"“That was a huge success because using Placer we were able to see where that customer was coming from, and that’s where [we] targeted.”

~ Director of Sales & Merchandising

“My marketing budget is so much more targeted than if I would have just sent a million mailers out. It’s worth my money to do all the targeted research beforehand and just send them where I want.”

~ Store Manager‍

The Challenge

Helping a newly opened store with declining traffic in a crowded grocery market

In July 2021, a large independent grocer opened a new store in a west coast market. While the store generated good initial sales, it was also located in a busy market with a Walmart, 99 Cent Store, Dollar Tree, El Super and other stores located close by. Within the broader market were a number of Albertsons and Vons, as well as natural and organic grocery stores. Following some initial success, the store began to see declines in sales as shoppers went elsewhere.

Learn more about Visits Trend

Wanting to take a proactive step regarding the decline in sales, the Director of Sales and Merchandising and the store manager looked to spread awareness of the store and boost traffic and sales through print and digital advertising.

The Solution

Using True Trade Area to understand existing customers and potential competitors

The challenge the grocer faced was common for retailers: they had great visibility into performance inside their store (transaction volume, sales totals, etc.), but poor visibility into things outside their store. Placer’s physical market intelligence platform gave them insights into their true trade area, or the area where her customers lived, and the demographics of those customers, and the true trade area of the two specialty grocery stores they identified as competition, stores with higher priced items, high foot traffic, and little cross-shopping coming to the independent grocer.

Using cross-shopping to determine locations for optimal flyer placement

With a clear idea of what competitors grocers to target, the grocery team then used Placer to uncover how to reach their competitor’s shoppers by identifying cross-shopping patterns of competitor shoppers that they could then use for marketing purposes.

Placer allowed the store marketing team to see, by category, the stores that their competitor’s shoppers frequented the most.  The manager explains: “we used Placer and we looked at all of the stores that people were shopping at who also shopped at our competitor. Marshalls was one of them, for example. We also went to different gyms those shoppers frequented most.”

Learn more about Favorite Places

With this list of stores in mind, the store manager and local team printed flyers and went to the top locations their competitor shoppers visited, across many categories, distributing them to people at those venues.

They also turned to Placer for insights they could expand to digital marketing.

Using True Trade Area to find zip codes for targeted mailers & digital ads

With the goal to make the next round of ad spend as effective as possible,  the store manager began comparing the True Trade Area for her store and her competitor’s store: “I had a small amount of money to put toward marketing for the second campaign, and the mailers were very expensive, so I basically said ‘show me where both competitors have an existing trade area but where I’m not pulling anyone.’”

Armed with visibility into trade area gaps, the manager used Placer to identify the home zip codes for those trade area gaps, which the store manager then used to target digital ads directly to those competitor shoppers.

Learn more about True Trade Area

“I found this little area where they were pulling customers and we weren’t pulling anyone. It was a very small area. And that…was where I sent my mailers and my targeted digital ads.” – Store Manager

‍The Outcome

Success: 33% lift in sales, larger trade area, and customers driving FARTHER than before

The print and digital ad campaigns worked in such a powerful way that the weekly store sales saw a 33% lift over the course of 2 months. And those numbers have held. But that’s not all.

In the two months of the campaigns, the store saw an increase in nearly every measurable statistic used for performance, including store sales, store visits, trade area size and population, and more, as shown below:

Many of the new customers even drive farther than previously, as the zip codes targeted were significantly closer to the competitor’s store. In other words, the campaigns were a resounding success.

Going forward, the store team plans to continue using Placer to target marketing campaigns for their store, and Placer looks forward to working with them as they do.

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