Keys to Retail Activations

While retail activations are nowhere near as glamorous as music festivals, sporting events, or trade shows, they are an important piece of the fast growing experiential marketing field. Retail events provide the opportunity for instant metrics in terms of tracking sales during the activation. In addition they substantially reduce or even eliminate one of the biggest costs that an activation incurs at a major event - the vendor fee.
Whether it be a food/beverage sampling, a new product promotion, scheduled mobile-tour stop, or a store grand opening event, the field team can greatly increase the success of the retail activation by implementing the following strategies:

• Contact the store management to see if they could share the upcoming event on their social media, send an email blast to their customers, and put up signage advertising the event.
• Plan with the store management ahead of time to make sure they can block off the best location inside or outside the store for the upcoming event.
• Send out a flyering team to distribute flyers promoting the event in the surrounding neighborhoods and shopping centers several days prior to the activation.
• For activations taking place outside of the store doors, it is important for the event team to send consumers inside the store as much as possible to generate onsite sales.
• Find an incentive for consumers to buy during the activation. This could be in the form of offering exclusive discounts during the promotion, or giving away special premiums to consumers that purchase the product/service at the event.
• Always have a backup plan for inclement weather, such as doing a modified version of the activation inside the store.