I asked Christine how she would describe tactical marketing, and here’s what she said:

“My interpretation of tactical marketing is the planned marketing activity that companies execute.

An example was Hoover setting up the Training and merchandising team and choosing to outsource it.

Companies attending exhibitions demonstrates tactical marketing along with the provision of promotional staff in place to support achieving objectives.

Leaflet drops, advertising, merchandising, direct mail, and other marketing activities are included in tactical marketing.”

James Bell makes a nice comparison between Strategic versus tactical marketing here, and makes an important point:

“Just putting a marketing message in an appropriate medium for John Smith to hear or read is not good enough. The strategy must derive from an understanding of what’s important to John Smith. Otherwise, this tactical part of the marketing process will be much less effective, resulting in ads that under-perform.”

The Times 100 has an article that compares the two, and comes to a slightly different conclusion - that strategic marketing is the overall long term plan of where an organisation wants to be, and tactical marketing involves using the elements of the Marketing Mix to get there.

They also have a great summary of marketing techniques that should give you a better understanding of how you should plan your marketing activity to include research, strategy & tactics.

You can read more about what Christine did with the Hoover team to improve their tactical marketing activities here.

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Field merchandising can take on many forms, but predominantly merchandisers make sure stock is available and well placed on the shop floor for the consumer to see. Merchandisers can check stock levels by checking the store systems, make sure all products are placed out on the shop floor, or by going into the warehouse and unboxing products if necessary. Once the product is on the shop floor, a merchandiser will make sure that the product is placed in the best possible vantage point, make sure all POS is correctly placed and that the product is clean and tidy. So it will be the first product the customer will see when entering the store, and if the product looks good, customers are more likely to buy that product.

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Point of sale can have enormous benefits when designed correctly. If the design is poor and the thought process for designing it minimal it becomes confusing for the customer and can in fact, have the opposite effect.

Here are two examples of how it can differ. Both are designed to advise the customer on an electrical appliance but one is far superior and will inform the customer of the product more effectively.

First of all I want to raise the guidance given to staff by companies, quite rightly they ask them to talk to the customer about how a product will benefit. The benefit tells them what the feature will do for them; a feature may be limited in its ability to educate the customer by revealing its use. Despite this, some retail outlets persist in creating customer information in the form of point of sale which refers only to the feature, totally contradicting the sales training they give to staff.

Consider the picture below, POS for a camera. Unless they have previously completed their own research about the product or have a technical background, would the customer know why they should select a camera with 72 mega pixels as opposed to one with more or less?

Is ‘compatible with PRO Duo’ an important feature? Only the customers that know what ‘PRO Duo’ is would know the answer to that. What about 3x optifocal zoom and 6x digital zoom, will every prospective customer know if they need it? It leads me to ask the question ‘What’s the point’ of point of sale that doesn’t tell the customer anything. Perhaps the thought process is to encourage the customer to ask a member or staff. Easy for the confident customer to do if they can find a member of staff, but what about the unconfident customer who may feel foolish if they admit to having little knowledge about the product.

In my mind the presence of the feature indicates that the author is concluding that the reader should already know the benefit. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news – some don’t and any store displaying such POS could potentially alienate customers and lose sales.

If we compare the POS on the picture below a key feature with its benefits is displayed clearly and boldly. Straight away the customer is informed how the large 1.8” screen and easy to use interface on the MP3 video player will benefit them.
Following on key features are displayed as icons with a simple clear associated benefit.

Reading this information has given me a much greater knowledge of the product. As a customer I can make a more informed decision to buy or decide if the product is suitable or insufficient for my needs without the help of a sales person.

This is a great example of simple and effective point of sale with ‘a point’.

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