Merchandising

What is merchandising or strategies to boost sales?

Merchandising are a set of techniques that serve to enhance sales and rotation of products in establishments, whether physical or online stores, since customers will be more willing to purchase one or more products .

To work with merchandising, it will be necessary to pay special attention to the place and way in which the products are displayed, in order to encourage their purchase. Merchandising is a well -known term, but perhaps not so much its application.

It is important to clarify that, in a generalized way, the general public has associated the word merchandising to promotional gifts, but these are two very different concepts.

1. Advantages of merchandising

Working with merchandising offers a notable list of advantages, among which we can find:

• It helps increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• It helps to get more profit, increasing sales.
• It is possible to attract more customers.
• It allows to liquidate product stocks more quickly.
• It is a catalyst to improve the results of an advertising campaign.
• It helps to boost impulsive purchases.
• The time a customer will take to decide to finish the purchase will be reduced.
• Branding is reinforced and enhances virality.

2. Types of merchandising

At the moment, five types of merchandising are usually differentiated, the choice of one or the other only depends on the type of product, target public and desired sales channel. Similarly, you can alternate between them on multiple occasions:

Product merchandising

Here we can list all the promotional activities that are used to sell a product, as well as posters, displays, etc. When we think about online channels, we are talking about SEO and web design.

Visual merchandising

Here we are talking about the strategies to show the advantages of the product and highlight its features, such as lighting, placement, colors, etc. In the online channel this is achieved through images and videos.

Retail merchandising

It refers to the products shown on a physical store, where special attention is paid to the activities of promotion, special discounts or loyalty programs. In online channels, retail merchandising is known as digital merchandising.

Digital merchandising

It brings together all promotional activities that are used with the objective of selling products on digital platforms, this can be: social media, email marketing, landing pages, flash offers, etc.

Omnicanal merchandising

Its objective is to offer customers, a unified experience within the different platforms in which they sell their products.

For example, they could convince visitors from the web to go to the physical store or request the email of the customers of physical stores to send them email marketing campaigns.

3. Tips for working with merchandising

To get positive results with branding, you will have to apply the right strategy. Therefore, here are the advice you can apply so that your promotion strategy achieves your expectations:

• Try to list what you would need if you were a customer looking for the products or services offered by your company.
• List all your goals and select the most important ones.
• Check to see what other businesses are doing similar to yours and improve this aspect.
• Define a corporate image and visual identity.
• Keep in mind the best special dates to promote your products with more success.
• Define your KPI and start testing.
• Measure the results and ask your clients opinion.
• Try different promotion strategies and repeat the ones that best worked first.