Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Back it Up: The Customer Service Experience Does Matter!


We all know that bad customer service experiences abound in the retail world, but how influential are they really? Does a consumer really think about those bad experiences when they are making a decision to purchase a product or frequent a certain location? A recent report in the Toronto Star found that they most definitely do!! The customer service experience and customer loyalty go hand in hand…Fail with the former and the latter will undeniably suffer.  

Covering the 2012 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, an international study that looks at customer service experience, the Star reported that over 60% of those surveyed said that a bad customer service experience in the past year had negatively influenced their decision to buy a product or brand. In Canada specifically, the study found that 43% of respondents considered switching to a competitor after a bad customer service experience – clearly this does not bode well for customer loyalty. 

We have all had our own bad customer service experience – and they usually follow a common thread. Customer service representatives with no knowledge base are not going to be very effective when it comes to promoting your product. Poor product merchandising and product placement are not going to increase customer loyalty – they’ll kill it. Any number of things can contribute to a consumer feeling fed up by a bad customer service experience.

Don’t ignore the power of social media. People are not willing to sit idly by and deal with a bad customer service experience anymore. Instead, the study found that 63% of respondents admitted to taking to their social networks to vent about bad service – a stat that seems to be continually growing. And these numbers are influential, since it is also true that people feel heavily influenced by reports on products given by those in their social networks. Facebook and Twitter are used for a lot more than sharing pictures of that weekend getaway and sharing about what you ate for lunch!

So how can you turn that around and ensure that those customers are leaving the store happy with YOUR brand in their bag? Differentiation is key, so setting yourself apart from the competition is going to get you the brand recognition you need – and ensuring a good customer service experience will work to increase customer loyalty. This is where a merchandising company – and merchandising services – come into play.

So what kinds of merchandising services are important? Experiential marketing, including product demonstrations, ensuring correct product placement and planogram execution, as well as making sure that your product is being continually re-stocked, all work towards creating the right customer service experience that is going to increase customer loyalty and get those tweets and status updates working for you!

For more information about how merchandising services offered by an experienced merchandising company can help banish the bad customer service experiences and increase customer loyalty, please contact Storesupport at 1-877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

Spread the Love with Your Valentine’s Day Experiential Marketing Campaign


Trying to ramp up your sales and exposure but having trouble figuring out how to engage consumers? Why not leverage an experiential marketing campaign that takes advantage of holidays like Valentine’s Day to influence consumer buying! An effective experiential marketing event that influences individual purchases can yield major results.

It is easy to make the claim that experiential marketing is influential – but that doesn’t mean that you have to believe it. Need more evidence – don’t worry, we’ve got it! Event Marketing Institute’s EventTrack: Event Marketing Industry Annual Forecast & Best Practices Study found some pretty intriguing results with regard to experiential marketing. If you want to know how influential experiential marketing is, just check out the stats that they uncovered: 

-          71% of the study’s respondents reported that they felt more positive about a company or brand after an experiential marketing event.

-          58% of those surveyed said that they ended up purchasing a product after an experiential marketing event.

-          86% of those consumers surveyed said that they became regular customers of a brand or service after en experiential marketing event (That’s HUGE!!!).
So how can you leverage a Valentine’s Day experiential marketing campaign and get the most bang for your buck?? It is easy. An experiential marketing agency that offers a plethora of merchandising services can help you make the most of a Valentine’s Day experiential marketing campaign. Here are just a few examples:

Get people excited about your product. A campaign that allows consumers to interact with your representatives and sample your product is a good start. Presenting your product through a live product demonstration associated with Valentine’s Day will be sure to capture those who are excited about the season and eager to spend to purchase your product and perhaps even shift their brand loyalty. The same technique could be used for food products sold at the retail level.   

Catch those stragglers. Grab those last minute shoppers by setting up as close to Valentine’s Day as possible. An experiential marketing campaign is going to be the most effective if consumers are thinking about the holiday. Those shoppers (ahhem males – sorry guys) that typically leave their Valentine’s Day shopping till the last minute always seem to need help finding the perfect gift, so let your experiential marketing event help them 'discover' exactly what that perfect gift is!

Ensuring that you have the best front line staff is crucial where experiential marketing campaigns are concerned. This is your opportunity to influence shoppers who otherwise way not have considered your product. An experiential marketing agency that can deliver results through their merchandising services can help you achieve results, especially if you are considering a last minute campaign.  

Spread the love this Valentine’s Day by enlisting the expertise of an experienced experiential marketing agency that offers a suite of merchandising services. For more information, please contact Storesupport at 1-877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

The Days of Clips Boards Are Over! How Technology is Improving Brand Management


Staying Informed about your brand at retail is integral if you want to succeed. Effective brand management means keeping on top of product placement, restocking, and product movement. If you find yourself struggling to maintain control over your product, this can be a big problem – so how can you solve it? By leveraging merchandising technology and working with a merchandising company that employs this in their suite of merchandising services is key. 

According to a recent study done by The Parker Avery Institute, only 57% of retailers have a well-formed merchandising strategy, and these are the ones who experience 3% or better sales growth from year to year. Those that don’t have a well-defined brand management/merchandising strategy don’t see these results. Clearly there is something to be said for planning ahead.

What are the benefits that exist when you leverage merchandising technology as part of your brand management strategy?

1.       Speed. What if you sent out a planogram but are unsure whether or not it was executed properly? What if you see that your product is not moving well compared to last month? Knowing the answers to these issues – in real time - is crucial for effective brand management. Merchandising companies that leverage merchandising technology can send out a rep and send you information, before and after pictures, and stock updates right from a mobile device.

2.       Accuracy. Using merchandising technology that uses a store’s ‘store data’ system to report on your brand means that no manual inputs are necessary – ensuring accuracy. The days of clip-boards are over, so relying on them instead of merchandising technology will put you at the bottom of the retail hierarchy!

3.       Competitiveness. Being aware of how the competition is performing is also a crucial part of effective brand management. Merchandising companies use merchandising technology to do this by comparing pricing (which again can be sent to you immediately), checking display execution, and gauging customer satisfaction. Get a leg up on the competition through effective brand management and merchandising technology.

4.       On Demand Access. By syncing store data to a web portal, you can have on demand access to reports and data mined by merchandising companies. Relying on updates from the store (if they will even provide them) can be costly and time consuming, so taking advantage of the services offered by merchandising companies that leverage merchandising technology for on demand access is a really smart idea.

Most of the big brand names leverage merchandising technology to ensure that they maintain control over their own brands. This doesn’t mean though that this kind of brand management has to be expensive. It is actually a smart way to achieve cost savings that allow you to stay in control and always be aware of what is taking place with your brand.

If you are having trouble controlling your product in-store, or if you just want to ramp up that marketing campaign, a merchandising company that leverages merchandising technology as a part of their merchandising services is the way to go. An effective brand management strategy should include technology which will ultimately make your life a lot easier.

For more information about leveraging merchandising technology for effective brand management, or any other merchandising services you may need, please contact Storesupport at 1-877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

B and C Level Brands on the Cusp


If you are just making your way in the retail world, you are no doubt aware that there are many challenges that you will need to overcome. If you are a brand on the cusp of success, you know that you need all of the help you can get to ensure that your product gets to where you want it to be. 

You know that there are several goals you want to meet and a common challenge is being able to meet those goals even when sometimes dealing with a constrained budget. Your goals may include beefing up profits, becoming number 1 in your category, and achieving prime product placement.

Working with an experienced merchandising company can help you reach these goals, as well as ensuring that once there, you stay there.

How can this be done? There are a number of ways that you can breach that barrier and work your way up.

Experiential marketing: Experiential marketing refers to the strategies that engage the customer through sensory experience – product demonstrations or taste testing for example. These methods allow the customer to not only hear about the benefits of your brand but to experience them as well. A study done by the Event Marketing Institute found that experiential marketing can have dramatic impacts on your bottom line: on average, 58% of consumers said that they purchased a product or brand after an experiential marketing event that let them experience the product for themselves, while 86% revealed that they became a regular customer afterwards. Furthermore, 71% said that they felt a stronger connection with the brand after the campaign, resulting in further brand loyalty.

Merchandising: developing a well thought out merchandising strategy takes knowledge, and working with an experienced merchandising company lets you see the benefits of the various options available. Merchandising strategies may include various tactics such as experiential marketing and coupon distribution. These allow you to gain crucial brand recognition while ensuring that customers remain loyal. Merchandising strategies also work to implement effective product placement schemes, ensuring that your diagrams are as you want them and in the right location in-store.

People Support: When you are on the cusp of success, working with an experienced merchandising company can also provide you with the staff to ensure that your products are being demonstrated and placed properly in-store. They can also make sure that your product is being continually stocked and that retail employees are providing the correct information to consumers.

How can you ensure that your merchandising company will be able to achieve the best for you? There are a few things to look for. Make sure that they offer a suite of services such as those mentioned above. A merchandising company with national experience will have a wide range of practice and strategies that can help you reach your goals. Furthermore, for the best results, work with a company that specializes in one industry – the retail food industry for example – rather than one that tries to cater to all – that way your issues are never lost in the shuffle.

In order to break into and stay in the incredibly competitive retail food industry, keeping up with product distribution and retail merchandising is key. By working with a merchandising company that offers a wide array of services to meet your needs you can ensure that your brand is receiving the attention it requires at retail, achieving prime product placement and thereby increasing customer retention and loyalty.

For more information about merchandising services offered by an experienced merchandising company and how these services can help you break into the top rungs of the competitive retail food industry, please contact Storesupport at 877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.