How to Use Point of Purchase Advertising to Boost Sales [Checklist]

When’s the last time every single item in your shopping cart was on your list? You’re not alone. Seventy percent of purchasing decisions happen at the point of purchase, meaning brands have a huge opportunity to influence sales by making their products impossible to miss. The most effective way to do that? Point of purchase (POP) advertising.  

What Is Point of Purchase Advertising?

POP advertising refers to the information a brand communicates to a shopper at the moment they make a purchasing decision. This involves using POP displays that raise brand awareness and in turn increase sales.

A POP display sits outside of a product’s home aisle and creates extra facings and exposure for your product. POP displays can appear in a ton of different places in the store, but most commonly you’ll see them in action alleys or in the form of an aisle endcap. Other than serving as secondary displays, POP displays can also be signage that appears somewhere in the store to raise brand awareness and keep your product fresh in shoppers’ minds.

POP advertising is an important next step after getting your product onto store shelves. The more times you expose a shopper to your product, the more likely they are to buy it.

Setting Your POP Advertising Goals

In order to develop your POP advertising strategy and incorporate it into an overall sales strategy, you first need to set goals to ensure the advertising is effective. There are 4 questions you should be asking yourself during this process:

What are the goals you are aiming to achieve?

Is your overall goal to increase sales in certain stores? Increase presence within a territory? These elements strongly influence the direction your POP advertising strategy will go in.

Additionally, you must align sales and marketing goals — if your sales team is looking to increase facings, investing in a POP display like clip strips might come to mind. But if marketing wants to raise brand awareness, it may make more sense to them to invest in banner stands. To incorporate both of these goals into your strategy, a compromise could come in the form of a standalone display that provides surface area for signage as well as extra facings within the store.

What is your timeline for this POP advertising plan?

An important yet often overlooked step you should take is deciding how long you will implement and track results of this initiative and incorporate it into your overall sales strategy. Planning this out ahead of time will help you set concrete goals to reach, establish the metrics you are looking to hit and will give you better insight into what is working and what isn’t.

Are you going to integrate your POP advertising with product promotions (coupons, BOGO, sales, etc.)?

POP advertising is a great way to raise awareness about sales and promotions. The more impressions you can make on the shopper in-store, the more likely they are to seek out your product and take advantage of the deal.

That being said, it's important to prepare ahead of time for the potential increase in sales. One of the last things you want to happen is for a shopper to get excited about your product just to find an empty shelf due to an out-of-stock. Planning ahead for this will preserve your brand’s credibility and help you get the most out of the promotion. Additionally, make sure your field team is checking in at the retailer more often than usual so if a problem arises, you can catch it sooner than later.

Checklist for Ensuring POP Advertising Success

• Encourage field reps to constantly check in on accounts for retailer compliance to ensure long term success of your POP advertising strategy.
• Communicate regularly with retailers and field reps to stay on top of low inventory and out-of-stocks.
• Track sales data closely to quantitatively compare the performance of your POP advertising across different locations, promotions, or markets.
• Use your sales data to demonstrate successes when negotiating for additional promotions or facings in retailers.
• Keep in mind how a POP advertising strategy creates an opportunity not just for brand awareness but for sales growth.