We’ve put together a video running through some tips on how to differentiate your brand in retail stores. Here’s Christine with her top tips:

To ensure this is accessible to all, we’ve also written up the show notes below.

If I had to sum it up in 5 tips, the important things to make sure your brand can be differentiated are as follows:

• Make sure your product is on the shop floor. You can’t sell an empty space. Ensure you have plenty of stock in the warehouse to put on the shelves when they’re empty.

• Make sure your product is positioned well. It’s possible to purchase good store space in a retail outlet, so have a word with the buyers to find out where the best spots are.

• Make sure the product is well merchandised when it’s in position. There’s nothing worse than a scruffy dirty point of sale (POS). So make sure the point of sale is clean, relevant, eye catching and up-to-date.

• Once your product is on display, make sure staff know about it. It’s not always the case that staff are trained on all products. It’s important that staff can speak to customers about your product with confidence - that will differentiate your product from a different brand.

• What a lot of companies will do to achieve this is employ a trainer merchandising team where people will go in to a store representing that brand making sure all the above are followed through.

We would love your feedback, any positive or negative comments, or anything you would like to add.

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• It is imperative you try to record the details of anyone visiting your stand

• Worst case scenario, have something for them to take away that will retain their interest with an invitation to call you.

• Put the photographs of the people manning the stand on the literature you are handing out so they have something to jog their memory when they get back to their office.  Remember they will be taking several pieces of literature home, help them to remember you.

• Record details of everyone visiting with their area of interest and contact details and their preference to when they receive a call from you

• Follow up the calls within a few days of the exhibition finishing.

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Exhibiting at a show can be great for generating new business, but it’s a large investment in time and money, so you’ve got to make the most of it!

This is the first in a 3 part quick tip series which will help you prepare and manage an exhibition stand. This first post will give you some ideas about how to get people over to your stand.

• Hold prize draws - this can generate interest and allows you to collect contact details of people interested in your field.

• Free ‘stuff’ - your visitors can take home something with your brand and contact details that they will keep longer than a business card.

• Enticing stand display - make your purpose clear, and portray a professional image.

• Open friendly staff - make sure you staff your stand with people who are approachable and happy to help.

• Someone in the hall encouraging them to visit - don’t restrict yourself to your allocated corner.

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I visited the Beyond The Box stand at the Business North West Exhibition today to take some photos and video the team in action.

We’ll be adding some videos to the blog with great advice from Christine on how to manage an exhibition stand and some examples of effective training techniques from Dawn.

Christine had arranged for an artist to be there for the two days, and I was roped into having my caricature done while I was there!

Here are some photos from the day, and of the before & after caricatures.

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For successful brand promotion, you need passionate staff who will promote the brand consistently and achieve sales and loyalty for the client.

Building a strong relationship with retail stores and sorting issues out will also help achieve confidence in selling the brand.

It’s important to put the right people in the right job, and to have good communication processes in place.

It’s also vital to have comprehensive training about the brand and product line. Your product line may not be suggested by a customer advisor because they don’t know enough about it.

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• Awareness - The most important part of the Product Training role is to make sure staff are aware of any new and existing product. If they don’t know the product is there - they can’t possibly sell it.

• Confidence - If sales staff have had training on a product they will feel more confident in selling it to the customer. By letting staff try, touch and feel the product it also gives them more confidence to sell.

• Knowledge - Training staff on features and benefits help them to understand the products and helps them to find the best possible product for the customer. Customers will be much more satisfied if they received informed advice from an advisor, and this is particularly important in retail for technical purchases such as computers, mobile phones, washing machines and vacuum cleaners where the average customer knows what they need it for but not what specification.

• Up-Selling - Training staff on the differences between product can also achieve best possible sales for the client and store and sell top of the range products instead of entry range products. This helps the sales person to sell up the range.

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Being able to collect information and send to the client instantly allows the client to get a feel for what is going on in the field without having to go out themselves.

Information on new products or offers from competitors can be fed back to the client with product features, benefits and prices.

This helps the client compare their products with the competition and makes them aware of potential threats. If a threat is established, the client can evaluate and make an informed decision of how best to maintain a competitive advantage, achieving the best possible results without affecting profit margins.

It’s important that competitor information is accurate and is kept up to date, so our preferred method is to send competitor feedback reports from in store using mobile technology.

This speeds up the process for the client, but it also helps staff because they don’t need to go back to the office and type up notes and figures from a store visit.

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Training staff on new and current products is a must to maximise sales. But to enable the trainer and customer advisor to demonstrate products in store, stock must be checked before hand.

If the product is not on display we check the system in store and request that it is placed out asap. We also make a note of this and input this information onto our pda so that the client has a record of missing stock within store.

Stores miss sales opportunities when stock is not on display, so along with allowing product trainers to get on with their work, checking stock levels when first in store also helps avoid missing sales.

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Merchandising acts as a silent sales man.  So if there are no sales staff around, the merchandise explains about the features and benefits of the product.

Retail merchandising staff make sure that the products looks clean, it is in the right place and the correct sales tickets are on the correct products.

They may also put out promotional material such as leaflets, stands and shelf wobblers to draw attention.

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Today I have met with Katrina from PushOn Online Marketing to talk about the additional changes required to the website.

We are nearly there. It must be completed within the next 2 weeks so we can start our marketing campaign. We are looking to supply more field teams to merchandise, sell or train staff on products. The key changes being made to the website will allow visitors to be introduced to our work in field marketing. We have realised we don’t shout loud enough about our activities in this area so inclusion on the website will have a positive effect on changing that.

We have also been adding information about the promotional activity in the business. This side of the business is headed up by Sean Adams and he has reluctantly had some temporary shots taken until we can get some done professionally. Here he is pretending to be sorting mail and papers rather than take the in house ‘photo shoot’ seriously!

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