The industrial revolution brought about producing and focusing on the masses. Now in the information age data is everything and the focus has moved from the masses to the individual. Personalization is a key factor in building loyalty. Whether that be for a store banner or a store brand. People are more receptive to something they feel is personalized towards them. This may be a fairly obvious point, but how does one go about personalizing a grocery store for one shopper? Truth is you can’t but the webinar I listened to busted 4 myths about personalization in grocery retail and also gave a few digital recommendations at the end for how to add more personalization for your shoppers. Myth 1: Shoppers want everything to be personalized. This has some truth to it because consumers consider the act of shopping an act of personalization in itself. Shoppers still want to maintain control but retailers should look to help them while also empowering them during their time in store. It is important that retailers don’t make their customizations feel manipulative to the…
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Keys to a Great Rebrand
Are you thinking about a rebrand for your store’s identity? Sure there are risks involved. There is, of course, the cost of the investment, but what about the way the rebrand will be communicated to your customers? How will they respond to this new identity? I read an article, The Keys to a Great Rebrand: Advice From the Duo Who Revamped Chobani and Spotify, written by Matt McCue. In the article, McCue shares advice from Brian Collins, CCO and co-founder of the branding company, Collins, and Leland Maschmeyer, CCO at Chobani and co-founder at Collins, for a successful brand redesign. They give 6 key points to consider. A rebrand includes a redesign of your company’s logo. As someone who has done logo design in the past, I can tell you there is a lot more work and time put into designing a logo than you may realize. Then you’ve got revisions to typography, possibly colors, imagery, voice. It is an entire revamp of the advertising and marketing approach. It is not something you want to do just because it sounds…
Trends: A Look at Today’s Grocery Shopper Webinar Recap
State of the Grocery Market: 86% of all adults now say they have at least some of the responsibility for household grocery shopping. This is an important change because it is bringing in more consumers to the grocery retail world. In the past grocery shopping was fulfilled by one person, now that is only the case in 25% of US households. So, 75% of US households split the grocery shopping responsibility in some way making it a team sport. Sharing the shopping responsibility didn’t affect the number of trips like you would think. That number is around 1.6 trips per week and has remained fairly constant over the past 5 years. However, these lifestyle changes have made the biggest impact on trip frequency. Increases Trips: Reduced planning for meals Urbanization (People live, work, play, eat and shop all in the same neighborhood) Desire for freshness Decreases Trips: Sharing the shopping responsibilities Migration to online Increased reliance on food services The average weekly spend for a household is $113.50 which aligns with inflation. Of the shoppers that were surveyed only 13%…
Social Media Campaigns
If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ve probably noticed that I mention the term social media campaigns a lot. But what exactly does that mean? The word campaign might bring to mind images of Don Draper in “Mad Men” but you don’t need a New York ad agency to run a successful social media campaign. A campaign on social media can be as big or as small as you want it to be but it has the potential to make a big effect on your customers and your sales. An example of a small social media campaign is a recent meat sale campaign done by Murfin’s Market, an AWG member with four locations in southern Missouri. The store was having a one day meat sale at all four locations on the Friday before Father’s Day weekend. I helped them create a boosted post with a link to their ad on the website so customers could see all of the items available in the one day sale. Murfin’s spent $50 on that post and it ran the Thursday before and…
Targeted Marketing with Clubs, Groups and Loyalty Programs
I recently told a few of my colleagues that our members can’t always create a digital marketing message that will be “everything to everyone.” It’s true that sometimes you will have general digital marketing content with the goal of reaching a large number of people. But you should also consider incorporating targeted marketing into your overall strategy. What is targeted marketing? Targeted marketing is a message or campaign that specifically appeals to individual demographics or preferences in an audience. The goal is to target a message to people who you have determined will be interested in that message and, ideally, will buy the product or service offered in it. Why should I use targeted marketing? You are more likely to see conversion rates increase when you use targeted marketing strategies. If you direct your messages about a specific product or service that appeals to a certain demographic and marketing it only to that audience, they are more likely to buy that product or service. This is as opposed to directing a general message to a general audience. You can still…
WordCamp recap – Voice Your Values
At WordCamp this year there was a lot of talk about ADA and SEO. I’ll talk about ADA in another recap soon. As for SEO, we have written articles recently, such as Content Marketing & SEO and How SEO Can Strengthen Your Digital Store Brand Identity. While you do need good SEO to drive traffic to your website, values are important too. Actually, in today’s world, it is kind of unique. Having core values to define your brand can make you stand out from your competition. In the WordCamp session, Voice Your Values, Andrea Garcia, Chief Mind Officer at mind+matter, says to let others know who you are and who you are not. Define your brand. Voice your values and you will connect with customers who are looking for the same values. That makes sense, right? When you hang out with friends, don’t you have the best time when you are with those who share the same values and the same interests? We at AWG manage social media pages for many of our members. One thing we must keep in…
SMCKC May Lunch Recap: Making A Splash on Social During Large-Scale Events
Recently I attended a SMCKC lunch titled “Making a Splash on Social During Large-Scale Events.” It was a panel Q&A with Derek Byrne of Visit KC, Rachel Kephart of KC Film (a division of Visit KC), and John Kreicbergs of Propaganda3. While I work with retailers on digital promotions for their events, they aren’t the type of large-scale events that were discussed by the panel. But I found that a lot of what they advised to the audience can be applied to small-scale events and social strategy in general. For example, all three panelists discussed the importance of keeping attendees informed before, during, and after the event. Derek Byrne manages social media for all of the college basketball tournament games that take place in Kansas City in March. For these games, Visit KC is on social media all year long, announcing games when they are scheduled, helping people plan their trips, and giving them sightseeing ideas outside of the games if they’re coming out of town to visit. John Kreicbergs works on events like Boulevardia, a craft beer and music…
Adobe Summit Recap – How Best Buy is Competing with Amazon
I recently watched a keynote session from this year’s Adobe Summit. Shantanu Narayen, the CEO of Adobe, sat down to chat with Hubert Joly, the CEO of Best Buy. Joly shared some innovative ideas that may encourage any retailer who feels their business has been disrupted by the digital world. Seven years ago, Best Buy knew they needed to do something so they didn’t “die” to Amazon. They had to find a way to reach customers other than by selling them a product. They discovered customers were coming into their store to shop for products and then leaving the store to buy those products from Amazon. To discourage that, Best Buy started price matching Amazon. This was part of their Renew Blue, a marketing campaign about rebuilding the company and fixing what was broken. They also invested resources into their website and online shopping capabilities. They now ship as fast as Amazon does, for FREE. And they’ve invested in their employees to improve the customer’s in-store experience. Then came the marketing campaign, Building The New Blue, which is about reinventing…
Social Media Trends
I mentioned in a recent blog post that your social media plan “needs to adapt as the social landscape changes.” It’s helpful to know how changes and new trends might affect your strategy so you can determine if you need to course correct. Digital strategy shouldn’t be reviewed only once at your annual planning meeting. It should be an evergreen conversation to help you keep up-to-date on the tools and trends you can use to make your digital strategy as successful as possible. Here are some things I’ve noticed in the first few months of 2019: Using Stories to Tell Your Story Are you using Instagram and Facebook stories? The idea started with Snapchat, where you share an image or a short video that disappears after 24 hours. Both Instagram and Facebook have launched similar features on their platforms and they are steadily growing in popularity with users. Consider creating content that you can share across all areas of Facebook, including stories. Also consider using stories to help you create content that your customers will connect with more. Buffer suggests…
A Case Study for Customer Surveys
Have you ever considered conducting a customer survey for business? You might think it would be a waste of your time but consider this statistic from Zendesk: “96% of consumers don’t bother to complain, making consumer surveys an excellent way for organizations to better understand their customers’ problems.” Instead of making assumptions or viewing your business from the owner or management perspective, go directly to the people who affect your bottom line: your customers. I’ve worked with several stores on crafting and maintaining customers service surveys for both their overall customer service and specifically for their online shopping programs. I used my experience working with these stores to develop a case study of how and why to create a customer service survey. To read the full case study, click HERE. Here is a quick summary of what I cover in the case study: When to Use Customer Surveys Consider running an ongoing general customer service survey so your customers always have the option to provide feedback. I highly recommend running a separate customer service survey for your online shopping program,…