4 Proven Tips for Butcher Shops: Break Your Sales Ceiling Without Breaking Your Site

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In 2023, customers have an endless array of options for all types of foods since they can order online from stores all over the world. This includes butcher shops, and they now have to compete not only in their local area but on the internet as well. 

The digital space has become a haven for foodies. Here, they can look for new dining opportunities, browse menus, find discounts, shop for specialized products like fresh meats, and get their favorite items delivered to their home. And with digital grocery sales increasing year over year with no end in sight, it’s more important now than ever for butcher shops to have a strong online presence.

The following four powerful tips for digital butcher shop marketing will help you to improve your visibility in the eCommerce space and create new revenue streams through online marketing.

1. Create an Online Brand

Let’s start with one of the fundamentals for your online presence—design. Creating a brand identity for your butcher shop aims at giving your customers a point of differentiation from other butcher shops, provides insights on the experience they receive ordering products, and increases your recognition value.

A brand identity combines your menu and values with your brand’s aesthetics. Therefore, it is important to have your logo, tone, company name, and fonts defined and aligned. Also, choose your website’s colors wisely—using a signature color can increase brand recognition by 80 percent. Don’t be afraid to make yourself stand out a bit.

In the food industry, we advise you to work out a brand identity that connects your physical store with your online presence on your website and social media. Having a cohesive omnichannel brand experience is incredibly important and can help with brand recognition. Always use branded content across all channels and in your digital applications. 

Let’s check an example from the food industry: Los Gatos Meats shines out from other competitors with its strong branding. Selling high-quality meats, seafood, jerky, and pre-made foods, their logo and design align with their values and brand. Using black, white, and red as their base colors, they are visually promoting an elegant, enticing, and luxurious brand of meats. This creates a cohesive brand presence, resulting in better brand recognition, increased sales, and more.

2. Build an eCommerce Application for Food Delivery

While having a website is half the battle, today’s mobile purchase sales numbers make an eCommerce delivery app for your butcher shop a necessity. In the US, food delivery app revenue in 2020 was $26.5 billion. While eCommerce sales growth has slowed since the end of COVID, it’s still expected to grow significantly over the next decade.

When you are creating your butcher shop delivery app, make sure your application is user-friendly. Features such as showing both top-selling products and personalized recommendations make it easy for the user to fill up their online cart. Making your app easy to use only helps customers buy more, meaning more profit.

Butcher shops can also add promotions, and special deals, and show selected products to create additional incentives for users to order from your menu. Get inspired by Berkley Bowls, offering ‘Today’s Deals’ and special menu packages in their app available for iOS and Android.

Apps can also help you optimize business processes and offer a seamless customer experience. To do so, your app should facilitate easy inventory management. It’s useful to have a full product database to easily set up your eCommerce business and keep it updated in real-time with inventory changes. 

If you want to learn more about the requirements for building applications, read this blog article.

3. Send out Email Newsletters on Discounts and Promotions

Who thinks emails are dead? Worldwide, 4.73 billion users are estimated to use email by the end of 2026. Email remains one of the most important communication channels.

By building biweekly newsletter email campaigns, you can increase customer awareness and drive attention toward your butcher shop. Remind your customers that it’s time for a new order, invite them to download your app, or highlight news about your meats, your staff, and events. 

In general, newsletters should alternate between discounts and promotions, as well as regular news without promo codes. Doing too many discounts and promotions can decrease the perceived value of your brand/products, and too few can lead to customers going elsewhere. Find a balance between informing your customers and driving sales via discounts and promotions.

4. Drive Customer Loyalty Programs  

To date, 62% of consumers share deals with their friends. Organic, mouth-to-mouth marketing is one of the best ways to make your butcher shop known, and it can help you gain customers, drive sales, increase brand awareness, and more.

Loyalty programs have strong marketing power for three reasons. First, because they motivate us to engage; second, because they speak to people’s reward systems; and third, they inspire long-term commitment.

Customer loyalty programs can be facilitated with POS systems. Assessing what products your individual customers have acquired, POS can automatically assign points to their accounts. Assessing your customers’ data also allows you to identify their favorite meats, preferred payment method, or special food diets, which in return can come in handy for sending personalized messages to your most loyal clients.

Are you ready to improve your marketing strategy, attract foodies and boost your butcher shop’s revenue? Then it’s high time to leverage Local Express, an end-to-end eCommerce platform for butcher shops.

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