Third and final piece of my grocery store dealer marketing program for Cadbury Schweppes.  The strategy was written in April 2008 for the Techdirt Insight Community.  Part I covered blog strategy for grocers, and part II explained way to connect with moms using social networks.

A.  In separate promotions, start a user generated content contest for beverages. Don't just set it up.  Work with a slideshow and video provider like Flektor.com (a sister company to MySpace) to create a branded, specific UGC contest.  Think of the way that George Lucas provided Star Wars images and fans to make machinima and videos.  Diet Coke missed the opportunity, but you can  tightly manage the submissions.  You can even use a satire section set up to specifically make fun of your product.  That section can be used to shunt criticism by activists into a separate channel.

Budget:  $50,000-$$500,000+. Works best as a national program rolled out with the full force of the Marketing and Advertising departments.

ROI: Branding, Consumer Loyalty, and Free Advertising 

B) Text Clubs:  Specifically for 7-11, set up text clubs with number limits.  If someone enters a local store, POS materials provide a text message that they can send to sign up for a special coupon.  If you reach 500, or 1000 members, it triggers the coupon, and one person in the bunch gets entered in a grand prize. Smaller prizes can include cool cell phones, computers, software, and of course, drinks and candy.

Budget:  $50-$500,000 - depends on what  you do.  The text clubs are cheap.  The prizes and advertising are a different story.

ROI:  Easiest measure, as it's based on number of text club signups.  

C) Monitor forums, blogs, and websites using specific monitoring software (RelevantMind.com for forums, umbria or collectivex for blogs). 

Budget: $2-5,000 a month

ROI:  Can you afford not to?   

D) Build a social network for grocers and distributor on Ning. 

It's very easy to set up, and if you take the time to create a social network that allows grocers to share information and trade tips, you'll get the credit for building and maintaing a network that the grocers could easily start on their own. This idea can be fleshed out more, but take a look at www.recruitingblogs.com, which has over 5000 members, to see how a community can grow from the bottom up, with minor direction.  

Budgetary:  $10-$20,000

ROI:  Internal messaging to dealers.  Invaluable dealer surveys and demographics 

 There are a lot of ways to utilize social media to drive in traffic, but it all begins with local platforms that Cadbury can help build by providing the training and infrastructure.  The technology is cheap and reliable. It's all about selecting the right consultants, starting with the right internal people, and integrating the program into existing dealer and Cadbury advertising. 

Some of the tools and ideas have changed, but this is the kind of program I put together when planning out a social media strategy.  I'm speaking with a local agency about their successes in this space, and hope to be able to publish more ideas and case studies of older work.

This is the second part of my marketing strategy for grocery retailers.  It discusses a better way to use Mom blogs and social networks to connect with consumers. In the comment section of the original TechDirt Insight Community post, a reader pointed out a kid-angle that was an excellent addition to my strategy.  Keep in mind this strategy was written back in April of 2008, so a lot has changed since then.

Phase II:

A series of well-timed, well-planned social media campaigns powered by the original blogging team (and the dealers who come online in growth phases.

A. Connecting with Mom Social Networks:

They're all over the web, and the only way to get involved is to be part of them.  Companies and PR firms are throwing money and products at moms online in hopes of securing reviews.  It's a short-sighted and ultimately fruitless strategy, as moms who take money and product are no longer objective.  But if Cadbury could learn how to truly interact with moms by being part of the social media world, they'll be accepted as an insider.

Rather than free product, the local bloggers learn to listen and respond to complaints and suggestions.  And all Cadbury had to do was train them. 

1) Charity Giveaway - tie in existing local charity work with the blogs and get the social networks to pitch in. 

2) Use mom=powered content to help content for grocery newsletters.  Build up their blogs and networks by working with them to promote their content. 

3) POS items - advertise Mom Social Networks with which you have a relationship.  Integrate your online efforts with Store Displays. 

Budget:  Training and Social Media  $10-$20,000

ROI:  MomBlogs and Mom Social networks represent up to 38% of the mom population, and that number is growing each day.  Calculate the ROI of being the first recognized name in a market that actually cares what moms have to say about the products they buy and the stores in which they shop.  

I don't like to give away strategy too much, but this particular strategy has already been published at the Techdirt Insight Community.  The challenge was to create a marketing plan for Cadbury Schweppes to use with their local retailing partners, and my response was one of the top insights. If you're looking for this kind of analysis, I would highly suggest you sponsor a case and reach out to this particular community. 

Here is Part I of my response (scroll down on the link to find the rest). 

The challenge facing any promotion with retail partners is the need to generate local action from a coordinated national strategy.  To be successful, Cadbury should look for examples of local internet marketing successes from their retailers, strengthen those local attempts, and create an easily replicated dealer program managed by a social media expert. 

Phase I: Helping Grocers Go Local

The margins for grocery stores are very slim, and the expertise in marketing is often limited to print ads and store displays.  The key here is to look for ways to use the internet to publish what local stores are doing without asking them to duplicate effort.  This is essential, as local stores don't have a platform to publish their information.  They rely on mailers and the store displays, but that can easily be transitioned to a blog platform that can then be used for local advertising.  This is no easy task (the convincing), but if dealers can be taught to use social media to publish information they are already creating, you'll be able to help them do the heavy lifting in terms of driving traffic to the store. 

A.  Grocery newsletters:  One of the easiest transitions is taking e-mail recipe newsletters and turning them into blogs.  Most grocers have a list of some kind they use to push out recipes to the local community.  The content is already digital, and when published in a blog form, it's an easy step for grocers to take towards social media. 

Cadbury Blog Starter Kit:  Using Wordpress or Movable Type, Cadbury can create a series of blog starter kits that a grocery could use to put a blog up in under a day.  Tightly controlling the content and allowing White labeling for each store, the stores can begin publishing the newsletter on a blog, generating it as an RSS Feed, and improving search engine optimization without doing anything more than publishing old content. 

Building a starter kit for grocery stores to have a local blog is a good first step in getting them to leverage the internet, but it is just the first step.  Think of it as a Trojan horse effect. You're giving them the means to have a turnkey online publishing platform, but you're really giving them a platform that Cadbury can use to pitch itself as a partner to the grocers (which seems to be the point of the exercise).

B. Picking Your Partners Wisely: 

You can't launch a large-scale program across your entire retailer network and expect it to work.  To minimize risk and maximize the chances of success, look for partners who already have some kind of online presence.  Some local grocer - someone at Albertsons or Kroger or elsewhere has some kind of social media experience. To get started, pick 5 or 10 locations and practice ways to use the blog to affect the local market.  Picking 5-10 ringers will give you advantages in managing, setting expectations, and will allow you to build the nucleus of a social media team.

C.  Train the bloggers to be social media experts.

In addition to pushing local content, the 5-10 bloggers can be trained on Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Flektor, Flikr, and half-dozen other social media softwares.  Your goal is to have them become part of the social media community in their local area.  Using Twitter local, joining local blog communities, attending social media events, and most of all, sharing their experiences will give them the "street cred" to be accepted as social media types and not clumsy corporate bloggers trying to drive traffic. Putting local emphasis on each blogger creates the conditions for local evangelism.

Local evangelism means an established presence in the community from people who are not paid to blog.  If you want to drive traffic, join the local community and let them drive your traffic.

D.  Create an ad budget.  

Blog Advertising locally is very cheap.  For a few hundred dollars a quarter, you can have a big affect on local blogging, pushing people to the local grocery store site.  Think of it as co-op ad dollars.  

E. Train the Stores to replicate advertising information on the blog. 

The eventual goal of the blog/local online platform is to teach retailers that they can publish the information they are currently paying to publish in mailers and newspapers in online forums.  This doesn't require additional coupons, but instead is free publishing for coupons and specials the store is already running.  You're taking store advertising online, and making it free.

 And it's all prepped, taught, and managed by a small Cadbury team of 1 or 2 people.  You're helping bring grocery stores into the next century through the use of Cadbury dealer blogs.  The hard part is understanding the white labeled blog platforms.  The stores won't do it if this is branded Cadbury or your beverage division.  You're actually giving them something of immense value because of the good will it creates, and in doing so, you're showing that you are indeed committed to bringing in more traffic, and not just selling your products.

The small size of the program allows you to expand as success is reached.  If just 1 or 2 of the 10 blogs works well, you now have the blueprint, and what you'll find is this will absolutely work if you create the right training program and pick the right people to staff it.    

To Summarize: Create a blog training program that uses local content, creates an online platform for local retailers, and gives you a nucleus of social media trained partners to help you implement larger projects.

Timeframe:  3-6 months

Budget:  $100,000 (for infrastructure, social media consultants), and local advertising.

ROI:  Fully formed social media team, both for local dealers, and for Cadbury/7-Up/Dr. Pepper.  Measurable stats in traffic, SEO, and press mentions from project (you're assured of getting in ADAge for this one), as well as hundreds of high-quality links from business bloggers discussing the strategy.  Long-term benefit of platform that can be utilized for future promotions.  

For more of my responses, check out my Gold Level Expert profile.