Industry Specific Marketing Advice
Marketing a Grocery Store
You're heavily invested in the success of your grocery store and failure isn't an option. That means you'll also need to invest yourself in the strategies and techniques it takes to effectively market your brand in the marketplace.
Still looking for a way to effectively market your grocery store? It's hard to get your messages heard through the industry's noise.
In general, good business owners make good marketers. However, the most visible brands are always on the lookout for the marketing tactics competitive grocery stores have used to achieve success.
Media Monitoring
Some marketing initiatives lend themselves to simple measurement while others are more challenging. Direct mail can be evaluated by tallying the cost of inputs (e.g. a premium mailing list, printing, postage, etc.) and measuring the number of customer responses you receive from the campaign. The difficulty comes when you are tasked with quantifying market presence and brand influence. Fortunately, media monitoring has the ability to give your grocery store a sense of market presence and other variables that are difficult to quantify. If executed properly, media monitoring can help your brand get ahead of negative messaging and exert greater influence over news cycles.
Generating Buzz
Never underestimate the value of good buzz with consumers. You've heard it said before: Word of mouth is the best form of promotion for products and brands. For a grocery store, meaningful brand conversations have the ability to transform the impact of your marketing efforts. The process begins with developing communication vehicles and mechanisms that invite discussion. Social networking and other online strategies can play a foundational role when they are performed in tandem with face-to-face interactions and industry networking.
Leveraging Print Ads
Print advertising has been a marketing staple for grocery stores. Historically, Gutenberg's invention has been used for a broad range of commercial and promotional applications. Online advertising has clear benefits. But that doesn't mean you should stop advertising your grocery store in printed media. The difference is that it's more important than ever to make sure the publications you target reach the right people. Publications geared toward large, general readerships tend to be less productive than publications that are read by likely buyers of your products and services.
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