Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities ...

Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

by Rick Sales

As a business major in a predominantly engineering-focused college, I was occasionally "ribbed" by my classmates about the less rigorous nature (in their opinion) of some of the subject matter I was studying. Marketing was a favorite topic of ridicule, commonly referred to as an "inexact science". While is true that marketing can be inexact, marketing is nevertheless a science - and it does work!

As a science, you can apply the "rules" of marketing to a product or service to increase its consumer appeal in different demographic and target audiences. You can group your audience using any criteria that gives you a commonly addressable message. In other words, you can target consumers with similar likes or dislikes so that you can communicate with them as a group. "Targeting" (one of these "inexact" rules) allows you to share a message that you believe will resonate with a large percentage of people in your target audience.

You can get pretty fancy about how you group and target your different audiences. However, today we are going to keep things simple. Because we are talking about In-Store Digital Signage technology, we are going to define the group of consumers that currently visit your store as the "targeted audience". My goal is to share ways in which you can create Digital Signage Advertising that will help you influence the buying behavior of the consumers in your stores so you can Up-Sell and Cross-Sell more and so that these consumers will Revisit your stores more often. Before we discuss how to accomplish this, let's quickly define these three terms.

Upselling

According to Wikipedia, "Upselling is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. While it usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, it can be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered."

Specific to Convenience Stores and Convenience Foodservice establishments, Up-Selling is influencing your consumer so that they buy more items, or spend more money than originally planned during a given visit to your store. Commonly referred to as "Increasing the Register Ring", examples of Upsell techniques include Meal Combos, "2 for" or "3 for" offers and of course, the much vilified Supersize. Upselling also includes reminding consumers of items that they may need, that are conveniently available in your store.

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Abierto Networks White Paper: Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

Cross-Selling

Unlike Upselling, Cross-Selling is enticing the consumer to engage in a totally different purchase. defines Cross-Selling as "encouraging a customer who buys a product (gasoline, for example) to buy a related or complementary product (engine oil, for example)". Again specific to our industry, Cross-Selling is influencing a consumer to buy different product or service from you than what they would normally purchase, and unlike Up-Selling, it is not tied to any single one visit to your store. Good examples of Cross-Selling is getting Breakfast-only customers to also try your Lunch menu items, and encouraging Convenience Item consumers to try your Foodservice.

Revisits

The concept of increasing Revisits is pretty straightforward. Simply put, increasing Revisits means getting consumers to visit your store more often. Like Cross-Selling, the concept of increasing Revisits requires that you modify your consumers' buying behavior. The challenge, however, is that your goal is to more permanently modify this behavior so that you become your consumers' first and most common destination for certain purchases. While some loyalty marketing strategies attempt to "buy" this Revisit behavior, ultimately many factors influence a consumer's decision to revisit your store, including location, cleanliness, staff and quality.

Advertising Techniques Used to Influence Consumer's Buying Behavior

There are three types of advertising used to influence consumer buying behavior that I believe are most effective in Convenience & Foodservice Retail. They are:

? Suggestive Selling ? Awareness Advertising ? Brand Messaging

Suggestive Selling is a technique where you present an offer with a "call to action" that suggests to the consumer that he or she must act now. Most promotional advertising in our industry falls into this category. Ads that display a special price this week, a new special pizza available today or a product available "while supplies last" are great examples of suggestive selling ads. Effective suggestive selling ads make it clear to consumers that they must act now or risk missing out on whatever amazing deal or product you are advertising. Used correctly, Suggestive Selling techniques are very powerful for creating upsell opportunities.

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Abierto Networks White Paper: Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

Awareness Advertising is a way of exposing your consumers to the choices available to them when shopping your store or restaurant. Typical Awareness Advertising does not include a call to action because its goal is to increase the number of items and services consumers are willing to consider purchasing from a given retailer today, or at any time in the future. Typical Awareness Advertisements in our industry include ads that introduce consumers to your Burger or Sandwich line-up, Smoothie and Barista-like offerings, and even the fact that you have a well-stocked and cold Beer Cave. Awareness advertising is most effective for creating Cross-Selling and Revisit opportunities.

Brand Messaging is perhaps the most challenging but most magical and effective advertising type there is. I consider it "magical" because good Brand Messaging is powerful but subtle, and in many cases not really perceived as advertising by the consumer. Effective Brand Messaging strives to establish an emotional bond with the consumer, and delivers underlying messages that speak to the quality of your establishment, your values as a retailer, and ultimately, your commitment to the consumer and his or her needs. Brand Messaging combines Logos, Tag Lines, Color Schemes, Unique Product Offerings, Local Color and Company Culture to make consumers become fans and to incorporate your brand in their definition of who they are as a consumer. Dunkin Donuts, Wawa, Sheetz and Starbucks offer many good examples of effective Brand Messaging.

All of these advertising techniques have been traditionally delivered by print media using all sorts of vehicles like posters, door decals, end caps, menus and pump toppers. These mediums are expensive and much less effective than their digital counterparts. Why? Consider this...

? Come in and stay a while? ? A study performed by Override in 2007 confirmed what many of us in the Convenience Store industry already knew ? the average consumer visit to your store lasts about 6 minutes. However, Override went further into breaking down the data, and learned that the consumer unconsciously allocated the last 2 to 3 minutes to pay for purchases, and once the consumer entered that mode, most suggestive advertising was ignored. This means that on average, we have about 3 to 4 minutes to influence consumer buying behavior! This is just not a lot of time...

? Fading into the clutter ? Today's retail environments are full of products, packaging, labels, posters, stickers, and other graphics calling out to your brain for attention. Because you can't possibly process every single message presented to you in the 3 to 4 minutes you have allocated for this store visit, your brain prioritizes all of these inputs and assesses, at a high level, what is

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Abierto Networks White Paper: Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

important or interesting to you. Everything that is not important, non-essential and not interesting gets discarded! Consumer recall of printed POP advertising messages is appallingly low (in the single digits!), as these print ads simply become part of your store's wallpaper! ? "Excuse me, but I'm paying attention to my iPhone" ? Consumers today are highly distracted, and it takes more than a poster to get them to look away from their phones and learn about your offers and your brand. In-store printed media simply can't compete with the richness and personalization of information on consumers' phones. ? "It's time to change the posters, again?" ? Merchandising the store with new POP advertising is an art that takes time but must be done in a timely fashion. Nothing irritates a consumer more than to find out at the cash register that the promotion advertised for a product they've selected ended, yesterday! Further, the process of changing these ads disrupts the store and takes time, which could be used to make sure consumers have a great shopping experience in your store. Finally, merchandising managers can get pretty cranky when they find out that certain collateral has not been placed in the store because the staff was just too busy to do it.

Why Use Digital Signage?

Print media is less effective and more expensive than Digital Signage as an advertising medium. Why is Digital Signage different and more effective at leveraging the powerful advertising techniques discussed above? Well, here are a few key reasons why:

? The Brain Prioritizes Motion ? Cognitive Scientists tell us that the brain assigns a higher priority to Motion than to static images. Even the simple motion of switching static images on a Digital Signage playlist will attract the brain and get consumers to look at the monitor. When you add animations like steam rising from coffee or bubbles in a cup of soda, the brain will process these images with higher priority to determine their importance. Bottom line is that, in a store crowded with many visual cues, consumers notice motion First!

? Visual is the New Language ? According to several research studies, 50% to 70% percent of purchase decisions are made in the store. With three to four minutes to influence the buying decision, who has time to look at every poster, pump topper and end-cap? A Digital Signage playlist can efficiently deliver several suggestive selling, awareness advertising and branding messages to a consumer in a short amount of time, and in a format that is highly interesting and efficient for the brain to process. In fact, the emergence of Millennials as a meaningful consumer demographic (over 30% of the U.S. population) is forcing advertisers to embrace this concept of "Visual" as the new language. Because Millennials grew up with many social media "connections", they are used to processing lots of information concurrently, and are usually "skimmers" instead of "diggers" of information. With Digital Signage, it only takes 7 seconds to convince a skimmer to pay attention to your "2 Hot Dogs and a Fountain Drink for $1.99" combo and decide that it is exactly what they want for lunch!

? The Playlist is "Edutainment" ? A three-minute Digital Signage playlist can deliver 18 to 25 individual messages to a consumer in a very engaging and entertaining way. When you combine

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Abierto Networks White Paper: Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

suggestive selling, awareness and branding messages, most consumers are compelled to pay attention. For example, a retailers with touchscreen ordering systems may provide information on how to place an order, followed by information about today's lunch special, followed by a loyalty program message, followed by their line-up of mouth-watering burgers in about 30 seconds! Printed media simply can't compete. ? In-Store Digital Signage is the Anchor to your Omni-Channel Strategy ? Today, most retailers have a concurrent "presence" in several electronic media channels that typically includes a mobile phone app, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a consumer-facing web site. Collectively, these "channels" deliver a unified message stream about your Brand, and what products and services are available at your store. When consumers arrive at the store, Digital Signage confirms the messages they've received and reminds them of those they may have forgotten. In essence, the Digital Signage playlist makes the store more "familiar" to the consumer, and makes the shopping experience more predictable thus enabling more revisits and cross-selling opportunities. ? Efficiency and Centralized Control ? Enterprise-level Digital Signage Systems give you great flexibility and control over your in-store messaging efforts. Current Digital Signage technology allows you to schedule ads and messages for distribution weeks and months in advance of when these messages need to play. This flexibility dramatically changes your content creation requirements and allows you to better manage your advertising design efforts. Day-parting capabilities allow you to advertise breakfast items during breakfast hours, lunch items during lunch hours, snacks, milk and beer during evening commute hours, maximizing the consumers' exposure to the messages and allowing you to target groups who are highly likely to purchase those items. Your fresh-baked cookies vendor failed to deliver enough holiday cookies to 20% of your stores? No problem, with centralized content management you can pull an ad remotely and replace it with another at as many stores as you need to. Regional specialties, local events, and even pricing differences can be incorporated in your content distribution strategy, eliminating secondary tasks and special visits to stores. Someone made a typo in an ad and no one caught it? (that never happens...), with Digital Signage it takes but a minute or two to remotely correct this.

The Take Away

In a world that is increasingly filled with information and messages competing for our attention,

engaging consumers effectively about their purchase decisions at the point of purchase is a must.

Digital Signage technology can help you get a better return for your advertising dollar, and increase your

sales of highly profitable products like coffee and foodservice items. Animated digital ads with

compelling visuals suggesting the great values available in your store right now can increase your

register rings 5% to 15% (and you can measure this!). Compelling awareness messages in your digital

screens can get consumers to return to your store to try new products and help you grow your breakfast

or lunch business. The "one-to-many" nature of Digital Signage content distribution will give you cost

effective and centralized control of advertising messages, as well as time of day, day of the week and/or

geographic region localization and customization of messaging. Printing mistakes and product out-of

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Abierto Networks White Paper: Increasing Up-Sell, Cross-Sell & Revisit Opportunities with In-Store Digital Signage

stock situations will no longer threaten to defeat your consumer messaging goals, as most systems can allow you to react instantly to these situations. Finally, centralized, scheduled messaging will give your store staff more time to perform their most important job ? to help consumers have a great shopping experience!

Rick Sales is President of Abierto Networks and has been part of the Convenience Store and Convenience Foodservice industries for over 20 years. In addition to being an industry supporter and advocate, Rick spends much of his time with retailers and other industry participants trying to understand current issues and challenges in order to find technology-centric ways of addressing them.

About Abierto Networks Abierto Networks is a leading Digital Engagement Solutions provider focused on the Convenience Store and Convenience Foodservice Retail industries. Our Digital Marketing solutions integrate in-store Digital Signage, Digital Menu, Engagement Kiosks, Mobile Coupons and Mobile Engagement technologies to help retailers increase sales by maximizing consumer upsell, cross-sell and revisit opportunities. To learn more, please visit us at ab-net.us

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