Congratulations to the family of Pastor and Mrs. Sulaimon Olanrewaju on the wedding ceremony of their daughter Darafunmi last Saturday. It is a thing of great joy to see your children grow and thrive in your lifetime. I rejoice with you wholeheartedly and I pray that God Almighty will shower your family with more blessings. Your best years are still ahead!
Today, I am yielding this column to feature a write-up that presents another dimension on visibility, a subject I treated some weeks ago here. It is written by one of my protégées, Atoyebi Oyelere, who has not even read what I wrote on the subject earlier. Atoyebi is Head, Sales Strategy, Promasidor Ltd. Enjoy.
There is something called information asymmetry.
If you just entered Lagos on a flight from London and you are hungry, you will relate better with this. There are several food sellers in Lagos, but you do not know of any and you just hope the one you choose will somehow suit your taste. Many good food sellers exist in Lagos but because you have not been to Nigeria in years, you have no particular favourite. Yet you seek something satisfying.
As the taxi takes you out of the airport and you start to contemplate on how to get this need met, some other pressing official duties came up and somehow you forgot about the hunger. While doing this, you pass by an image of a restaurant with pictures of local delicacies. The hunger pang is again triggered…
This is the power of visibility. For sales to happen on a constant basis, there must be a means by which we often inform current and prospective customers that our businesses exist to serve them.
Men by design have lots of things going through their mind and competing for their attention. It is the one that ‘seems paramount” that often gets chosen. The problem then is, how does the man arrange its priority?
A Yoruba proverb states that the person who is not at home is the one whose goat usually gives birth to one kid. The literal interpretation of this is “out of sight is out of mind”.
Do people see you when they need you? Does your presence remind them of the need for your product? Are you always in their face, not in a somewhat rude fashion but in an appealing and inviting posture of “I am here. What can I do for you?”
If you have been involved in commercial execution for a while, there are mantras you will be used to by now.
A popular one is “What is not seen is not bought”.
In selling, visibility is king. So, if you play in a crowded category (who doesn’t anyway in today’s world of retail proliferation), driving prominence across channels pose lots of execution challenges. Life does not answer to what you deserve, but what you demand.
Any organization that is interested in maximizing sustainable and profitable outlets needs a win-win proposition in visibility strategy.
In retail, visibility is one of the critical legs of any organization’s Availability, Visibility and Accessibility (AVA) drive. Product visibility is an attempt at enabling shoppers to discover, identify, and engage with brands at the retail level.
Two things are cogent in the product visibility strategy. First is where a product is located in the outlet and second is the presentation of the product to shoppers (influencing their perception of your product).
Why is visibility important?
As the saying goes, unless you are there, you cannot ask them for your own share. Visibility is a proven way to drive outlet ownership and consequently, the dominance of your brand at the retail end. It provides a good platform to engage with shoppers and make shopping more interesting for them.
When visibility strategies are built with the understanding of how shoppers shop, it encourages shoppers to interact with the solution you are offering, makes the assortment accessible to all shoppers and the category easy to understand and shop.
In addition, visibility complements the usage of your point of sales materials. The eyes will not see much without light and the light is nothing to a blind man. That is the relationship between products and point of sales materials.
The commanding shelf presence that a well-designed visibility strategy gives you is critical in the attraction of shoppers.
A few questions are critical in setting up your visibility strategy. A good understanding of your shoppers’ journey is key. How do they buy and where do they buy from? What are the pain points in your path to purchase? What challenges do they go through? How will the different touch-points integrate to present a unified positioning for your brands? What kind of customer experience do you want shoppers to have of your brand?
Never forget to always strive to create experiences via the solution that you offer.
I close this with a popular story I once heard in a business school.
A popular chewing gum company was having dwindling sales and couldn’t pinpoint what the problem was. It took some research to find out that it was the advent of a popular social media site that affected them. How?
Chewing gums by their nature fall into an impulsive category. You don’t plan most times on going to buy gum. You only remember to buy when you have some change from your transactions or when you see them on your exit from a store, on your way to board a flight or when you are stuck in the traffic.
So, people bought more of these chewing gum at the airport but since a popular social media site became the order of the day, people now became busy with the phone and no longer pay attention to the displays that compel impulsive buying at the airport.
What did the company do differently? Your guess is as good as mine. They took their visibility drive to the social media site.
Zacchaeus was visible, even though it was an attempt to differentiate himself. He came to the mind of Jesus because Jesus could see him. Can your customers see your product and the value you offer?
It is not about having the best product. It is about being the best product that they can see. That is what makes all the difference.
Angela Ahrendts, former Senior Vice President of Apple Inc. once said “The thing is, I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. I want to be welcomed.”
That is the power of visibility!
That is how to create experience.
That is how to always be the first to be thought of, when the need arises for a solution or product as the case might be.