Packaged to Increase Sales

At first glance, both bath benches appear similar. They are both boxed and cost within a few dollars of each other. But one outsells the other more than four to one. Why?

This top-selling bath bench is packaged to sell: visual retail packaging sells itself, POP display and signage attracts customers, laminated product information card educates customers, floor samples demonstrate personal benefits to customers, rebates stimulate customers to buy and a coop advertising program helps increase overall retail traffic and sales. Obviously, the tremendous difference between these two products is more than meets the eye: whereas one bath bench is simply a product, the other is a retail package that helps sell-through the product for you.

Behavioral psychologists have found that people buy in a four-step process:

When you buy home health care products, be sure to facilitate this retail purchasing process by buying a complete retail package. Following are several components that will help you increase your turns, ROI and profitability:

Attractive Retail Packaging

Soothing blue medical packaging might look professional, but physiologically the human eye looks right past it. In contrast, caution road signs are black on yellow because this color combination stops our eye and - at least momentarily - holds our attention. Attractive retail packaging uses a combination bright colors, visual graphics and brand recognition. Plus, highlight user benefits over product features to help motivate the consumer to buy.

Magnetic POP Displays

Point-of-purchase (POP) displays are used to attract attention, educate customers, generate sales and identify with a corporate image or national advertising campaign. According to marketing studies, they facilitate the purchasing process by moving product off of the shelves and into customers hands - which is two-thirds of the way to closing a sale. Retail sales of a particular product can be doubled by simply moving a POP display from an aisle to a more visible or highly-trafficked area such as the register, pharmacy or entrance.

Follow that Sign

Consumers value the ease of shopping and finding particular products in any given store. Therefore, one of the goals of retailers is to make shopping a pleasurable experience. But few retailers realize that category and shelf signage are as important to customers as road signs are to drivers. Signage that helps increase sales starts at your window and then direct customers to the respective department and/or POP or shelf display.

Floor Samples Sell Themselves

Home health care is an educational, informational business: retailers must first educate consumers as to how the available products can improve the quality of their lives, and then they will buy as a direct result of these personal benefits. Customers also need to touch and try out products before they buy, which they usually cannot do in the mass market or chains because floor space is at a premium. But HHC providers have more space available and take advantage of their retail showrooms by displaying not only floor samples buy products in use such as model bedrooms and bathrooms. Customers are able to see, try out and then buy the products that best meet their own needs.

Rebates Close Sales

Rebate offers and coupons are documented to increase in-store sales from 100 to 300 % by increasing sales per customer. They satisfy customers in two ways: first on an intellectual level by validating their choice of product for quality and/or price; and second on an emotional level by rewarding either loyal customers for their continued patronage or cost-conscious buyers for their diligence. Traditionally viewed as simple "cents-off" discounts, today rebates and coupons are used to reward frequent buyers and reinforce brand purchases.

NOTE: Retail pricing is a sensitive issue, but marketing studies document that the lowest price is not always the best price. Consumers value other values first before price: quality, first-class service, informed sales people, convenient location and one-stop shopping. By selling this value, you meet their primary need and then your price becomes the best price available.

Co-op Your Ad Dollars

Advertising is important not only to attract new customers to reinforce current customers that they have made the right choice by shopping at your store. But advertising is a cumulative process and needs repetition and continuity to be effective and profitable. Co-op advertising programs that are available from manufacturers and distributors help achieve these advertising goals by defraying your costs. Consider co-op programs as another available discount and buy the highest quality products with the best available discount programs. Lower your product and advertising costs by utilizing all available rebates, promotional discounts, ad slicks and collateral marketing materials.

Increase Demand and Profit

Category management redefines each department as a self-contained business entity with its own individual profit-and-loss concerns. The most cost-effective way to increase retail sales is to cross-sell related and impulse merchandise either within a particular department or between two department’s "retail adjacencies." Most departments usually sell at least one demand product that customers return to buy on a regular basis, such as incontinence, diabetic or wound care products in the HHC market. To increase sales, any related products that appeal to similar needs or impulse products that appeal to similar values must be displayed between the entrance and the respective demand product. Selling is a numbers game, and according to retail marketing studies at least two out of every 12 customers will buy these related and/or impulse products if provided with the sales opportunities.

Back