How One Retailer Cut Waste, Reduced Marketing Costs - GSP

In today’s competitive retail environment, marketing teams are facing pressure to reduce costs and improve return on investments. However, companies aren’t sure where to cut, so they end up reducing their marketing activity instead.

A startling fact: Up to 50% of in-store marketing is wasted. According to the “Promotion Commotion” study by the CMO Council’s Marketing Supply Chain Institute, “Marketing is investing billions in the production of POP displays, sales collateral, brochures and in-store materials.” Taking into account the many different store formats each retailer has, they find “there is little regard for the actual targets, locations and resources required to turn these displays into demand creation assets.” The study also goes on to assert, “[C]ustomization and optimization of marketing… would maximize the potential for impact while also eliminating waste and over-spending.”

Improving efficiency, especially in your print marketing budget, starts with reducing waste.

Here are some actionable strategies that your company can use to make a significant dent while still realizing your marketing program’s highest potential:

• Eliminate spreadsheets. There’s an old saying about a man with two watches – he’s never really quite sure what time it is. The same can be said for spreadsheets. How many times have you done a ‘save as’ because someone else wanted the file? (So much for sharing information.) How many copies are actually floating around the department? A spreadsheet has serious drawbacks if you’re using it for data storage. It provides little or no validation of its accuracy or protection from user error, which is easy to do when you’re retyping notes from store visits.
• There’s gold in your store profiles. Each store’s unique attributes – square footage, number of windows, sign ordinances, asset inventory, etc. – translates into data that can be leveraged to improve every aspect of your marketing. AccuStore,^® GSP’s proprietary store intelligence software, uses this information to determine your precise, store-specific fulfillment needs. With it, you can customize and manage your entire print campaign, from ordering to production to install. You create the criteria, AccuStore helps you automate distribution, and you order only the quantity you need for each store, nothing more. (Voilá! No more waste from overage.)
• Get store-specific. You know that not every store is the same. That’s why a one-size-fits-all marketing solution not only generates waste but also causes confusion at the stores. The POPAI 2015 Compliance Initiative Study poll of CPGs found that, on average, retail display compliance is approximately 40%. By creating store-specific kits, you help your stores significantly improve execution. There’s no more guessing about whether a page in the planogram applies to their location. Each store receives exactly what it needs for a promotion and nothing more. Also, with this kind of localization, you can customize your collateral to better reach your target market. Change prices in POP to allow for local tax differences. Match competitor pricing. Test new products. The sky’s the limit.
• How an 8,000-store chain reduced its spend: The marketing team of a large drug store chain with 8,000 locations reached out to AccuStore for help reducing waste. After going through several mergers and acquisitions, they had a variety of store formats and sizes. The team knew they were wasting money trying to roll out the same marketing material to all of their stores, but they didn’t have accurate information to make better decisions. After a thorough survey, their customized, cloud-based AccuStore store intelligence platform was built with accurate store profiles. Now, they understand what assets they have. They can easily access information about any store. And, they have improved store-level execution by simplifying store distributions. The retailer believes it has achieved savings of 20% by eliminating waste it uncovered by using AccuStore.
• Free audit. Where is the waste in your marketing budget? We’re confident that we can help you eliminate waste and boost your ROI. Let us give you a free audit to help you make the most of your marketing spend.

Contact GSP today to learn more.