Studies confirm that visual merchandising materials such as professional displays, signage, fixturing and other point of purchase elements unquestionably increase sales.

Vision Care professionals have a unique opportunity to work with leading eyewear and lens vendors, with professional optical marketing consultants, and with national vision care support organizations to develop powerful visual merchandising materials that deliver messages of quality, style and professional services to patients where it counts the most ... inside a practice.

The Goals of Visual Merchandising

Visual merchandising can metaphorically be considered your “silent salesperson,” achieving the following goals:

• Improving service

• Educating the customer

• Increasing productivity levels

• Reinforcing store image

Visibility, simplicity, originality, cleanliness, and timeliness are the “Golden Rules” of effective visual merchandising presentations.

Proper Placement and Presentation

Virtually every area of your practice holds the potential for effective merchandising. From windows and walls ... to ceilings and countertops ... opportunities abound for quick identification of frames and lenses, for focusing attention on a favorite brand, or for communicating a desired message.

Window Presentations: Windows are a magnetic draw that can convert the potential passerby into real patient profitability. Focus attention on one or two important themes - be it an artful arrangement of the hottest designer frames ... or a well done vignette featuring your newest sunwear introductions. Too much unrelated material confuses rather than enhances your presentation.

Lease Line (entryway) Opportunities: Here’s the place to introduce a special promotion ... announce an event ... or elicit inquiries concerning a new product or service. Floor standing sign holders with back-to-back signage that can be read from either direction ... overhead banners that deliver a stand-out message ... or a floor-standing fixture enhanced with promotional graphics … all offer the potential to pique patient curiosity as they enter your practice.

Waiting Room Materials: What a perfect opportunity to present patients with a quick read or a take-home pamphlet on the vital importance of vision care for the whole family ... or the quality differences among different brands of sunwear or eyewear... or the hottest new lens options and frame materials. Displaying and disseminating these materials emphasize your commitment toward the delivery of quality care and materials.

Wall-mounted Displays: Use your wall space to create attractive and functional visual merchandising systems tailored to your dispensing area. From convenient slat wall displays to high-impact light boxes featuring beautiful back lit graphics (duratrans), high visibility walls offer maximum impact in merchandising and marketing your best selling brands. Be sure to intersperse your frame offerings with logos, lifestyle graphics, and brief “sound bites” of product information.

Countertop Merchandising: While countertop space is often limited, you can optimize your counter space with small, space-saving frame or lens displays positioned adjacent to appropriate lifestyle and promotional countercards. Wherever space permits, you might consider featuring ‘Informational Countercards’ addressing such topics as the importance of maximum sun protection, the concept of prescription sunwear, or an eyewear or lens offering’s unique points of difference.

In Case Presentations: Tent logos, couvettes, and in-case signage are but a few of the wide variety of merchandising opportunities designed to enhance your under-glass presentations. Eyewear presented under glass often conveys an upscale image – the feeling of a treasured collectable or an important piece of jewelry.

Targeting Your Patient Population

Who are your patients and what do they want most? From kids to tweens and teens . . . from baby boomers to matures … each group forms a unique marketing niche of similar opinions, common needs, similar buying instincts and motives. Tracking and knowing your demographics and their lifestyles gives you the power to communicate to your target customers in so many ways:

In Communicating to Children ... Here is your chance to design and create a fantasy presentation that brings fun and excitement to children and communicates factual information and a sense of quality to the adult.

When Talking To Tweens and Teens ... If you talk in a language that’s purely visual and give them the attitudes and values that mean the most, like truth, fun and independence, they’ll listen. Say it all in graphics and quick sound bites.

Though Boomers are, perhaps, your Busiest Demographic ... they want all the facts. Put them in control by giving them what’s real and true ... all the information they need to judge a product and to make an educated buying decision.

Because Matures are Loyal … brand names and logos are an extremely powerful merchandising force. Speak to them clearly about quality and value – these are essential elements to matures – vital to making a purchasing decision.

Establishing Your Identity In Fashion Eyewear

Combining your professional recommendations with the power of popular designer and brand name frames can translate to big business for your practice. Creating high visibility vignettes of your most prestigious and popular collections can quickly identify you as a Fashion Eyewear Professional:

• In creating a designer vignette, it is vital that you be consistent with a designer’s image and philosophy. Your vignette should always reflect the unique and personal approach to style established by the designer. If possible, visit a designer’s own boutique to see, first hand, how fashions and accessories are presented.
  

• Always use professional, vendor supplied materials in a vignette. These have been created in conjunction with the designer and his team to ensure consistency of design philosophy and image.
  

• Update promotional materials and frames regularly to enforce your fashion savvy, showing patients you are right on top the latest and greatest in designer frames.
  

• Cross-promote your key brands throughout your practice via logos, graphics and signage in the window … in the waiting room . . . and in your dispensing area … clearly identifying and communicating their availability in your practice.

Powerful visual merchandising offers you unlimited marketing potential. It is an ideal way to strengthen your practice’s unique identity at every turn. From dazzling your patients with designer logos . . . to intriguing them with posters, and patient-focused signage that speaks to their special lifestyle . . . effective product presentation and appropriate, well placed merchandising materials delivers the marketing magic that can increase sales – and your bottom line.

Harriett Ruderman