Grocery Store Marketing Tactics

The right music can revolutionize the grocery shopping experience

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What Is a Grocery Store Marketing Plan?

A thorough grocery store marketing plan is essential for success in your supermarket’s marketing endeavors. Without a plan, your supermarket strategies could waste money, damage your reputation, or both. While marketing plans are important for everyone, about 50 percent of small businesses don't have one.

A marketing plan is an operational document outlining the various marketing tactics a business will implement to reach its target market and generate leads.

Grocery store marketing plans detail all the PR and outreach campaigns to be executed over a period, including information on how the supermarket will measure these activities’ effectiveness.

Effective grocery store marketing plans typically include the following:

Personalized language: It has tailored messaging that is targeted toward predefined demographics and geographic areas.
Data: Market research to support new market entries and pricing decisions.
Channels: A clear list of digital and offline platforms on which you will promote your products and services should be outlined. Social media, podcasts, newspapers, trade press, radio, Google AdWords, or a mix of all these platforms could be part of your plan.
Goals: Metrics and measurements of the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts and analytics support this information.

How to Create a Grocery Store Marketing Plan

The following steps should help you to get a head start with your overall supermarket strategy:

What do you sell? The first step is to define precisely what type of grocery store business you are running. What groceries do you deal with? Once you’ve answered this question, determine the specific details of the products you sell or list them in product groups, as each group may require a different marketing approach.
What sets you apart? Find the unique selling points (USPs) that your products have compared to other readily available products on the market. Do you offer products that your competitors don’t stock? Are your prices lower than your competitors? These questions will help you define your marketing messages and angles.
Who is your target market? Define this information for the end consumers, considering where they access information as well as their average age, gender, and hobbies. Try to ensure this information is as accurate as possible, or you may waste money targeting customers through channels they don’t access.
Where do you work? Do you provide products locally or nationwide? What is the size of your target market?

New Grocery Store Marketing Tactics to Try

Today’s consumers are savvy and on the hunt for a great experience. How can you reach them? What techniques have you avoided because they seem too new or trendy? These are grocery store marketing tactics for today’s business owner that you can—and should—consider.

Social Media Marketing

In the U.S., 7 out of 10 people use social media. Post clever, engaging content, and you could reach customers as they scroll.

Social media posts may seem irrelevant, but small, daily reminders of your products and offerings are a great way to stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds.

Social media is a cost-effective, simple way to advertise special deals, tastings, holiday hours, and upcoming events at a supermarket.

Several social media sites are available, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. You’re not required to use all of them. Start with just one channel that appeals to your target market. Pew Research Center says Facebook is most popular among consumers ages 50 to 64, while people ages 18 to 29 prefer Instagram. Experiment until you find one that’s right.

Similarly, you’ll need to experiment to determine how often to post content and what to talk about. Following your competition is a smart way to get started, as you can see what works for them and build upon it. You can also use social media to help define your brand.

For example, in one case study of social media use by a grocery store, the company committed to responding to all followers as quickly, accurately, and politely as possible. That work reinforced the customer service experience they offered inside the store. The company saw a growth of 4,000 Facebook followers and about 15,000 post engagements every month.

You’ll know your tactics are working if your sales increase more than you spend in content creation and social monitoring.

Email Marketing

Engaging with and speaking to your customers outside the supermarket is a significant plus for your business. You could establish a connection on social media, but an email list is more intimate.

Create a weekly or monthly newsletter outlining and promoting exclusive offers for customers willing to part with their email addresses. Also, consider sending out recipes, cooking tips, weekly specials, and coupons.

You can save money by replacing traditional weekly newspaper inserts with email marketing campaigns.In one case study of email marketing by a grocery store, the company redesigned email templates to make the format cleaner and more enticing. They included discounts, sales, and recipes in each email. On average, 30% of these email messages are opened—which is considered exceptional by industry standards.

You’ll know your tactics are working if customers show you their phones at checkout (to use the coupons in your email).

In-Store Games

Cost-conscious consumers might enjoy the opportunity to save a little money (and have some fun) while they’re inside the store. If you hold just the right game, happy consumers might tell their friends to try it, or they could share videos of your game on social media.

Games grocery stores have tried include the following:

Spin the wheel. Customers spin the wheel for a discount on purchases over a set price point.
Scratch the ticket. Customers get a slip of paper to scratch off and reveal a prize.

Monitoring the success of a game is a little more difficult, but if you hear people talking about how much fun they had, and you don’t lose more on discounts than you made in increased sales, it’s worthwhile.

The right music can revolutionize the grocery shopping experience

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Old-School Grocery Store Marketing Tactics That Still Work

Common grocery store marketing strategies include some or all of the following techniques:

Promotional Pricing

Everybody loves a bargain. Although this marketing technique is far from subtle, it’s employed by thousands of supermarkets worldwide.

Promotional pricing is a great way to drive sales and attract customers. People are likely to buy in bulk if you offer discounts for limited periods.

Additionally, promotional pricing gives you the option to create loyalty cards and coupons, enticing customers back to your supermarket. Tech-savvy supermarkets will digitize their coupons and loyalty cards for shoppers to use via their smartphones as they shop.

Use this tactic judiciously. Researchers say more than half of all promotions go to customers willing to pay full price. If you use sales too often, you could be giving money away for no benefit.

To create promotional pricing campaigns, look for products that are at their peak right now (and might expire soon). Create a discount that might entice customers to buy without eating into your profits. Then, watch the results to see if it worked.

Exclusive Tastings & Events

Try hosting tastings at the same time every week or every day, so customers can factor your tasting into their shopping trip. Create fun themes and offer various items rather than just one cube of cheese and a cracker.

Use your social media marketing efforts to promote these events across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other relevant platforms. People love free food and will probably pick up the coffee and sugar they just ran out of when they come to sample.

Companies like Whole Foods Market often use these strategies. Shoppers can try artisan snacks, meat samples, and tasty drinks. In some stores, they can drink wine, too. In Austin, for example, Whole Foods Market offers weekly wine tasting opportunities that come with plenty of snacks. Customers love them, and they often leave with a bottle or two.

Think about the products you sell and how you might create a special event to taste varieties or otherwise entice customers to visit you. Check out the competition to see what’s working in your community.

Keep track of how much you spend to create, staff, and promote your event, and track your sales on the day it launches. If you don’t see a bump in profits, you may need to recalibrate.

Print Marketing

Print marketing is a tried-and-true method companies use to capture customers. Plenty of grocery stores print circulars to insert in local papers. And some use QR codes in their fliers to entice customers to find the very best deals online.

In a study conducted in 2022, researchers surveyed grocery store managers about the efficacy of their print marketing. Of respondents, a full 55% said that print flyers were “very effective” and worked better than digital outreach methods.

To make this work, you’ll need a graphic designer, copywriter, and proofreader. Some newspapers will offer these services to you (for a fee). Pay attention to how much you spend on these efforts, and watch your bottom line to see if they increase sales.

Digital vs. Traditional Grocery Store Marketing Tactics

We’ve outlined two very broad methods you could use to reach your grocery store customers. In one, you’re trying methods that are new. In the other, you’re leaning on the tried-and-true playbook. Which is right for you?

Digital grocery store marketing tactics can help you reach an entirely new set of customers, especially if your content is somehow different and exciting. These techniques can also enhance some of your traditional marketing campaigns (such as ensuring people know about your sales).

But digital marketing requires expertise, and customers often breeze right by content that doesn’t interest them. It’s also difficult to measure how well a social campaign connects to increased sales.

Traditional methods can help you retain the customers you have, particularly if they like what you’ve been doing so far. If you’ve already got good partners for your campaign, sticking with what you know could mean not wasting time on learning something new.

However, some customers will simply expect their companies to use new marketing techniques. If you don’t, you could lose these potential buyers forever.

How Does Music Enhance Grocery Store Marketing?

Music is an incredibly important tool in a grocery store marketing plan. Paying attention to the sound of your store could help you get the customers you want.

These are a few of the benefits associated with in-store music:

Bigger Sales

The longer people stay in your store, the more they'll spend on your products. Music could entice them to linger and put more items in their cart.

A popular study conducted in the 1980s by Ronald Milliman revealed that supermarket sales increased by 38 percent when slow music was played in a store. In 2012, a Norwegian study revealed that music with a slow tempo played in a minor mode was the perfect tempo/mode mix. Slower music played in major mode was less effective at slowing shoppers’ pace and encouraging them to shop more thoughtfully.

Better Branding

Is your playlist closely associated with your brand? Is it made to appeal to your customers?

Create the right soundscape, and you could encourage people to choose your shop over all the others in your market.

Happier Customers

While most people hate crowds, they don't actively avoid them. For example, instead of shopping at off-peak times, your customers may pack in right after work, just like everybody else. Music might help to soothe customers during busy times.

Your playlist could help drown out annoying noises, such as people on the phone, crying children, and snapping shoes. Rather than listening to other customers, they can tune into your music.

How to Decide Which Marketing Tactics Your Grocery Store Should Use

This article is packed with ideas anyone could use to benefit their grocery store market share. In a perfect world, you'll use them all. But in reality, you may only have the budget and time to tackle one or two tactics. Where should you start?

Step 1: Enhance the In-Store Experience

Focus your time and talent inside your grocery store’s walls. Ensure that you're surrounding your customers with a great brand experience, including the right music, good deals, and plenty of branded signage. If you don't make customers happy when they come in, they'll never come back.

Step 2: Experiment With Online

Experts say digital marketing strategies (like social media and email marketing) are so popular because they’re cheaper than standard marketing strategies (like print ads). When you're ready to spend a little more money, try employing some digital marketing plans.

Measure your return on investment for each experiment. If you find something that works, keep at it.

Step 3: Go Big

When you’re ready to try something new, try planning a big event that’s promoted in newspapers, on the radio, and in other traditional marketing channels. If you find success, great! You have a model you can repeat. If not, head back to Step 2.

Create Grocery Store Playlists With Pandora CloudCover

Click here to try Pandora CloudCover for 14 days and start creating playlists that encourage shoppers to shop for longer and spend more money in your supermarket (terms and conditions apply).

Do you have multiple supermarkets? Using our custom business music streaming software, you can control the music in all of your stores from one easy-to-use dashboard.