6 POS Marketing Strategies To Encourage Impulse Purchases For Your Retail Operation

In the competitive world of retail, encouraging impulse purchases can significantly boost your bottom line. These POS marketing strategies are a powerful tool to influence customer decisions at the checkout point, where last-minute purchases are made. 

By leveraging these techniques, retailers can enhance the shopping experience and increase sales with minimal effort.

Strategy #1: Promote sale items

Everyone loves a bargain, and this is particularly true when it comes to impulse buying. Over half of the consumers who engage in spontaneous purchasing only acquire items with reduced price tags. If they are allowed to buy the item now and pay later (BNPL), the conversion rate goes up by another 13%.

Entrepreneurs looking to leverage the power of impetuous buying have an arsenal of options at their disposal. You might, for instance, decide to incentivize the purchase by offering two for the price of one. 

Alternatively, try slashing the price by half, a sure way to appeal to the penny-pincher in everyone. 

If you can’t quite justify a half-price drop, you could make it a point to let potential buyers know just how much they are saving with your limited-time sale. The urgency this creates, combined with the bargain, just might be what it takes to draw in someone who is on the fence.

Strategy #2: Promote small products

Tempting buyers with good deals isn’t the only way to raise your profits. With the help of your POS solution, you can leverage the gold mine of customer information that already lives in its database. It is, after all, these consumers who have already demonstrated interest in your brand and a willingness to make a commitment to it by spending their money with you.

These individuals don’t necessarily need to shell out a lot of funds on big-ticket items. The key to your success is continuing to keep them engaged with your store. 

Often, one of the best ways to accomplish this goal is by providing them with small items that usually come at a low cost. Examples include but are not limited to essential goods like batteries, candy or other sweet treats, and even magazines or newspapers. 

The latter are especially appealing if they are compatible with some of the merchandise you sell.

Strategy #3: Sell add-ons

Shopping is much more than the acquisition of goods that someone needs. In fact, many people use “retail therapy” to elevate their mood. 

According to the Cleveland Clinic, taking a trip to your favorite store raises your spirits by releasing chemicals, including dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Additionally, shopping can enhance a consumer’s sense of control, provide a sensual distraction from daily life, and promote socialization and community.

As a business owner, you can make the most of a customer’s excitement by making their experience at your POS as positive and personal as you can. The tools that reside in your POS can enable you to customize almost any purchase. 

For instance, offer suggestions of compatible items such as matching clothing or peripherals for electronics. If you sell home goods, find related merchandise that can further enhance the item they are already buying.

Strategy #4: Reward loyalty

It costs anywhere from five to 25 times as much to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. Additionally, a whopping 85% of customers surveyed say that the presence of a loyalty program makes them more likely to make purchases from a particular store.

The database of customer details that is already built into your POS makes it possible for you to launch your own rewarding loyalty program with minimal effort and maximum results. In fact, companies report an average positive ROI of 4.8x. 

When you institute a Payanywhere loyalty program in conjunction with your POS solution, it’s easy to incentivize purchases by linking products directly to them. 

For example, a buyer in your loyalty program could receive a purse-sized fragrance along with a beauty purchase. This is also a great way to offload surplus or end-of-season inventory in order to make room for new or better-selling items.

Strategy #5: Focus on the right audiences

Each customer who walks into your store or clicks on your home page has their own unique story and set of preferences. It is in your best interest to learn these as your relationship with them grows and as you gather more rich data about them via your POS. In the meantime, you can leverage some known general facts about shoppers.

For one thing, you may want to give more attention to single shoppers since this demographic makes 45% more impulse buys as compared to their married counterparts. 

Additionally, Millennials are more likely to make impulse purchases. More than any other cohort, this generation tends to make impulsive buys. 

Therefore, consider catering to them with marketing campaigns that resonate with their love of spontaneity. Often, furnishing limited-time offers helps to foster a whim-based acquisition.

Meeting the needs of your Gen Z consumers involves a slightly different strategy. 52% of them preferred to interact with TikTok when doing spontaneous online shopping. 

As a savvy entrepreneur who wants to appeal to a diverse customer base, you should create and regularly update pages on all social media platforms, integrating them with your POS with links that direct shoppers to your website or allow them to buy directly from the platform itself.

Finally, gender may also make a difference. In general, males tend to gravitate toward electronics while women prefer fashion items when making impulse purchases. 

With the assistance of the database that is built into your POS, you can take a deep dive into the buying behaviors of your own customer base to determine how to appeal to various demographic groups.

Strategy #6: Create scarcity

No one wants to find out about something long after they could have taken advantage of it. In fact, it is this fear of missing out (FOMO) that drives an estimated 60% of sales growth and inspires 69% of consumers to make an impulse buy. 

To stimulate FOMO, you need to create a sense of scarcity and urgency that spurs consumers to make an impulse purchase.

One great way to generate scarcity and urgency is to let customers know that your prices are not just at an unprecedented low but are only going to be that way for a limited time. 

Another tried-and-true strategy involves only having a limited amount of inventory in stock. Informing customers that the price will rise when it is gone is a terrific incentive. 

Moreover, offering limited edition products that may become collector’s items inspires immediate purchases from people who fear that they may never again have access to one of your once-in-a-lifetime products.

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