Typically, communicating with customers ends with the ad. However, you should complete that process in-store by directly, physically relating the advertised product to the customer. It doesn’t cost much to do this well, either.

Automotive parts retailers should repeat their advertising messages in-store, reinforcing the customer’s desire to shop there for the right product at the right price, helping the customer find what he or she wants.

No need for a blue light special announcement

I’m not talking about screaming in-store audio, although correct in-store audio programming works. I’m talking about in-store use of print ads and flyers, a central location where customers can find in-store help, a thoughtful, careful use of shelf-talkers, and secondary perhaps tertiary, in-store placement of on-ad merchandise with pull-through copies of ads and flyers.

This pull-through program will not break your budget, but it may break your sales records. For less than $2,000 total investment, you can take your computer, add a scanner and a graphics software program, buy some art board and glue, and make your own in-store ads. The scanner needn’t be real powerful [600 dots per inch (dpi) is all you need]. A graphics program like Adobe Photoshop® is neither expensive nor brain-taxing. It can be up and running within an hour.

You scan your ad (which you own, so this is not stealing), doctor it up with a little color if it originally ran in black and white, and print it out through a color or laser printer. Adding color makes ad messages more attractive. Research shows that the consistent shape and position of images within an ad makes translation from black and white to color (and vice versa) almost transparent to readers. People will recognize your message.

Take the printed ad, mount it on a one-ply illustrator board from your local artist supply store (so it won’t wrinkle), and then frame it in a nice simple inexpensive reusable plastic frame.

You now have another ad, in an exclusive non-competing messages environment — your store where your customer is shopping. Place it where customers enter the store, to reinforce the reasons why they’re there.

You may also use that same scanned ad at a central gondola dedicated to advertised specials. This could be near your checkout counter. The downside to that placement is that your customers may not shop through the store.

The upside for additional sales may be the on-ad gondola’s placement elsewhere. You can place it at the store’s far corner if you use ceiling and on-floor signage to help draw your customers through the store to where the gondola is located.

‘Least’ budget, but not cheap looking You can also preprint the illustrator board with a custom frame for each of your standard ad sizes, so you have a template upon which to mount the scanned ads. Yes, you can skip the scanning, printing, mounting, and framing, and use a tearsheet of your ad from the paper or magazine or flyer. But a “tearsheet” is well named: it looks torn, cheap, tacky, hurried, and without care. Using tearsheets does take a little effort, but, as the young folks say, it doesn’t respect the customer. A bit more effort makes all the difference.

In-Store Merchandising & Marketing Tip of the Month Enlist Your Store Associates Help your store associates feel as if they’re an important part of your team. Ask them to greet customers, to offer assistance finding a specific product, to learn whether the customer’s visit is a result of an ad or commercial (and which one). Have your associates keep a tally for you. It’s a great way to involve associates as partners, and to help your customers.

Forget the clutter myth

There’s this bad rap about shelf-talkers. It’s said that they clutter stores. Wrong! That is an absolute unproven myth. It is not documented that shelf-talkers have offended a single customer. It is documented that shelf-talkers will increase sales. This in-store stimulus is a positive, not a negative, in-store technique.

While shelf-talkers don’t force customers to buy, they present an optional action for shoppers. They can learn more, they can recall the original ad message, they can choose to buy. This is not bad.

Like the on-ad gondolas, shelf-talkers help those customers who may not know your store well and may complain, “I can’t find something you advertised.” Shelf-talkers are a positive tactic, empowering customers to be in control of their shopping process from beginning to end. Customers don’t come into a store seeking an advertised product to have a conversation. They don’t want to talk — they want to buy.

Can we talk timing?

It goes without saying, but outside-in should be coordinated with the ad program. When the ad or flyer or commercial breaks, the in-store messages must be in place at the same time. Not to do so is not as bad as the need for a raincheck merchandise voucher. However, bad timing on outside-in does miss the opportunity for reinforcing your ad investment.

One more outside-in tip: Let your store associates know your whole outside-in plan. The ad program, the in-store placement of the scanned ads, a central on-ad gondola if you have one, your shelf-talker program, the secondary and tertiary placement of products on ad, every piece of information they need to help the customers who walk in. Not only will they know what you need them to know for sales purposes, they’ll feel as if they’re part of the team.

It makes sense to pull your advertising through to your in-store atmosphere, to bring the exact ad image into your store, to your shelf edge where product is sold.

“As seen on TV” works. The same kind of in-store messages can work for you, too. Stephen J. Alexander, president of Automotive In-Store Marketing, is a member of Aftermarket Business’ Retail Advisory Board. To reach him at his Sanibel Island, Florida headquarters, call 239-395-9203, or e-mail, salexander@autoinstore.com.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:"Reprinted with permission from Aftermarket Business, August, 1999, page84. Copyright by Advanstar Communications, Inc. Advanstar Communications, Inc. retains all rights to this material." To subscribe to Aftermarket Business, call 1-218-723-9477 or email fulfill@superfill.com.