The intersection of technology with business processes and the need to drive revenue is a familiar place for VARs. It's at the front desk, where they help hoteliers transact check-in while driving incremental revenue such as room upgrades, using technology. It's at the quick-service counter or retail checkouts, where VARs help operators deploy the right POS terminal to quickly process the transaction while upping the check. ("Would you like fries with that?")
And currently, it's at the intersection of in-store marketing and the somewhat daunting mix of technology and merchandising expertise required to drive sales in the store. The old saying goes, "Where there is mystery, there is margin." For SMB retailers in particular, tapping such technologies as digital signage, custom video content and electronic messaging to drive sales is the stuff of mystery, one that larger chains are only beginning to unravel.
But with the right tools, tailored to SMB retailers' needs, VARs can be in the position to help,
says Laura Davis-Taylor, founder and principal of Retail Media Consulting (www.retailmediaconsulting.com) and co-author of Lighting Up the Aisle: Principles
and Practices for In-Store Digital Media.
At the Retail Solution Providers Association "Forward Thinking Thursday" seminars in July as part of the RetailNOW show in Las Vegas, Davis-Taylor untangled some mysteries of her own, offering attendees a clearer understanding of what in-store marketing is and how VARs can use it to help solve their customers' problems.
With the power of television and print advertising being diluted by competition from the Internet, cable and mobile devices, retailers are increasingly interested in delivering marketing messages at the point of decision. Solutions may be simple, such as a continuous loop DVD hooked up to a monitor on the counter, or moderate, such as digital signage promoting an end-cap special, or may be as sophisticated as a remotely run digital media network broadcasting vendor-paid content to stores across the country.
These are still early days in the in-store media industry, with the strategies for measuring impact still in development and the tools to create and deliver content still evolving toward a user-friendly form. But then, that's exactly where we were in the nineties with selling via the Internet - and look how that turned out.
"This is not going away," says Davis-Taylor. "VARs can be successful; it's just a matter of what formula they can activate." There is return on investment for in-store media, but the source depends on what you're looking for, she says. What works is different for every retailer, just as with Web sites, and it takes trial and error to find out.
Step one for getting active in in-store media is getting educated through associations (such as the RSPA), by viewing various blogs (try www.billgerba.com) and by reading Davis-Taylor's book. Step two is talking to customers: Are they interested? What do they think in-store media could do for them? If they're hesitant, why? Then, VARs need to identify if, and then how, they want to be in the market: business model (on-time project fee, monthly service or reselling a third-party network offering, for example), partner opportunities, available tools, required skillsets and resources, and so on. The marketplace is beginning to help, with "digital-signage-in-a-box" solutions that offer basic templates and everything you need to set up a basic signage program.
To be sure, a marketplace already exists of suppliers specializing in delivering in-store media and electronic content. But SMB retailers and other businesses with products and services to sell trust their technology VARs. And as this space matures, particularly on the measurement end, integration with in-store technology will become a requirement, and therefore knowledge of how those solutions work.
VARs looking for a chance to get to get in early an emerging sector of retail technology would serve themselves well to investigate what in-store media is, where it's going and how they may be able to make money while making customers happy.
The intersection of technology with business processes and the need to drive revenue is a familiar place for VARs. It's at the front desk, where they help hoteliers transact check-in while driving incremental revenue such as room upgrades, using technology. It's at the quick-service counter or retail checkouts, where VARs help operators deploy the right POS terminal to quickly process the transaction while upping the check. ("Would you like fries with that?") 
