2. Trader Joe’s began in 1958 in the Los Angeles
area as a chain called “Pronto Markets.”
In 1967 they opened the first “Trader Joe’s”
and started carrying fresh, unique specialty
items.
Trader Joe’s “skips the middle man” and sells
most products under their own label, buying
items from local and international vendors.
3. Trader Joe’s currently is located in over 30
states and has 365 locations. Their gourmet
food provided at great prices strategy helped
them expand by being different from other
chain stores. Between 1990 and 2001, the
chain quintupled the store number and
increased its profits by ten times so clearly
word of mouth has been working out for
Trader Joe’s. My problem is Trader Joe’s lacks a
social media presence.
4. Trader Joe’s has extremely loyal fans that have
only positive things to say about them. They
currently don’t have major advertising or a
social media presence and rely on the
“Fearless Flier” they carry in their stores and
their loyal customers word-of-mouth to
expand business. I think they could benefit
from social media because they already have
people saying good things about them and
they need to use theme to their advantage.
5. Mobile Campaign
First off, Trader Joe’s should start off with a
mobile campaign. They should collect
customers phone numbers and send out bi-
weekly text coupons with information on
specials for the week as well as discounts that
customers can only use if they are signed up
for texting discounts. They should send these
texts out at the same time every other week so
customers come to expect them, plus people
like consistency.
6. Phone Applications
They already have success with their Fearless
Flier and are loved for being an
environmentally conscious company. They
should put these two traits together and create
a phone application that mirrors the Fearless
Flier and eventually phase out the physical
Fearless Flier as a “green” move for the
company.
7. Building an Online Presence
Although it’s a positive many people have good
things to say about Trader Joe’s online, the fact
that they don’t have their own site for people
to say things on is a problem because if people
have complaints they need a way to reach
Trader Joe’s and if they have a public place to
do this people can see how Trader Joe’s is
willing to work with their customers and has a
good public relations team.
8. Social Media
Trader Joe’s needs to create their own official
Twitter and Facebook fanpage. If they did this
they could coordinate the recipes they feature
in their Fearless Flier phone application onto
these pages. With the Twitter page they can
retweet customers praises and respond to this
to show they are engaged with their
customers. On their Facebook page they can go
into more detail and use it to explain what’s
going on with the store and company.
9. Trader Joe’s also could expand with Google ads
and use adwords such as
gourmet, healthy, organic, wine, specialty
foods, unique, value, variety, environmental, F
earless Flier, etc.
If Trader Joe’s were to implement these
strategies they would be able to monitor if
they were successful or not. Using Google
analytics and other tools they can see how
often their sites are getting hit as well as how
many people are searching for their adwords.
10. I think a fair budget for Trader Joe’s to
implement on their social marketing plan
would be one million. They can use this for
their Google ads as well as hiring social media
employees and a public relations team to
maintain the upkeep and respond to as many
customers they can on their Twitter and
Facebook pages. With this new plan they can
make goals to expand their clientele and keep
track of what’s working since they can monitor
their sites traffic which is something they can’t
do with their current word-of-mouth
advertising strategy.
