Walgreens: Marketing Strategies
Walgreens ranks the second largest Pharmacy store in the United States. The brick-and-mortar company has 9000 stores across 50 states in the US. Walgreens has risen from a small pharmacy at its establishment to a large pharmaceutical retailer, despite the competition from other retailers such as Rite Aid, Walmart, McKesson, and J. C. Penney. This fast development is attributed to the efficacy of Walgreens’ online marketing strategies that blend social, mobile, and local marketing approaches.
Social marketing
This marketing strategy targets influencing the behavior of individuals to their benefit and society. This can also be described as a brand humanization through engagement and inspiration of customers (Moore, 2011). Walgreen’s maintains an active social media and online presence all the time on Twitter, Facebook, Walk with Walgreens, Foursquare, Walgreens App, and website (Moore, 2011). The company has competent customer care staff on that socially listens and engages customers valuably. The appropriateness of marketing models ensures effective communication and relay of intended information to prospective buyers and customers (Moore, 2011). Walgreens gets an in-depth understanding of its audience through its customer care service, which has enabled it to tailor its products and services to satisfy customer wants and motivation. Integrated social communication with customers delivers seamless messages (Biernacki, 2019). This social interaction increases the chances of customer attraction to the product, and so it has been for Walgreens.
Mobile Strategies
These are multiple techniques of online marketing that focus on reaching a particular audience on websites, tablets, phones, emails, social media, or mobile applications. The company has registered an increase in online mobile interactions from 1% to 60% from 2009 (Lowery, 2017). Walgreens launched a strategy called ‘brick and click’ aimed at interacting with consumers in clicks rather than steps (Talbot, 2019). The Walgreens mobile app has been successful and ranks third after Amazon and Groupon among online marketing retailers (Lowery, 2017). However, Walgreens app users spend more than in-store users.
Walgreens has launched a strategy that incorporates both physical and mobile store shopping to reduce the cost of online shoppers incur. In-store shoppers spend three and half times less than online and physical location shoppers (Bhattacharyya, 2019). This is a practical approach of marketing to Walgreens because it seamlessly services millions of customers across the United States (Talbot, 2019). Besides, it has enabled the company to generate a lot more revenue and better customer engagement.
Local Marketing
This is a strategy that markets explicitly to a locality, the neighborhood of a physical store. All promotional activities are intended for a local audience rather than the mass population. Walgreens uses a regional marketing strategy to promote its non-pharmacy products, such as groceries, beauty accessories, and other retail (Talbot, 2019). The company has redesigned its locations and collaborated with other healthcare providers, which hosts clinics at their premises in given locations. Walgreens already partnered with Kroger grocery products and Home Chef at some locations to promote the business (Bhattacharyya, 2019). This approach of local marketing is effective in attracting more prospective customers to their local stores.
In conclusion, Walgreens uses a marketing mix approach to online marketing that has proven valuable to the company. The quick development of the business in such a competitive market is a result of the efficacy of their promotional strategies.
References
Bhattacharyya, S. (2019, April 25). How Walgreens plans to drive more traffic to its stores. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://digiday.com/retail/walgreens-plans-drive-traffic-stores/
Talbot, P. (2019, July 22). Inside Walgreens’ Marketing Strategy. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultalbot/2019/07/21/inside-walgreens-marketing-strategy/
Moore, P. (2011, December 07). Walgreens Case Study – Humanizing Social Business. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/walgreens-case-study-humanizing-social-business-0
Biernacki, S. (2019, December 10). 5 Social Media Best Practices Learned from Walgreens. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://emgonline.com/2011/07/social-media-concepts-from-walgreens/
Lowery, K. (2017, August 07). The Amazing Mobile Strategies of Sephora, Walgreens and BMW. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://www.sailthru.com/marketing-blog/the-amazing-mobile-strategies-of-sephora-walgreens-and-bmw/