How Important Are POP Displays in the Sales Process?

Wondering how you can optimize your retail sales, but aren’t sure how to do it? Point of purchase marketing is an excellent and effective way to pull extra attention to your product through point of purchase (POP) displays. Many companies use point of purchase advertising and strategies to affect a consumer’s buying decision.

A point of purchase is a term that retailers and marketers use when deciding how and where to place their products in a store. Examples of this would be a product display that gets customers interested in buying the product. It should be distinguished from the point of sale, which describes when the customer actually pays for a product. The point of purchase is the area of a building or online store where you’ll often see promotional activity and other products.

The Path to a Purchase

Though marketers long conceptualized that the path to purchase was a linear progression — customer awareness to familiarity, consideration, purchase and loyalty — recent developments in the market place have put this linear path into question. Instead of being a straight line, today’s path to purchase is more like a web, with multiple paths customers can follow before making their choice.

For marketers and companies, this change from a linear path to a more open-ended one means that they must expand their advertising efforts to more than just one or two areas. Multifaceted campaigns are necessary to reach consumers who are going to explore several options before making a purchase and have a wealth of information right at their fingertips.

To account for these changes in consumer behavior, you need a more comprehensive marketing strategy. A new strategy will offer multiple ways that consumers can interact with your brand. To know what you’ll need to engage potential buyers, you have to understand their timeline, personas, touchpoints, channels and emotions. With this knowledge in place, you can design marketing materials that will appeal to customers no matter where they are on their buying journey.

Broadcast, print and digital campaigns often get the most attention from marketers, and for good reason — they are all great ways to reach out to potential customers and boost brand awareness. However, you don’t want to be so focused on those three areas that you forget about in-store marketing materials that can be great touchpoints for customers. POP advertising relies on attracting customers with in-store advertising, whether that be online or in-person. POP displays are a form of POP advertising that plays a significant role in marketing products.

What Are POP Displays?

POP displays are advertisements that companies place next to the products or merchandise that they are promoting. They can sometimes stand alone with the products stored in or on them. In stores, you will generally find them at the checkout area or other areas where customers tend to make the purchase decision. Companies frequently underuse POP displays, giving you the opportunity to get the leg up on the competition by using them.

Vendors often to provide free POP display material to stores, as a win-win opportunity since the store and the vendor can both sell more products.

Typically, POP displays will be designed to lead customers’ attention to the product and differentiate it from similar merchandise. The displays can come in a variety of forms that range in complexity. For example, a company might use a small display like a “shelf talker,” which is a sticker attached to the end of a shelf to draw a customer’s attention.

If a retailer really wants to show off a product, they could go with a branded, full display that houses the vendor’s products and place it where customers are likely to see it. Whether you go large or small, either option can be effective. Ultimately, it comes down to what you think your product needs.

5 Reasons Why POP Displays Are Beneficial

If you’re looking for reasons why you should add POP displays to your store or provide them to a store as a vendor, you’re searching in the right place. The point of purchase display’s effectiveness is unmatched when it comes to in-store advertising. Below are the top five ways POP displays can benefit your company.

1. Increase Attention

We’ve all been walking through a store, determined to find an item or two and gotten sidetracked by other products we noticed, resulting in an impulse purchase. Somehow, our attentions were diverted from the task at hand, and we found ourselves finding a new product that we just had to have. So, how does this happen? Well, POP displays are a huge part of it.

When a shopper walks down and aisle, skimming the shelves for one particular product, they will be rapidly passing by other products that are visually appealing but don’t make them stop and consider buying them. Often, this is a problem of the products not generating enough attention. They will usually be too small to catch the eye or will be ignored as soon as the customer sees that the product doesn’t relate to what they are looking for.

To solve this issue and lead to more unplanned purchases, you can use POP displays to give you that extra edge needed to interest the customer enough to stop and consider if they should buy the product. An attractive POP display that grabs their attention in the store and directs them to a product that they can immediately purchase will often result in a sale. With so many purchases each year going unplanned, you’ll want to draw attention to your product in the store.

These POP displays will often come in the form of signs that hang or stick out from selves, making them more visible to shoppers who pass by. Another popular option is a cardboard display that rests beside a shelf, partially in the path of an aisle, almost guaranteeing that customers will see your products.

2. Stand out From the Competition

While POP displays often lead to unplanned purchases, they also can help companies get ahead of the competition when customers are coming into the store with their purchases planned in advance. Say, for instance, someone comes into a grocery store looking to buy tortilla chips. Obviously, there’s going to some competition among brands for this customer’s business. As a tortilla chip vendor, you’ll probably wonder how you can differentiate yourself.

A POP display can do just that. If you know that tortilla chips sell well at the store, you can use eye-catching cardboard displays around the store that hold bags of your chips. This point of purchase strategy attempts to get the customer to pick up a bag of your chips without even making it down the chip aisle and having to consider their options.

Even if they do make it down the aisle, POP displays can come in the form of signs that still draw the customer’s eye to your product and help to differentiate it from the competition. Whether or not you’re in the tortilla chip business, the principle applies for multiple types of products. By using POP displays, you’ll bring more attention to your product.

3. Create an Experience

When someone goes to a store, they are not just going to buy something. They are going for an experience. POP displays are a way to give customers a more engaging experience, whether or not they are initially interested in buying anything at the store.

Interactive features implemented into POP displays are growing in popularity as companies realize these displays can be more than just visually appealing. With features like exclusive offers, QR codes, touch screen displays or custom lighting, POP displays can give shoppers a reason to invest a couple of minutes of their time considering what you have to offer.

4. Affordable

Though POP displays are often underused, it isn’t because they are too pricey. The alternative methods of marketing will usually cost far more than the price of a POP display in a store. Additionally, you don’t even have to come up with any radical new design schemes for these messages. If you’ve already put out other print ads, such as on a billboard or in a magazine, you can use the same or similar advertisements on the signs or posters your customers can find in the store.

While you probably spend lots of money researching what kind of audience is interested in your products, a POP display ad has the advantage of automatically reaching a large number of people who are at least interested in a similar product. For much less money, a display ad reaches people who are already prepared to purchase something and are more likely to be persuaded that you have a product they’d be interested in.

For some stats to back up these claims, look no further than a study that found that the cost to reach 1,000 adults with POP displays that have a one year life ranges from 3 to 37 cents. In contrast, a 30-second TV commercial costs $4.05 to $7.75 per thousand views. As you want to reach a larger audience, these cost differentials can end up being staggering.

5. Answer Customer Questions

Naturally, even after you’ve gained a customer’s attention, some of them are going to want a little more information before they purchase your product. With a POP display, you’ll also have the space to educate buyers on what makes your product so unique.

This use of a POP display is a great way to add value to your product in a buyer’s mind and meet any potential objections a customer might have before making a purchase. In a way, a POP display is like a salesperson, and as such, they should be prepared to overcome objections. Use the space to provide easy-to-read text with information that a customer might want to know about before they make their decision.

Examples of POP Displays

To help you visualize POP displays, we’ve put together a list of three common types.

1. Freestanding Displays

These standalone displays allow customers to interact with them from 360 degrees and can be placed near shelves or other areas of the store that customers walk through consistently. Due to the nature of being a standalone display, they differentiate the products that they hold from the products on shelves, grabbing the eye of curious shoppers.

Typically made out of affordable cardboard, freestanding displays can be shaped into some creative and attention-getting designs. Products held in these displays will often be well organized, either placed on the display’s shelves or hung from hooks.

2. Endcap Displays

These displays are located at the end of an aisle and will hold a company’s products. Since endcaps will be visible before a customer even enters an aisle, they are a great way to grab a customer’s attention. Just like freestanding POP displays, they save you the need for extra aisle space and allow you to put your product in a well-trafficked, highly visible area.

On top of grabbing a customer’s attention, these displays are built to provide extra information to customers as they can be as wide as the end of an aisle, giving them plenty of space for additional text. With an endcap, you can hook the customer with an eye-catching design, and then reel them in with compelling information about your product.

3. Dump Bins

At grocery or retail stores, you’ll often see dump bins stocked with candy or some other product. These displays are more unorganized than freestanding displays, as they are just a large bin with lots of individually packaged products placed in them.

Since they offer smaller products and have the advantage of being very visible to customers, they are ideal for targeting shoppers who tend to make impulse buys.

How POP Displays Complement Packaging Design

So, you’ve grabbed a customer’s attention with a POP display, and they’re now considering buying your product. Is your work finished?

Not quite. Your product needs to have attractive packaging that is complemented by the POP display. When you design your POP display, keep its end goal in mind — getting customers to buy your product. Your display shouldn’t receive more attention than the product you are selling, or you risk undermining the POP display’s effectiveness. A visually appealing display that directs customers to a product with underwhelming or unattractive packaging can give shoppers a reason to put your merchandise back on the shelf and move on.

Make sure that your product stands out by working with a company that can help you craft packaging and POP displays that stand out from the rest and give your product an irresistible quality.

Get Started Designing Your Perfect Packaging With Phase 1 Prototypes

At Phase 1 Prototypes, we know that POP displays should complement good packaging design. We’ll help you workshop fresh designs for packaging and POP displays. Additionally, we’ll market the products to test audiences so you can get feedback before you roll out packaging and displays to a store.

We’re in the business of turning your vision to reality and have a track record of proven success. Our printing capabilities always deliver attractive and highly functional products.

Request a quote today, and a representative will send it to you within 24 hours. If you’d like to reach us directly before receiving a quote, contact us by phone or email.

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