’ senses you can engage, the more you will grab and hold them. If they hear music that they like or smell something enticing, they are very likely to check it out. Food samples are great way to promote a product and increase sales, especially of new items. Consider creating themes that will be both useful to your customers and valuable to you. Important themes to hit include holidays or new, popular trends. Remember that anything that you highlight will get noticed, so make sure your displays and your signs are well lit. Use color effectively, because the human eye is drawn to color.
Try to Think From the Customer’s Perspective
It’s easy to become so familiar with your own store that you can’t see from the customer’s point of view. Every year, 13% of Americans move. That’s a lot of new people who could be coming into your store at any moment, so as you plan marketing budgets, don’t assume that all your customers know everything about your store and don’t need any help navigating it. Also, if you put up a new sign, be sure to have an outsider take a look at it. You know exactly what message you are trying to convey; but is that message coming across clearly to a person who reads it for the first time?
Keep Things Simple and Consistent
You want to think like the person who composes newspaper headlines. Get rid of excess prepositions and adjectives, and make sure your message is clear and simple. Signs with good branding also communicate authority to the consumer. And whatever you do, check, double check, and triple check for any errors. Nothing destroys your credibility like poorly printed signs, grammar errors, and misspellings.
Your signage says a lot about you and it has the power to dramatically improve your bottom line. Don’t leave quality signage out of marketing budgets, and do be sure to follow these tips for an effective and strategic in-store marketing campaign.
