Grocery Store Marketing Could Use a Good Jolt

Marketing Grocery Stores

Grocery shopping is typically a predictable experience. Most any supermarket you visit looks the same: a perimeter with produce, bakery, meats and dairy surrounding the central aisles and, if it’s really fancy, a coffee shop, floral department or dining area.

Grocery store marketing is fairly predictable, too, consisting of weekly specials promoted through ad circulars, point-of-purchase displays and customer loyalty programs that may provide product discounts or free gifts for spending a certain dollar amount. The names of the supermarkets might change, but these grocery marketing strategies are essentially identical.

Want to break away from the pack? Incorporating custom content into your marketing plan can help differentiate your supermarket brand and help you move ahead of the competition. Wait, you say, wasn’t that what blogs and social networking were supposed to do? Yes, in theory, but most supermarkets are using these technologies to simply deliver the same old information via more channels. Custom content is different; it’s about giving your shoppers information that they can’t get anywhere else and making that content so appealing that your supermarket brand becomes known as the definitive destination.

The good news is that you likely have custom content already on hand. I reviewed the websites of a few local grocery stores and saw bits and pieces that would work well in a true custom content strategy. The problem is the bits and pieces, which are usually scattered across multiple Web pages and almost impossible to find. For custom content to work, shoppers have to find it easily and quickly. No one likes to dig through a website.

Why not take that single page of recipes and expand it into a separate website, one with its own brand identity that attracts people who want more than just weekly discounts? Fill it with seasonal recipes and general wellness information, and you now have a branded site that offers shoppers something of lasting value, one they will turn to again and again, and one they will recommend to friends and family. And those shoppers will appreciate that it comes from you, the same trusted name they depend on to feed their families.

That’s just one way custom content can work for your grocery marketing strategy. Another option is a branded print magazine delivered to your most loyal shoppers, that’s full of editorial content created specifically for your stores. Does your meat department offer more antibiotic-free or organic selections than the competition? If so, do your shoppers know this? A custom magazine is the perfect way to share this story and others like it to further cultivate loyalty with your shoppers and differentiate your stores from all the rest.

The point of standing out from the competition is, of course, to increase traffic in your stores and boost sales. Metrics on custom magazines sold by supermarkets in the U.K., for example, have shown a tremendous lift in sales. One leading retailer saw the average shopper’s basket size of those who regularly buy the magazine increase by 35% over consumers who did not buy the magazine. The average frequency of visits to this retailer’s stores is 65% higher for regular buyers of the custom magazine compared to those shoppers who did not buy the magazine. And the total amount spent per customer in a six-month period is 121% higher for those who buy the magazine.

A custom content strategy aims for the same goal as any other effective marketing approach. What makes custom content different is that it allows for the integration of those other tried-and-true marketing strategies that you already use, such as coupons and seasonal promotions. And no matter how custom content is implemented, results can be tracked so that you know how well it’s working.

Those other marketing strategies have their place, but custom content can do so much more. Why be predictable?

Posted By: Wes Isley