While getting your brand into major retail channels is no small feat, the work doesn’t end the minute your products hit the shelves. Supporting sell-through at your retail accounts is essential to making sure your products stay in-store or online. Seeing lackluster numbers and worried your brand might get the boot? Here are a few reasons why your brand isn’t succeeding at retail.
You’re Not Sampling: Customers are more likely to buy brands and products they have tried before. That’s why sampling is so important. By participating in sampling programs, you can reach customers that may otherwise never try your products. Sampling costs are relatively low, making it one of the more effective ways to reach new customers.
You Have No Reviews: With thousands of products at their fingertips, today’s shoppers look to product reviews to help them decide which products will make it into their shopping carts. If you are a relatively new brand, it can be hard to build reviews. Gifting programs can help. Sending out free products to some of your social media followers and asking them to post a totally honest review on a retailer website can help build your reviews in a way that is ethical. Just make sure that they disclose that they received the product for free.
Your Display is Lackluster: What does a customer see when they come to your shelf? If your shelf strips, shelf talkers or even your product packaging doesn’t say enough to sell them on your products, they’ll likely just walk away. Make sure your display visuals and your secondary packaging speak to your products’ major selling points so that customers are intrigued, not confused and frustrated.
You’re Not Participating In Retailer Promotions: While investing in your own marketing campaigns is important to boosting overall consumer awareness, retailer marketing promotions are essential to reaching customers that already shop their stores. Participating in things like promotional events, gift with purchase programs, and holiday sales helps not only boost sell-through in the short-term but also helps you build a cohort of return customers in the long-term.
You’re Not Training: Brands with training programs have better sell-through than those that don’t. Without proper sales support from retailer staff, you may never reach enough customers in-store to meet your sales goals. Through training, you can enlist the valuable sales skills of associates to help boost brand awareness and sales.
Not sure how to develop a training program or worried about your budget? Our new digital Training Tool can help you seamlessly reach sales associates and turn them into advocates for your brand. Want to see our tool in action? Get in touch with our team for a demo.