Elf on the shelf? Get more of yourSELF on the shelf at Christmas
In retail it’s NEVER too early to talk about Christmas, and if your sales HQ is anything like our office, you’ve probably been planning for Christmas long before the weather got a little cooler and the leaves started turning. There is no bigger retail event in the UK than Christmas, and the best-case scenario is that your products fly off the shelves. But this leaves a huge problem that many brands simply don’t plan for: availability.
Availability in the Christmas rush
Availability of stock can feel like a never-ending battle over the busiest times of the year. Many brands spend so long planning their Christmas campaigns, getting their marketing strategies, packaging, and unique seasonal items just right, they often don’t think about what will happen when they do the job well and the products sell out and leave gaps on shelf.
Availability is about having more of yourself on the shelf, and during the busiest times for retailers it’s not as simple as making sure shelves are stocked. It’s about ensuring products are present in the warehouse; it’s identifying which items are selling well and increasing orders of them; it’s making sure displays say what you want them to; it’s making use of every free display space in store.
But with little control over how supermarkets operate or where their staff spend their precious time, how can you make sure your products are available?
Getting feet on the ground
During the Christmas shopping period especially, field marketing can be an invaluable extension to your sales team. Field marketing agencies like Logobrand, often have hundreds of field merchandisers throughout the country who make daily trips to stores to ensure shelves are filled with stock.
Where supermarket staff have literally hundreds of brands to organise and arrange, field marketing agents can walk the aisles and spot places to showcase your stock without the rush, getting products out of the warehouse and onto shelves. This not only relieves overworked store resource, but it also means you have more opportunities to reach shoppers.
Working Smart not hard
At Logobrand we believe in working smarter not harder and by using technology to analyse millions of lines of sales EPOS data daily, we can ascertain your trading position identifying and highlighting potential issues in availability – ranging, stock & sales. Yesterday’s data today at the click of a button enabling us to react quickly and efficiently to go and fix those issues, reducing the catastrophe of being off sale and losing sales to your competitor
Drawing the eye
Getting more of your product out there in front of shoppers isn’t just about making sure you’ve got a full shelf. There are many display techniques that can draw the shoppers’ eye; a cleverly placed clip strip – say sachets of hot chocolate on a strip nestled next to the biscuits – can see a huge increase in sales. All it takes is having that team of people in stores to prioritise your products and ensure your products are displayed and available, at the busiest times
Field marketing is essential for brands during the Christmas period, and there’s no time like the present (no pun intended) to get in touch with Amanda to see how we can help you deliver your Christmas plan.
If you’d like a little more information about tactical field marketing, field marketing technology or just to find out more about how to win at retail field marketing, please do get in touch. Keep an eye out on our blog in the coming months, as we’ll be posting more tips on how to get the most out of your field marketing.
If you found this article interesting, you might like to know more about our award winning field marketing technology.
