The Way The “In-Store Marketing” Business Works And Why It's Costing You Millions

The thinking that P.O.P companies are a commodity to be bid out job by job has hidden costs that you pay for even though you gave the job to the lowest bidder.

Twenty to Forty percent of the costs of each display you buy are covering the cost of someone else's program that did not sell. That's right!! Your suppliers need to recoup their overhead. Fifty to Seventy five percent of the programs that are bid on never make it into production or are lost to the competition.

Sales forces and the creative departments are expensive to maintain. The majority of their efforts with cold calls and free designs are not turned into profitable sales. The sales that sell need to pay for those that don't.

This is the result of an industry that considered itself a vendor of displays. A biddable commodity, not as a long term partner with its clients to supply in-store marketing.

Some years ago when advertising agencies began buying P.O.P. Companies, it seemed like a logical marriage. The agencies could now be a one stop shopping center, servicing their clients with media advertising, promotion, and displays. Unfortunately the divorce came because the two cultures could not meld. Agencies consider clients as long term contractual partners. P.O.P. companies look for immediate results in metal, plastics and paperboard. Neither party could figure out in this new relationship how to bill clients. Hourly billing by P.O.P. companies was unworkable as clients looked on them as producers of biddable commodities and agencies were certainly not going to sell their efforts job by job.

Today the marketplace is changing, and along with this change many P.O.P companies are no longer manufacturers of displays. They are now in-store marketers and consolidators of manufacturing.

It made sense in yesterday's marketplace to have all production under one roof. Labor was not expensive, technology was limited and the computer didn't exist. Today no company can afford this luxury. It makes more economical sense to use outside partners who specialize in the various components that make up a display, and then act as a consolidator of the final product. Concentrating on marketing, creative and engineering provides more value to the client then hammering nails.

DNI Marketing Group is one of those companies that has changed we no longer consider ourselves as a vendor of displays. We are an In-store marketing company and a consolidator of manufacturing. As a result of this change we are looking for clients who believe as we do that long term partnerships are more beneficial than the biddable short term job by job relationships.