How to Market for a Grocery Store?

I don't think marketing items 1 by 1 for a market is a good idea, look at what the major grocery stores do and get ideas from that.

Market the friendiness of the employees, the freshness and variety of products, the neighborhood personalization....that they have what you need, when you need it, at reasonable prices and that you can easily get it...and when you do get it, it will be with a smile.
With only 5 locations I would assume that they are more neighborhood driven than the large chains.....target the personalized, neighborhood factor.

This would be a HUGE project to implement, but if you can pull it off, it would be a full time job for you.

I did a brief (45 sec) video just a like'walk-thru' about the store. At end you can give a bang, like" look for our flyer" or if you can have store to commit maybe a weekly video about next weeks special. Don't charge to much for it, they have a small profit margin.

Joe

So you could set up a booth at local events and have an employee cooking some sort of authentic ethnic dish and hey, nobody turns down food, so you offer them some free food and say we got all our ingredients from _____ grocery just down the street, here's a coupon (for your store only, not for a product). This works even better if your store has some sort of ingredient that you can't find at Publix or Bi-Lo or whtaever wierd chain stores you have where you are.

You don't even have to wait for a festival or whatever, just go OUT somewhere, making sure you have the appropriate permits and everything and give out some free food downtown at lunchtime.

So then they come in and shop a bit and they're all excited and then you give them about 5 more coupons, could be the same ones or different, but you say "give these to five friends!" And the thing is, whether they actually do or not they're gonna tell someone that if you go to CornerStore Grocery they'll give you a crapload of coupons, and hey everyone loves saving money and whabam, you've got business.

Marketing a grocery store


This question reminds me of a case study by Tom Peters in his book In Search of Excellence, the store in question was Stew Leonard's and they had 5 stores.


They thrived because they offered a unique shopping experience and outstanding customer service, from what you say this culture may be hard to achieve in the store you work in.


One thing that stood out for me in that case study was that they placed the staples (bread, milk and eggs) at the back of the store (which nearly all stores do these days) and they also sold them at or just above cost (almost as a loss leader), becoming the cheapest in the area that they operated.


This caused a flood of traffic for the cheap staples but also shoppers would buy lots of other items with a higher profit margin.


Stewie's didn't have the benefit of the Internet in those days but they still did around $300M a year (he also 'skimmed' $17m off and went to jail!).


I would drop the price of the staples (you need to do the math) and set up an SMS campaign offering coupons for the cheap staples and also other items that can be bought in as specials.


Have the SMS advertising very visible as they checkout also as they enter and leave the store.


I would also set up a Facebook Fanpage and have the coupons/vouchers posted on their as well.


Hope this helps.
John

Focus on their 10-20 best selling and also 10-20 most profitable items , the best sellers get people in the door, the most profitable will obviously make the most money per sale, the aim is to move the most profitable towards the best selling end of the scale , how is that done ?
Display placement and promotional surround, trial discount coupons to allow people who wouldnt normally purchase them to try them out are two possible avenues to explore.
really need to know a lot more to be more specific but thats trying to answer your OP question

Wow you guys this is all good stuff. This place amazes me more each day. They have so much potential, but fail to try new ideas. I had this really cool idea to improve navigation in the frozen departments, and they told me it would be too expensive. The only cost was the plastic sleeves for the doors, which couldn't price more than 150$. That kind of ignorance will lead to their eventual fall. They called me to help with the website (they know i'm majoring in IM). My plan now is to just get this marketing job in my portfolio, for when I pursue my business. Thanks guys.