Mark AdamsIt is no secret that supermarkets have long been pouring large quantities of money into marketing their businesses in the hopes of increasing their customer expenditure. By taking into account customer behavior and social behaviors, you can build a successful marketing plan that will increase your sales and boost your profits.
The social behaviors and customer behavior method is based on the idea that where there is a will, there is a way, and in order to spread the word about your supermarket, you will need to understand how your customers belong to a particular social group that will help you create hype about your marketing campaigns. The actions that they may wish to take will help you create awareness of your supermarket and drive customers to it.
Market Research
You will very likely need to conduct market research that results in the understanding of your target market, how your customers decide to buy products, and how to target it as seen best. The importance of market research is seen in the context of online marketing using the Internet.
You should look for social network communities including the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and others, as these will give you tremendous insight into the groups of customers that you need to target in order to increase your sales.
A Complete Guide to Marketing Strategy For A Supermarket
The types of communities that you might want to consider researching include:
- Young Adults
- Bikers
- Farmers: This gives the idea that farmers are a group of people that can be targeted as a source of customers.
- Foodies: Another type of customer that can be considered is this customer group, which also covers a large group of people. Just like customers that like to eat, this customer group is one that will be willing to spend money on a commodity and will use their spending-habits to drive sales to your supermarket.
- Hipsters: Radhika Kakade and Jonathan Brown suggest another customer group that may not have invested highly in marketing.
Social Engagement
Social engagement refers to the methods by which your customers will communicate the fact that they want to buy something. This can be a method by which you will be able to track and monitor the ways by which you will attract customers to your supermarket.
You should consider the various social media sites that now belong to your customers. As a supermarket, think about these as channels that customers will use to communicate with you and demand your products. For example, your customers may discuss buying a particular product on Twitter or Facebook, and you will want to make decisions on how to respond to customers who indicate that they want a particular product.
The option of viewing what your customers are saying can be a key component that will help you begin to gather information about their social media behaviors.
Targeting
You should plan on targeting a company directly. This does not mean that you must market to some extremely great customer. However, you should consider that customers are the fundamental unit that will need to be targeted throughout campaign-building. For example, if you do not aim to target customers, but rather you advertise your product, you will have a hard time selling that product.
Creating Buzz
You can keep your customers interested in your supermarket by creating buzz throughout social media platforms. You can focus on a particular brand by putting up a campaign on Twitter. This technique will work because people tend to trust other users more than they do pages like ForClerk. This can be seen especially helpful when you want to launch.
In this case, you should focus on making sure that the campaign will make your customers feel satisfied. You can make it extremely clear that your products are reliable and useful in the world.
Use videos, and you will be able to create buzz that will attract new customers. You can focus on concrete benefits of your products and include videos that put your customers more at ease, and the more comfortable they feel, the more likely customers are to purchase.
By actively starting conversations between customers and other customers, you will be able to establish a good presence in the social media platforms.
By following these steps, you will be able to use social media to your advantage.
Benefits?
- Customers talking about your brand
- They are happy about the experience that they had
- They will not want to go anywhere else
- They will gain the feeling that they can trust you
- You can sell more and gain more profit
Product Placement
If you are advertising your product correctly on the internet and other social network platforms relevant to your target group, you might be able to use a product placement campaign to boost sales.
If your supermarket is selling the right product at the right time, it will be able to stand out from its competitors. This might be even more effective for physical stores that are advertised on the internet because of its ability to be easily searched.
How the Social Media Can Help
Browsing the Internet is a way in which your customers will be able to access facts about your supermarket, and it will have a positive impact on the way in which you can advertise to your customers.
Consider that customers will be able to search for your business, find the posts that they have created in Facebook or Twitter that will have been shared by friends, and from here, it will be easy to target customers that can influence other customers.
Social Media will also be used to enhance the feeling that customers will have towards the products that you have for sale in your supermarket. They will feel more secure, and this will increase their willingness to run to your supermarket to choose from a selection that they will be able to find online.
Steps to Follow
Promotion
You can create content around social media that will gather a large number of likes and readers. You should put up a post on the social network page of your business and you will be able to use the commenting system on the website to put up messages that can be seen by customers.
Invisibility
Social media should be completely invisible in order to maintain the cleanliness of your investment. This can be accomplished by refusing to advertise your products via Twitter or other community networks.
Notably, you will need to use social search to see what can happen if you chose to advertise a product there. This is because Twitter has a reputation of being a place where more customers will not buy.
Targeting
It is important that you provide a quality experience for all of your customers. If you do not make your customers feel appreciated during the purchase, or the check out process, they will most likely not return. You can use social media to increase your customer satisfaction by making sure that you are interacting with your customers. It is more efficient to post something on a social platform about your supermarket that will inform your customers than to neglect the opportunities offered to you.
Even with the benefits that social media offers, you still need to consider the many risks that business owners face in their social marketing strategy. The moment you decide to buy products in your supermarket, the world will find out.
However, it is becoming more and more popular for social media strategies to be boosted up with social search. It is possible to use this new development to find users in the social networking websites that are relevant to your products and then adverts them.
Rule of Thumb
It is nice to have your customers interact with you when they visit your supermarket. You can achieve this by using social media to inform them that you exist. However, when you decide to approach them with your offers, make sure that you are capable of following through with your contracts with them.
As your customers are social creatures, they are very likely to accept contracts that are written in transparent and clear ways. If you do not understand how to write an offer, you should let your employees help you.
Social Media is not going to explode overnight, and it might take some practice to figure out a strategy that is good enough for increasing sales. Take a month off, and experiment to see whether you are able to benefit from social media. You can always use social media to advertise your success or experiment to find out whether your hard work will be validated by social media.
In addition to this, you should consider the fact that the new way that you can connect with your customers will also be a new form of communication that you will need to learn first before you can transform your supermarket into an internet-driven business.
The opportunities offered by social media make it the new beginning of the young generation that wants to be seen because they are willing to establish a reputation that will make them stand out of their similar competitors and become the market leader.
Though you might not be able to afford to jump into the social networking platforms without a thorough planning, you still do not have to sacrifice your goals in order to achieve anonymity. If the internet currently dominates your business, you can still consider making an investment strategy that will allow social media to complement your strategy.
Benifits of Supermarket Marketing
Social media can prove to be more beneficial than any other marketing strategy. The digital world is in constant movement and you can use the time that you spend on your social media to increase your sales.
Many successful supermarkets have been able to leverage their social media marketing strategy in order to increase the sales of their products by 20 to 30%. You can also see that internet marketing no longer focuses exclusively on the traditional ways of advertising your company.
There are different ways that you can use your social media marketing strategy to increase sales in your supermarket. Through a simple trial and error process, you can figure out the right product placement that will increase your sales.
Social media is an effective strategy but you will need to consider the many risks that might get in the way of your social media marketing strategy. With a cautious approach, you will be able to sell more than you are currently, and you will be able to approach your target market more effectively and efficiently.
Final words on supermarket marketing strategy?
In Supermarket Marketing the first thing that you have to do is connect with the customers. They are the only ones that will give your supermarket the potential to bring in more sales.
The main elements of Supermarket marketing is making the customers feel that they are a part of your business. For them, your supermarket will be a “home away from home”, and at the same time provide solutions in need. You have to show that every customer is important and you want them to feel that they are important to you.
