These days, many people in India want to open a supermarket, but one fear that stops many of them is how will they beat the big malls and supermarkets. And another challenge is posed by the online sellers providing home delivery systems. How can they beat big malls and online sellers if they don’t have enough resources? Are there any such grocery supermarket marketing strategies that can help beat them?
Guess what, there are such strategies and today we are going to learn 7 of them.
8 Grocery supermarket marketing strategies that can beat big malls and online sellers.
1. Focus on Locals
Many businesses try to attract everyone to their stores and thus they would market themselves everywhere. And as a very simple yet powerful rule of marketing is if you try to win every one, you win no one. As a small supermarket, you cannot defeat the big malls in terms of advertisements on such a big level but you can always focus on locals and make sure that you have a monopoly in your local area.
Your goal should be to make everyone within the area of 3kms, your and only your customer in the grocery market. And you only expand your location when you have done this much.
2. Build Connections
One of the best grocery supermarket marketing strategies to have a monopoly in the market is building very strong connections. Many of you may now think that I am talking about building a connection with the customers. While you should build connections with your customers, here I am talking about building connections with the other stores. The stores that your target market often visits. One great example of this is Mc Donalds and Coca-Cola. They are not competitors, they are selling different things to the same customer base, and thus; they are connected. And you should do the same, they promote you and you promote them to each other customers. To increase conversions, you can give special discounts to make them visit you. You alone can’t beat the big malls and rule the locality; you need support. And these connections will help you do so.
3. Irresistible Offers
This grocery supermarket marketing strategy is used a lot. Many supermarkets give a lot of sales and discounts to their customers, but a very big mistake is that they make discounts only to the extent where they can make at least some amount of profit. Now you must be thinking, “What is wrong with it?“ There is nothing wrong with it except one thing, all your competitors are doing the same. The correct way to do this is to just get customers into your supermarket, even if you make 0 profit.
This strategy is just like the strategy of Netflix and Amazon Prime. They give you a few days of a free month’s trial even if they make no profit out of it because they are not focusing on profit, they are focusing not on generating customers, but on retaining customers.
Also Read: Choosing the right grocery store franchise:7 factors to consider
4. Customer retention
Customer retention is one of the most ignored grocery supermarket marketing strategies. People focus on making people come every day but not on retaining the customers who came yesterday. First, get customers inside your supermarket, and then give them coupons, and monthly subscriptions so they will get higher discounts as they have been very loyal customers. It is hard for you to beat the big malls in terms of getting new customers, but you can beat them at retaining customers.
And not only the big malls, but you can also beat the online sellers, as they are far from your customers, and it is a deep-rooted thing in our subconscious mind that we trust people who are physically closer; faster than those who are far.
5. Referral System
The best, fastest, and most affordable kind of lead generation system is the referral system. In this grocery supermarket marketing strategy, your one customer promotes your brand to their known ones, and they further promote it to their known ones. And this can be done only when you give your customers an experience and quality that they just cannot forget. Now, one mistake that people make while practicing this strategy is that they expect that if they just give their customers a wonderful experience and quality products, their customers will refer them without having to ask for it directly.
You must ask them to refer you once you see that they have become loyal. Waiting for them to do it on their own is a very bad way to build a referral system.
6. Go online locally.
Now that the world has shifted online, you can never beat the big malls and online sellers by ignoring all the online grocery supermarket marketing strategies. While online sellers are focusing on many locations, you must use the internet to focus on your local area. Whether it be social media, ads, GMB listings, or any other strategy, they all must be focused on your local area within 3 km. All these will help you create a monopoly in the local market, and once you have done that, you can move on to scaling your area.
Also Read: 10 Strategies to Boost Sales in a Supermarket & Retail Kirana Store in India
7. Scale
When you reach the monopoly in your locality, expanding to the next 2-3 km will not be hard at all. In fact, you can target 5-6 km of the area easily now. One mistake that people make while scaling is that they forget to reward the old customers. Never make them say, “ That brand has changed, it is no longer how it used to be.” Always take care of them. One of the best ways to start scaling is to get into online delivery because you are a physical supermarket and your customers cannot travel such long distances until and unless your price is the lowest in the market. So to beat these, you should start with a home delivery system, later open another branch in that area, and then focus on the same techniques mentioned above along with new techniques as per your budget.
8. Help and support
All this is not too hard to do, but focusing only on marketing is hard because there are many other aspects of supermarket management like inventory management, customer management, hiring, training, and much more. Thus, you should never hesitate to find someone who can help you with all this. And one of the best ways to get support, and guidance is by taking a supermarket franchise. If you already have your own supermarket, you can take a supermarket franchise to scale your business in the area.
Conclusion
By now, you must have some good knowledge of some grocery supermarket marketing strategies that you can use to beat not only your competitors but also the big brands and online sellers. You have also understood how beneficial it is to get support and guidance by joining a franchise. And if you want to know of some franchise that can help you in all these aspects of running a supermarket, you can visit the website of 7 Heven or call them for a free consultation.