Taking cues from tried and true marketing strategies
How often do you look around when you go grocery shopping? For example, I am sure you pay attention to things like how much you are spending, and if you are somewhat prepared you probably brought a list. Better yet, some of you who happen to be tech savvy put the list of items on your phone. For those of still living in the dark ages, we prefer pen and paper. How often do you follow the list down to the item? I am guessing for most of you who happen to be reading this almost never.
What do you notice about the music that plays in the background, typically its slower paced and the store floor is very well lit.
Did you ever notice that you pretty much always enter the produce section first, where you are almost overwhelmed with bright colors and well-organized fruit displays? Why do you think that is?
I was always wondering this since I was a kid why fruits and vegetables appear first in a grocery store, my thought was maybe the healthier options make people feel better about all the other unhealthy garbage they'll be filling their oversized carts (which also apparently have gotten bigger too by the way). Or better yet, maybe the grocery store cares about their customers and wants to remind them that they should be more health conscious. As a kid, I remember eating a couple of peanuts or maybe a grape or two given to me by parents never once being told that I was stealing (even though technically I was).
This might make some of you angry, but the fact is you are being manipulated by your local grocer from the moment you walked in the door. The fruit and vegetables you're patting yourself on the back about buying are merely a tool to get you into a better mood which in turn gets you to spend more money. Let us be honest, you are not eating all of that food before it goes bad considering the fact that Americans on average throw away 20 pounds of food per person, per month.
What is worse is I came to find out that everyone handles all the fruit in a grocery store, people touch all of it, and the mist they spray on the veggies are for appearances only. This actually makes them rot faster if you can believe it. What else did I find out? Oh, the bread. The bread they bake is always in paper bags, and it is hard as a rock the next day. It is almost as if they are betting on it getting stale. How could they be so cruel? People need to buy groceries. I bet they are lighting their fancy Cuban cigars with $100 bills on their over-sized yachts. They should be ashamed of themselves manipulating their customers like that!
On second thought, maybe they are not up to no good? Most grocery stores clear a yearly net profit of only 1.5%. That is not very much profit when you come to think about it. Maybe grocery stores, just like any other business that wants to stay in business, need to have a process in place to improve the ease of doing business and in turn maximize their revenues.
Now that we've established that grocery stores are not inherently evil, what lessons can we take from them in relation to Internet Marketing? When comparing the internet to a grocery store, one can draw many parallels. For one, digital consumers are being advertised to and manipulated from the moment they are online, or getting back to those tech savvy people, usually it's via their smartphone. Considering how much time people spend on their smartphones it would seem that there are an infinite number of opportunities to market to your audience and it makes sense to have a process in place to maximize your earning potential.
Tech savvy might not be the right term to describe the millions of adults in America whose only access to the internet is via their smartphone. While its true that 78% of are multi-platform and consume media on multiple devices, there is a portion of people living below the poverty line who don't have that luxury. I am struggling to find the term but there was one recently coined to describe this group of people who are quite poor and pay for current technology (and often spend a large portion of their income on this). While many of you I am sure to disagree with people living in poverty spending money on a smartphone, devices like this have become essential in many cases replacing the landline and thus a link to emergency services.
I am getting a little off topic! Back to my metaphor: just like a grocery store, internet marketing requires you to get them in the store via SEO. Then once you have the traffic, you then need to convert those leads into paying customers. The idea seems simple enough however you need to have an effective and repeatable process in order to do it with any chance of sustained success. And just like how stores have figured out how to put the fruit and vegetables in the store first, you need to find a system that you can perfect and repeat to do the same.
I welcome any and all comments and thank those of you that stayed with me on this!
What do you notice about the music that plays in the background, typically its slower paced and the store floor is very well lit.
Did you ever notice that you pretty much always enter the produce section first, where you are almost overwhelmed with bright colors and well-organized fruit displays? Why do you think that is?
I was always wondering this since I was a kid why fruits and vegetables appear first in a grocery store, my thought was maybe the healthier options make people feel better about all the other unhealthy garbage they'll be filling their oversized carts (which also apparently have gotten bigger too by the way). Or better yet, maybe the grocery store cares about their customers and wants to remind them that they should be more health conscious. As a kid, I remember eating a couple of peanuts or maybe a grape or two given to me by parents never once being told that I was stealing (even though technically I was).
This might make some of you angry, but the fact is you are being manipulated by your local grocer from the moment you walked in the door. The fruit and vegetables you're patting yourself on the back about buying are merely a tool to get you into a better mood which in turn gets you to spend more money. Let us be honest, you are not eating all of that food before it goes bad considering the fact that Americans on average throw away 20 pounds of food per person, per month.
What is worse is I came to find out that everyone handles all the fruit in a grocery store, people touch all of it, and the mist they spray on the veggies are for appearances only. This actually makes them rot faster if you can believe it. What else did I find out? Oh, the bread. The bread they bake is always in paper bags, and it is hard as a rock the next day. It is almost as if they are betting on it getting stale. How could they be so cruel? People need to buy groceries. I bet they are lighting their fancy Cuban cigars with $100 bills on their over-sized yachts. They should be ashamed of themselves manipulating their customers like that!
On second thought, maybe they are not up to no good? Most grocery stores clear a yearly net profit of only 1.5%. That is not very much profit when you come to think about it. Maybe grocery stores, just like any other business that wants to stay in business, need to have a process in place to improve the ease of doing business and in turn maximize their revenues.
Now that we've established that grocery stores are not inherently evil, what lessons can we take from them in relation to Internet Marketing? When comparing the internet to a grocery store, one can draw many parallels. For one, digital consumers are being advertised to and manipulated from the moment they are online, or getting back to those tech savvy people, usually it's via their smartphone. Considering how much time people spend on their smartphones it would seem that there are an infinite number of opportunities to market to your audience and it makes sense to have a process in place to maximize your earning potential.
Tech savvy might not be the right term to describe the millions of adults in America whose only access to the internet is via their smartphone. While its true that 78% of are multi-platform and consume media on multiple devices, there is a portion of people living below the poverty line who don't have that luxury. I am struggling to find the term but there was one recently coined to describe this group of people who are quite poor and pay for current technology (and often spend a large portion of their income on this). While many of you I am sure to disagree with people living in poverty spending money on a smartphone, devices like this have become essential in many cases replacing the landline and thus a link to emergency services.
I am getting a little off topic! Back to my metaphor: just like a grocery store, internet marketing requires you to get them in the store via SEO. Then once you have the traffic, you then need to convert those leads into paying customers. The idea seems simple enough however you need to have an effective and repeatable process in order to do it with any chance of sustained success. And just like how stores have figured out how to put the fruit and vegetables in the store first, you need to find a system that you can perfect and repeat to do the same.
I welcome any and all comments and thank those of you that stayed with me on this!
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Edison