Point Of Sale Advertising Is 36% Less Effective Than It Could Be

How I loathe those awful, cheesy pages promoting the "secrets" of point of sale advertising. They usually offer nothing more than common knowledge with a bonus picture of a slick, 1980?s suited guy grinning at you.

However, this page will try to inform you about exactly that: a ?secret? market of 210,000 shoppers every 2 weeks (that?s 34,000 more shoppers more than Tesco?s) that most point of sale advertisers completely overlook.

I am talking about Motorway Service stations. 1 of these stations attracts 22 times the footfall of high street branded convenience stores. The stations have all your familiar shops: Boots, WH Smith, M&S Food, Burger King, The Body shop, in short: practically every shop you can find in your local shopping centre.

The average spend at CTN?s for every visit at a Motorway service station is ?5 compared to ?3.06 a head at conveniences stores. The logic is simple: if the average person spends ?1.94 more at a service station, and they attract 22 times the footfall, your ad at a service station is 22 x ? 1.94 (=?42.68) more worth than in any non-motorway convenience store, which translates in a 36% higher effectiveness rate in generating ROI for your advert.

Advertising in 131 Motorway service stations gives you the added bonus of launching a nationwide advertising campaign with excellent geographical distribution covering major arterial routes between all major areas.

Research conducted by Mintel clearly showed that motorway stations attract 27.3 million visits every two weeks, a number that will only grow in the future. Already there are 500,000 more cars on the road since 1999, and motorway stations carry 1/3rd of the national car traffic (despite representing less than 5% of the UK?s road system.) 75% of drivers on long motorway journeys stop for a break at one of the stations and 15,000 people a day purchase an average of ?5 in snacks for themselves and their families. Amongst the most popular snacks are crisps, a drink, chocolate, sweets, and sandwiches, pies or pasties. It is true in general that there is an overall decrease of chocolate and sweet snack purchases due to raised standards of health awareness. But not so for motorway stations: there the chocolate and sweet snack products perform as strong as ever in the battle to keep blood sugar up and find a kick to fight the monotony of driving long distances.

Do me a favour, next time you organize a point of sale advertising campaign, consider trialling and testing your campaign in motorway stations. I?ll bet you you?ll see your revenue rocket. You can send me a thank you email afterwards at llammens@admedia.co.uk

Find out more about Lorenz's point of sale initiatives in the UK.