Dublin is inundated of small and medium firms – the city exists literally only out of SMEs. Therefore and because of a large number of competitors, a strong and high visibility is a must-have. With Point-of-Sale Marketing, firms try to catch passers-by’s attention and arouse their interest. Qualtrics can also help you listen across dozens of social media, review, and forum channels, as well as private messages, to gain a comprehensive view of your brands and customers.

Point-of-Sales Marketing (look into https://ful.io/ to know more about it in detail) takes place in the ultimate surrounding of a firm. Everything around a firms location – advertising, floor graphics outside the firm, the house front or the attractive presentation inside the firm – count as POS Advertising. In Marketing-Mix (4Ps/ 7Ps) it is part of “Promotion”. It’s can also count as part of Outside Marketing (OOH). For more on this topic we recommend to look at this site.

Through a little case study of Dublin firms’ point-of-sale marketing (POS) of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) you will get an idea of how firms do POS marketing as well as which media they use to attract possible customers, visualization tendencies (colour, typography/ font) and what else you can mostly spot on them. Sounds good?

Especially POS-advertising tries to convince you at the moment you are passing by. It tries to catch your attention, leverage your interest in it, which leads to the thought “Hey, that sounds good. I think I will go in and treat myself with a tasty cappuccino”, which leads to the aim of the firm – your buying, consuming, increasing your brand awareness or whatever else their aim is. This formula is called AIDA and is very known in Sales, Marketing and Business in general.

Who uses mainly pavement boards?

• Retail
• Restaurants
• Cafes
• Pubs/ Bars
• Small businesses
• And more

Noticeable is that most luxury firms don’t use them, as the study has shown.

Billboards: Point-of-Sale Marketing in Dublin

Call them billboards, chalkboards or pavement boards – at the end they are outside marketing tools, they are signs in order to catch your attention and interest, create a desire which leads to buying/consuming (AIDA). The advantages of hiring SEO services in Orlando means that they’re able to expertly optimize on-page elements including page meta-titles, meta-descriptions, internal site-links, and keyword density with strategies that are proven to work over time.

The 3 top trends

• Back to the roots and therefore timber.
• Blackboards where firms can change the message.
• Mostly just text. Sometimes Drawings. The nicer the best.

So, if you want to differentiate from other providers don’t follow these trends necessarily. You don’t have to stick to only one text colour but be careful that your message is always readable, so chose colours with a high contrast to the background colour the best (like yellow). If you need help printing your promotional coffee mugs for your business or organization, Artik’s talented staff is here to help your business achieve its goals.

Visual Appearance & Material

In Dublin pavements are mostly out of wood, followed by metal.

Through the material choice of timber, blackboard frames have mostly the colour brown/wooden (41%); followed by black (23%), silver through the metal frames (14%) and green (9%). Some of them doesn’t have a frame, its merge into the actual board. Blue and golden form the tail light with 3%.

Text Style

Half of the blackboards have text on it that has been written on with chalk. Majority of the chalkboards have a white text colour (88%), the others are black or green. If they use a second colour as well it is mostly yellow, green or blue. For chalky decoration 61% doesn’t use another colour, they stick with white. If they use another colour, they prefer green or red.

The message on the two-sides pavement can be the same or a different one. Pavements, which have a chalk-written message on them tend to have different looks and messages (82%) on the both sides. Many firms use poster (31%) so that they can pin their message on the blackboard. Usually, it is the same message on both sides then (60%). 1/5 of the blackboard text has been directly printed on the board, these boards are mostly on both sides identically.

Half of the chalkboards have an extravagant font type, half keep it simple. Nearly 20% have drawings on them.

Content of the messages

Most firms put their logo on the blackboards, even though it stands right in front of the firm. Half of the firms advertise with prices. They mostly try to catch the audience`s interest through their food and drink offer (43%, 40%), often even with a special offer (28%). Regarding the drink offers, mainly firms place one`s bet on coffee (34%), Irish coffee only with 3%; followed by beer (22%), soft drinks (16%) and cocktails (13%). Even though tea and wine can also be seen on them to 7%.

21% of the firms just write a quote on it to catch the audience attention.

What some firms also do is to make an announcement like having live music events (10%); that customer can shop tax-free in their shop; some also write their phone number on it. Even less shows that they are certificated, that they offer free Wi-Fi, that they refer to their social media account or using a hashtag. Blackboards are slightly more used for advertising for a firm’s service than for a single product (16%, 5%). Seldomly you can find on it the opening hours of the firm.

Only one firm advertised with the sustainability topic of reducing the number of plastic coffee cups of bringing the own cup for a coffee to take away.

Background information to the case study

I went through the streets of Dublin City and took pictures with my smartphone of many stores and firms. The case study took place in Week Number 39 and 40, 2018. The results are not precise enough to make general claims about POS Marketing in Dublin, but they can give first ideas and provide may tendencies.

Part of this small study are 60 SMEs blackboards, what is in comparison to the estimated count of “uncountable” SMEs extremely low but at least it can give a first impression. Most of the SMEs have been restaurants and small stores.

Firms that have been part of the study
Camden Rotisserie, Happy Food, YogaHub, Barbiere (barbiere.ie), Green Nineteen, Caffé Nero, The clothing doctors (alteration & repairs), Bites & Brews Camden, Icon Health Club, Jack`s Barbers, Badger & Dodo (Boutique Coffee Roasters), Against the Grain, Café Sofia, Burritos & Blues, Paddypower, bobos, the smoked Chili, Camden Exchange, the cake café, Camden Barber, Granthams, Simon, Mulligan and Haines, Smokin Bones, the Bankers Lounge/ The Teller Room, Jewels & Gems, Nando`s, The Cedar Tree, The Old Stand, Laduree Paris, Jewel in the Crown, Spice of India, Dakota, Alfies, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Fresh Cuts, siopaella, Le petit Parisien, Nourish (Health Food Store), The Secret Book & Record Store, Ka Shing, Bauty & Nail Care, Pair, Centra,  L. Mulligan, freshii, Mykonos Taverna, Dublin Ink, and more.

Feel free to write questions and/or comments below 🙂