Whether you are shopping online or buying products from a brick-and-mortar store, merchandising plays a huge role in your enjoyment of the process. Go onto a website or walk into a store that has a chaotic organisation to it, and you will likely leave ASAP. If things are hard to find or filter, or there seems to be no order to where items are and what sections cover what, you can lose yourself. As a small business owner, you likely already understand the importance of merchandising your business.
Whether you are new to the world of business or you have been in the same industry for years, you are a consumer yourself. You know what it is like when you walk into a store and it feels like it has been organised in the dark. Or, you use a website, and it lacks proper features for search filtering, product organisation, and more. If you are having a hard time making the most of merchandising, then read on. We will break down the fundamentals you need to know to make merchandising easier!
What Is Merchandising?
It does not matter whether you run an account on an eCommerce platform like Etsy or own a local store; merchandising matters. Merchandising plays a critical role in displaying products, arranging goods into clear categories, and making sure that products can be easily found by those looking to buy that particular kind of product. Without the correct merchandising, you make it easy for your business to struggle to make the intended impact on your audience.
Why Does Merchandising Matter?
Without proper merchandising, you run the risk of losing potential customers before they even think about making a purchase. If someone finds your business, they have done so because they need a solution they think you can provide. Now, you might very well have the miracle solution to the issue(s) they face. Yet, if the person cannot find the product/service due to poor merchandising, they leave.
Instead, they go to your likely rival and try their service instead. Merchandising plays a critical role in attracting people to your business so they look around for the solution(s) they need. With the right quality in your merchandising, too, you also make it easier to upsell additional products and show the variety for sale in your store. From boosting revenue to building trust and showing the depth of your options, merchandising plays a critical role in any business looking to succeed commercially.
What Matters Most When Merchandising? The ‘Non-Negotiables’
While merchandising changes from business to business, there are some fundamentals that matter in every business. To help you make the most of your merchandising plans, here are some of what we consider the essential, non-negotiable features that will make or break your merchandising.
- Never Merchandise Without Knowing Your Audience(s)
The first and most important place to start for any merchandising campaign is a clear indication of who is being targeted. There is no one merchandising strategy to rule them all – this isn’t Middle Earth – but every good merchandising plan starts with a clear rundown of questions like:
- Who is our primary target? Do we have a set age target, for example?
- Do they work within a certain profession? Do our products help them?
- How much money do they earn? What kind of rates can we justify?
- What kind of hobbies do people in our target market tend to enjoy?
- Where do their problems come from? How can we offer solutions?
- Do our products solve their problems? If so, how do we help them see?
- How do we get our most suitable products front and centre in merchandising?
Of course, not every business just has one target market; you might be suited to more than one audience. If so, great – but it is better to try and target a maximum of, say, five demographic types. Going over this means your message becomes too universal and, at times, generic. It is better to speak clearly to someone than say nothing to everyone!
- Make Your Merchandising Appeal to Your Audience(s)
Any successful merchandising that you carry out comes with the requirement that it feels like a natural fit to the intended audience. For example, how do the visuals of your business appeal to the kind of people you want to help? Think about that closely. Do some research into the kind of colours that speak to the problems you resolve. For example, if your business has a main focus on making money easier to manage for distressed customers, greens make sense due to the association with money.
Think about how your colour schemes and typography stand out to your intended audience. Also, make sure that things like imagery used on your website and in-store show the results of your work. If your business sells products that make learning musical instruments easier, for example, you want plenty of imagery showing people in their element rocking out and playing their instruments easily.
The appeal of your merchandising goes beyond just the visuals, however. The language you use and the terminology you apply matters. If you are targeting parents or kids, then you want to use easy-to-grasp language that speaks to the audience correctly. You want to find a consistent messaging and tone, as well as style of language, that is easy for your staff to use in their communications, too. Make sure that your product descriptions, social media marketing campaigns, newsletters, and signage all feel like they represent the same business. This makes creating a brand identity much easier.
Make sure that the core values of your business remain front and centre of everything you do, too. If your business is in an industry that is typically quite cut-and-thrust in regard to environmental care, for example, but you go against the grain and are more sustainably-minded, make that clear in your merchandising and marketing. Align your business personality to the kind of businesses your ideal clients shop with – companies that feel like they represent them – and you will make rapid progress.
- Make Products Jump Off The Stand/Website
The goal of your merchandising is to draw attention to products that solve solutions as well as make potential shoppers go ‘ooh!’ when they find related products on sale. To do this, you need to come up with visual marketing plans that make your products stand out in a crowded field. Drawing attention to new products, best-sellers, monthly deals, etc., should be done using extensive visual merchandising.
The more you can do to draw the focus of someone to your product(s), the better. With the right visual cues, you can draw attention to your merchandise much more easily. You can point people to what they initially came for, such as your primary products, as well as new products that they might not know about but, after finding them in your store, know they need!
In brick-and-mortar stores, things like window dressing and décor within the store matter a great deal to merchandising. Not only can these blend in with the rest of your business branding, but they ‘pop’ just enough to draw the attention of people who might be looking for the solutions you have on sale. Make sure that this aligns with your brand values, too; if you are all about sustainability, make it clear you are using eco-friendly, recyclable products as part of your marketing push.
Even online, you can use high-end imagery and stylish combinations of audio and visual cues to help bring attention to top products, best-sellers, special deals, and new arrivals. Try and direct as many eyes as you can to this part of your business/website, getting people to ‘follow the trail’ to your latest arrivals or your best-selling problem solvers. You know what your audience needs, so how do you get them to go there?
Try to keep things at a clear eye level, too, whether on-screen or in public. If possible, also get those high-ROI, low-cost, must-have goodies and extras close to the checkouts, both in-store and online. These can encourage impulse buys, especially if the person found what they were looking for quickly enough.
Most importantly, though, simplicity is key. Avoid trying to overwhelm people with information overload or by having too many products in one area. This makes things look like a cluttered jumble sale as opposed to a sleek, targeted marketing operation. Make sure the focus is on the products as opposed to the flashy designs or the extensive typography used in the design.
Create seasonal marketing, too, that both asks questions about the problems people face in a certain time of year as well as what your products/services do to resolve these issues quickly.
- Show Your Philanthropic Side
When merchandising, make sure you show your business has a motive other than ‘help us make a profit this year’ – you need to show your altruistic side. Companies that are clear about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) have a much better chance of landing sales and then repeat sales from those who buy from them. So, think about including within your merchandising messages like:
- X% of your purchase goes towards [cause your key demographic cares about]!
- We support local charitable bodies such as W, X, and Y through Z means!
- Support local charities by choosing which nonprofit your X% goes towards
You can also go down a more partnership-driven route and bring in branded products and gifts from the charitable bodies you work with. For example, a nonprofit might have branded merchandise they sell; you could have some of this in-store, perhaps even giving away a valuable freebie for every $X spent by the customer. You could even make a declaration that your business will donate X amount of your product/service for every Y amount bought, showing your ethical, caring side.
Your merchandising should make clear what your business does outside of offering goods/services that help solve a problem. That is good enough, of course, but if your business has a more community-focused side, then there is absolutely no harm in showing that off. Shoppers tend to feel better about supporting companies that, in turn, support their communities. If your business does this, make it clear in your merchandising so you can draw more potential sales from people who care about this.
- Make Merchandising More Engaging
When you go to a show, such as a pantomime or a comedy act, the show goes better when the audience feels involved, right? Well, your merchandising should have a similar approach taken. To make this possible, try and consider how you can make your merchandising more interactive and engaging to the mind. There is power in merchandising that makes people interact with touch, sight, sound, and even taste and smell!
Have you got some awesome new foods or drinks on sale? Have some in-store ready for people to taste-test. Are you selling new fragrances? Be sure to have tester bottles out there with little smell cards people can use to see for themselves what they are buying. You might even find success from putting on little in-house workshops – or online video tutorials if you are mostly based online – showing people how they can use your products/services to their advantage moving forward.
Free samples and interactive tutorials/workshops really help to draw attention to your products. Get your most charismatic staff to operate these little booths, too, and they are much more likely to be a success. You could even include free samples as part of online orders as a surprise gift; you never know, that might make someone come back to buy the product they just surprise-sampled!
You might even wish to invest in interactive support, such as self-service in-store FAQs and, if you feel comfortable, AI chatbots that can answer questions and provide the ideal products to the person asking for help. These obviously cost significantly, but if your business seems to suffer from lost sales due to shoppers not knowing what they need, this could be an investment that feels worthwhile.
Always make sure that customers feel like their voices are being heard, too. Regular feedback requests and similar can all make a big difference to making sure customers feel part of the experience. You might even wish to create rewards for customers who offer feedback or refer your business to someone else; if you do this, make sure it is marketed amply on your merchandising.
With the above, we hope you feel a bit more comfortable about how to merchandise your business. There is no universal solution, but the above ‘non-negotiables’ should make it easier to design something that feels genuinely appealing to your target audience. A little thought and preparation can go a long way to building merchandising that does the job you need!