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Do You Charge Your Customers For POS or POP Materials and Displays?

Jim MillerJim Miller subscriber Posts: 3 Member

I make and sell Vino Slush, a wine slushie mix to wineries all across the country. I am just now starting to produce posters of my product and counter top displays. The posters cost about $6.00 each and shipping for them is $6.50. Counter top displays will cost about $20.00 each and shipping (with a special box) will cost about $17.00.

Do I send these materials out to all of my customers at my own expense? Or do I give them the materials for free, but charge them only for the shipping? Another idea is to deduct the cost of the materials and/or the shipping when they order a certain number of cases of product.

Sending these materials to over 150 customers at no charge is extremely expensive. How do other companies handle this situation? I know the wineries will sell more wine slushies and my take home pouches by using the posters and displays, and therefore I will make more sales, but still. It's very expensive.

I'm also concerned that even if they request these materials at no charge, there is no guarantee that the will actually use them. If they are free they might order them just for a lark. I learned this the hard way.

Please share your thoughts and ideas with me. Thanks.

Comments

  • MikeGMikeG subscriber Posts: 11 Bronze Level Member

    Hi Jim,

    Your product sounds great! I wish i could have some right now with this heat going on. From what i have seen most marketing materials are provided by the owner of the product free of charge. Its promoting your product so you should look at it as a marketing investment.

    if the company you give the promotional materials to continually looses or ruins it than maybe you would want to charge them. As trying to keep cost down maybe you give the wineries in better locations with more foot traffic the more expensive marketing materials and the other ones the poster only.

    Have you figured out the number of what it would cost for all the promotional materials and the and how much a particular vendor would need to sell of your product to cover the costs.

    As for verifying if they are using them or not its hard to do without having an employee or yourself visit the locations and see if they are properly displayed. The only thing that might ease you worries is running some kind of social media promotion asking each location to take photos of the marketing materials setup and post it to social media but you would need to offer them some incentive to do this.

    Also not sure where you are getting your marketing materials produced but if you haven't already look into getting it done oversees if you do a bunch a time. This might help bring some of the cost down.


    I hope this was helpful


    Mike Gandy

    Localdudesmarketing.com

  • Jim MillerJim Miller subscriber Posts: 3 Member

    Thank you so much, Mike. By the time I got this response from you I had already decided to offer the poster free of charge including shipping for the reasons you mention. So I have contacted 13 of my customers who order my pouches and made them the free offer. So far none of them have ordered a free poster! OMG! Not a good sign. I can't explain why. I'm going to send out emails to my remaining customers and see the response. I hope I haven't blundered. I don't know why all customers would not want the poster to enhance their sales.

  • Ryan O'BlenessRyan O'Bleness administrator Posts: 1,137 Site Admin
    edited July 2019

    Hello, Jim.

    I think Mike G. made some good points. I don't think it was a mistake to offer the posters for free -- if you are offering them for free and have not gotten the response you were looking for, imagine the reaction from customers if you tried to charge them.

    I would follow up with them, as you mentioned you may do, and let them know the benefits of receiving the poster at no charge to them: increase sales, free promotion of a product they sell, a visual aid that will entice customers to purchase the slush, etc. If you still get no response then it's their loss.

    Ryan O'Bleness
    Community Manager
    StartupNation, LLC
  • Jim MillerJim Miller subscriber Posts: 3 Member

    I made all those points in my initial offer, but I'm going to follow up with them and find out why they weren't responding.

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