The placement of your wine bottle plays an important role in the sales of the bottle. After years of experience and extensive study, we have collated some hacks that can help your bottle be placed at an optimal, eye-catching position.
Shelf placement is the number 1 most important thing you have to pay attention to once you get a purchase order.
Getting a sizable purchase order is great, but if your wines aren’t moving from the shelves, then the ballgame changes completely. The location and placement of a product in a store can make a significant difference in its sales.
Is your wine visible to the consumer? Is your wine in a place where consumers usually gravitate towards? Or is your wine being placed in a random corner of the store with dust gathered on it – a place where consumers’ hands don’t usually reach out to? These are some of the questions you need to ask yourself once you receive a purchase order.
Shelf placement is an important part of building the presence of your wine and getting your sales up. Let’s dive into the importance of shelf placement, and a few hacks to grab the perfect spot for your wines.
The importance of shelf placement
We’ve all heard the tale of ‘being in the right place at the right time’ haven’t we? Well, the same goes for your wines.
For example, imagine you get a purchase order from Walmart for 50 cases of Chardonnay during the summer, because a lot of people are drinking whites during that time of the year. You think you’ve hit a home run, right? Well, you have, sort of. Your Chardonnay is going to be in Walmart, but it matters where.
Consumers are going to go grab the white wines on the shelves, but imagine your Chardonnay being placed right beside all the full-bodied reds, or maybe beside wines that people don’t usually gravitate towards. No one is going to be able to see your wine, so where will the sales come from?
Now, let’s turn the tables. Imagine your Chardonnay being placed in the centre of all the white wines, with a sign that says ‘summer wines picked for you’ at the top of the shelf. Makes more sense, right? This way consumers will get attracted to it and there’s a high chance that they’ll end up picking your wine.
Is your wine ready to be placed in the top UK retail shelf? Find out.
Shelf placement hacks
1. Request the retailer if you can get an eye-level shelf to stock your wine.
If there are four rows of wine bottles on a particular shelf, you’re going to want to aim at the second row from the top, where the eye directly meets the shelf. The eye-level placement is where all the magic is.
Eye-level placement is said to be the best way to get your sales up and place your product. This is simply because consumers are more likely to pay attention to the wines that they can see directly instead of them bending down to check out something else, or tiptoeing to see what’s on the top shelf. If it’s easy for them to see, pick, and grab, then they’re surely going for it.
2. Check where your wine is placed
The second thing you want to look at is where your wine is placed on the shelf. For example, if you’re selling an Australian Shiraz which is $7.99, you would want your wine to be placed beside the number one selling sku in that category. This is because you already have that Australian wine drinker who is looking for a certain wine – and if your wine is placed beside the best selling sku, then all you have to do is to attract the consumer to that area and there are high chances of your wine being picked up.
Wine lovers are looking to try new things these days, so if a new product catches their eye in a comfortable manner where they don’t have to put in the extra effort of looking for it or picking it up, then they’re bound to give the new wine (in this case your wine) a fair chance.
3. Try a different tactic
Make sure that your allocated shelves are filled with your wine.
However, you could try a different marketing tactic by leaving one or two empty spots where the bottles are supposed to be. This will make it look like your bottles are moving and people are buying them.
Wine brand owners say that they usually leave one or two spaces to make it look like their bottles are moving – or else a lot of people can assume it’s a non-moving product. If it’s a moving product, consumers are more likely to pick it up to try it.
A little bit of a tilt in your usual marketing tactics might just work to get the consumer wondering and gravitate them towards your wine.
4. Using shelf talkers
The reason that the name of this particular merchandising strategy is called shelf talkers is that the objective of it is to talk to the consumer. Design a shelf talker, place it right near your product by understanding the mindset of your consumer. Be very simple, and explain your wine and tell your story to the consumer via that shelf talker.
This will help the consumer relate to your wine – and in turn, grab a bottle of yours.
If it’s a brand new wine, you can try to write things like ‘try me, you’re going to love it’, ‘summer wines picked just for you’. An advice wine brand owners usually give about shelf talkers is to take the casual route. Make sure your shelf talker language is very casual, and simply describe the wine how it is – in a few simple words such as rich, dark, fruity, etc.
Pro Tip: If you have ratings for your wines, then make sure to use that on your shelf talker to validate your wine. For example, if it’s 90 points from Wine Spectator, USA Wine Ratings, or London Wine Competition – use that logo. It always helps to be validated by a well-known, leading platform.
5. Don’t forget to do weekly rounds
Most people forget about this or don’t pay attention to it. Make sure you do weekly rounds to check where your product is. A lot of salespeople move around the products when the retailers don’t pay attention or are not looking at what is going on. So make sure your product is not moved around, and it is where you want it to be.
Check if your wines are clean, your bottles are shining, and your labels are placed upright. Make sure there’s no dust on your bottles. Retailers don’t have the time to sit and polish your bottles so make sure your bottles are crystal clear when you’re doing a check.
Pro Tip: If you have a sales rep going in and checking in on a particular account, make sure you have them clean the product, place them properly with the labels being upright, make sure shelf talkers are placed well and are visible to the customer.
These are a few hacks that you can use to find the perfect spot for your wine, and make sure it remains. Using these hacks – your wine is guaranteed to move from the shelves.
