Let’s talk about the money, honey.
Retail giants and brands around the globe know how important it is to fully optimise your in-store offering – but merchandising budgets can only stretch so far.
While we can’t write to the honchos at head office and ask them to reshuffle the numbers, our experts can certainly provide the best cost-effective merchandising solutions.
So say goodbye to costly marketing campaigns and hello to our strategic, cost-effective retail marketing tactics that deliver exceptional ROI while saving a little extra cash.
This guide at a glance
In order to promote a product and build brand awareness, merchandising is crucial. While it may seem like a simple operation, it can often prove to be quite expensive, particularly for smaller brands or businesses.
To help, the team at Tactical Solutions put together this ‘thrifty retailer’s guide to cost-effective merchandising solutions’ – aka, your one-stop shop for new ideas to invigorate stale strategies.
In this blog, we’ll provide handy insights and marketing solutions that’ll help business boom while staying within budget.
Let’s get into it!
Setting – and smashing – those clear objectives
You’d always look before you leap – and that’s no different for divers and marketing specialists.
Before dipping into any kind of merchandising activity, make sure your team is establishing clear objectives as part of salient project management.
It might seem obvious, but first identify what you want to achieve through your merchandising efforts.
Common aims include:
- Increasing sales
- Improving brand visibility and customer satisfaction
- Streamlining customer experience
- Educating customers about new or existing products
Cost expenditure can occur when goals become misaligned – especially when new (or unplanned) aims require pricey revisions.
By defining your goals early on, you can tailor your merchandising strategies accordingly, ensuring a cost-effective approach that saves time, money and stress.
Sometimes simple really means smarter.
Fail to plan, plan to fail…
You wouldn’t wing uncharted territory without a map.
That’s why thorough planning and research are essential to cost-effective merchandising, helping you trim the fat on unnecessary extras or ‘nice-to-haves’ that will actually bog those marketing strategies down.
Before making any big purchases, it’s important to understand two things: the market and your customer.
First, analyse your target market. Stalk their preferences and whittle down their buying behaviour, before tweaking and tailoring your potential offering to suit. Once you’ve planned that, it’s on to nosying at the big wide world – aka, the market.
That includes past, present and predicted market trends – we can help with that, by the way – as well as peeking at your competitor strategies and industry best practices.
What’s working? What isn’t? What can you steal (or avoid) to make your product shine on the shelf?
This knowledge will guide you in making informed decisions and prevent unnecessary expenses.
Optimise in-store merchandising
Layout and leverage.
Two surprising words when you think of cost-effectiveness.
Firstly, the layout of your physical store is crucial for effective merchandising. Optimising your existing store layout to encourage customer flow and product visibility is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to nab conversions, utilising customer behaviour to your advantage.
Place high-demand or high-margin items at eye level or near checkout counters to increase impulse purchases, making use of planograms and research to ensure everything is within reach.
You can also use POP displays, floor decals, and more strategically to guide customers towards specific products or promotions, leveraging these highly-effective methods to communicate key messages and showcase your products.
For ultimate ease, consider using cardboard cutouts and banners before going upmarket with interactive displays that engage customers and create a memorable shopping experience.
Figure out what works and the money will follow.
Use your connections
Partnerships can be a great way to bridge the gap between expenditure and exposure.
Considering a collaboration with a complementary business or certain retail stores can mean a win-win for everyone involved, thanks to cross-promotional activities that will stand out on the shelf.
From joint events (more on that next) to co-branded campaigns – or simply sharing sought-after space – we could all get by with a little help from our friends.
In addition to sharing marketing costs, your product could be seen by new audiences, with fresh eyes well worth their weight in gold.
Because if you can’t have ketchup without mustard, you might as well sell them together.
Workshop it
Sometimes you have to meet your customer in the middle – and what better way than creating an ultra-engaging interactive experience?
As well as showcasing your product and leaving a lasting impression, experiential activities can create a much-needed buzz around new launches or invigorating an older line.
They can also encourage customer loyalty and build brand advocacy without significant monetary investment, whether that’s within a retail space or by pinpointing local events.
Consider:
- Product workshops
- Demonstrations
- Tastings
And more to get your customer excited about your offering. Sometimes seeing is believing, after all.
Reassess, readjust, realign.
Retail merchandising strategies are tricky. You’ll never get everything right on the first go, so ensuring you have measures in place to continuously check the effectiveness of your activities is absolutely crucial – especially if you’re keen on saving cash.
Rather than making costly mistakes and having no choice but to stick with them, make adjustments as needed. The earlier the better, which you can do by performing monthly ‘litmus’ tests through sales data analysis, customer feedback, and those gold-dust engagement metrics to identify what works and what doesn’t.
Essentially, a cost-effective approach that yields positive results can be ensured by monitoring your marketing over time.
Implement Cost-Effective Merchandising Solutions with Tactical Solutions
The key to cost-effective merchandising is careful planning, strategic execution, and an understanding of your target audience.
With the strategies outlined in this guide, brands and their marketing managers can successfully promote their products, increase brand visibility, and drive sales without straining their budgets.
You must remember that effective merchandising is not just about spending money; it is about being creative, relevant, and providing your customers with value.
So, how do you implement these solutions and retail merchandising strategies? And
You reach out to the experts.
Spoiler alert: that’s us.
It all starts with a deep understanding of you and your customers’ needs; that way, we can create a bespoke solution that works.
We have worked with retailers and brands across the UK and helped them achieve their goals. Don’t just take our word for it – take a look at our merchandising case studies and read about our success stories.
Start your journey with cost-effective merchandising solutions today.
Because what’s better than making money?
Saving it. Just call us Martin Lewis.
