Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

The Burlington Free Press recently ran a story on how “Companies get social with marketing”.  One major take away, if it can work for grocery it can and will work for your business.

MyWebGrocer was the feature for this story:

“Facebook and Twitter are fun, but they can also make a business thrive.

So say Alec Newcomb, vice president of MyWebGrocer, and Rebecca Roose, a project manager with the Colchester firm. MyWebGrocer provides digital services for leading retail grocers such as Shoprite, Lowes Food Stores, Big Y and Food Lion. Newcomb said the lessons he’s learned helping grocery chains can apply to almost any business.

Social media helps level the playing field, Newcomb said. There’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on an ad campaign when a business can use social media to do its bidding.”

Continue the full online story here

Kellogg’s is the world’s leading producer of cereal and a leading producer of convenience foods. MyWebGrocer’s objective was to increase sales in Kellogg’s snack category.

Solution: Kellogg’s eBusiness team partnered with MyWebGrocer to target moms, a key demographic, to drive incremental sales and build brand loyalty.

Kellogg’s snack campaign ran from August to December of 2008. Kellogg’s utilized MyWebGrocer’s targeted daily recipe and weekly specials emails to promote the August Fuel for School campaign and featured snack products.

MyWebGrocer designed nearly 300 creatives to serve across the network. MyWebGrocer optimized creative weekly to improve click through rates and influence sales. Rotating creative allowed MyWebGrocer to emphasize products based on factors including seasonality and new flavor introductions.

MyWebGrocer created unique landing pages featuring Kellogg’s products that enabled online users to add products to their lists and to purchase products.

Results: In 2008, Kellogg’s snacks sold on MyWebGrocer increased 81% over the previous year almost double the initial goal.

Kamela Warren, eBusiness Manager: “Kellogg’s online advertising with MyWebGrocer has shown double-digit product sales growth online from 2007 to 2008. The ability to track and report sales enable us to test and forecast what works in online grocery.”

-Cheers
Courtney

Every online advertising campaign is different. Objectives, messaging and overall strategy depend on what is being advertised, where, to whom, and to what end. Advertisers have been making media buys and evaluating campaign success based on these factors for decades. Online marketers know no one media mix will prove most effective for everyone. Why, then, do so many insist on cycling through the same creative?

The creative, or actual image, being shown in any given advertising placement is the single most important aspect of any online advertising campaign, and not only for reasons a brand manager would recite, like positioning and brand identity. Creative are golden opportunities to connect with consumers on a personalized level, to increase brand equity and to drive engagement through relevant content that augments the site’s focus.

Think about it. It seems obvious that creative running on the New York Times home page would send a different message than those serving across Facebook. After all, you’re reaching different users with different interests and divergent needs. If an objective is to target multiple demographics, it should be obvious based on creative content.

For advertisers running online campaigns, creative should be customized based on where they will serve and who will see them. For publishers managing those campaigns, creative should be optimized based on back end performance metrics and current observations. Otherwise, brands miss out on the benefits niche online environments provide to engage consumers and drive behavior.

Rachel

A recent survey from ChoiceStream shows that personalized ads do the best online.  Frequent online shoppers are 32% more apt and willing to click on an online ad if it is personalized, frequent meaning purchases done within the past 6 months.    And get this, the more the online users spends the greater their interest in personalized ads.  Overall, 78% of online consumers are interested in receiving personalized content.

Think online advertising doesn’t alter online users behavior?  Think again!  70% of consumers state that their purchase decisions are sometimes influenced by seeing an advertisement for a product or service.

When building your online advertising campaign be sure to personalize your advertisements to your target.  A great way to do this is to use online tools such as “Quantcast” to really get to know your targets.  It can show you what other sites they frequently visit, how old they are, and even how much they make.  Also, keep your creative updated.  The last thing you want to do is bore your online viewers with the same ad.  Make it exciting, change it up, and keep it personalized.

Cheers!

Courtney

*info source: Center for Media Research, ChoiceStream Survey 2008

For years, Seattle-based Starbucks coffee company was praised for building its brand without heavy advertising. While the strategy proved successful in a booming economy, Starbucks’ recent financial woes, store closings and layoffs have left many questioning whether, ultimately, that decision to refrain from expansive marketing may have propelled the company’s decline.

In a comparison of Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s coffee advertising strategies, Optimedia’s Antony Young outlines how two competing brewers positioned themselves against Starbucks and grew their market share in a down economy. Dunkin’ Donuts focused heavily on television, public relations and its web campaign. McDonald’s focused more on regional advertising and nontraditional media, such as product placements.

Dunkin spent about 15% of its total media budget online, developing a website Dunkinbeatstarbucks.com and serving ads across several sites.

Young concludes that Dunkin’s approach to use heavy broadcast was efficient, but typical. The exception, he says, was Dunkin’s “strong push online, which was a definite strong point in Dunkin’s communication plan”. McDonald’s, a traditional TV advertiser, departed from the company’s typical media buy to focus on local strategies, which, according to Young, paid off.

Advertisers can learn two things from the 2008 coffee wars.

One is a simple, but not always obvious lesson: the number one brand in a category cannot maintain its position indefinitely without continued innovation and effective communication. Starbucks’ blind faith in the superiority of its product, its subtle communication efforts and its cult following, coupled with its expansive growth strategy, alienated the company from many consumers, who no longer recognized the brand as the trendy, grassroots coffee it used to be. The down economy, when consumer purchase behavior had begun to shift continuously, was an especially bad time for Starbucks to lose focus on its brand position.

Two, brands can no longer afford to emphasize traditional broadcast advertising over online and regional efforts. In a diverse media mix, multiple channels often complement each other, but the focus should be on where consumers are most engaged. Dunkin’s website encouraged consumers to “Learn the Truth” through Dunkin’s story and “Spread the Truth” via e-cards sent to “less fortunate Starbucks friends”. Ads directed users to the site where they spent invaluable time interacting with the brand. These online tactics gave Dunkin’ a competitive advantage in a high-margin market.

To read Young’s entire analysis, click here.

Rachel