Wegmans grocery store is one of the great content marketing examples. How do I know? My wife, Suzy, loves the store. Thing is, we don’t even have one here in Utica! She knows, likes and trusts the brand yet the closest Wegmans to us is in the Syracuse area.
How does she know about it? You’ll see…
Wegmans got its start in Rochester. Called the Rochester Fruit & Vegetable Company in 1916, it was run by brothers Walter and John Wegman. There are now stores in six states with more on the way.
Wegmans food quality, selection, and service are as good as it gets. But why do I like its content marketing?
Wegmans’ Content Marketing Offline and Online
Because last weekend Suzy’s sister, who lives in Rochester, brought her a copy of Wegmans’ magazine, “Menu.” It’s a gorgeous, glossy 130 pages full of recipes and articles. So I went to the website and found more recipes, services organized into easy-to-find categories, and a top navigation link called Eat Well Live Well.
The articles in the magazine include Tastes of Asia, Mexico, and Italy. Smart snacking, popular cakes for your celebrations, fondue ideas for winter parties, winter warming wines, and cocktails. There’s even one with an environmental slant on sea food sustainability.
On the website are pages organized into Nutrition Facts, Special Diets, Food Solutions and Principles of healthy eating. All of these are in the Eat Well Live Well section. Each page on the site and article in the magazine tie into a product or service Wegmans offers their customers.
Business owners and marketers wonder, “How can we be interesting enough to publish content that people will read and benefit from?”
Well, Wegmans is JUST A GROCERY STORE! But look at the world they’ve created with their content marketing. A world based on their products and services.
The best definition of content marketing is by Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is the strategic marketing approach of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience—with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”
If you can create and distribute (remember, you own your media, your website) valuable, relevant, and consistent content, you can build a following, too. But you have to open your mind to a world outside of the everyday transactions of your business. It’s a world that your customers or clients live in. And it’s based on your products and services.
This is not the easiest thing in the world to do at first. I’ve helped businesses with their websites, blog posts, and custom magazines who are lawyers, manufacturers, insurance agencies, architects, beauty salons, franchises and more. What I’ve found is that the people in business often don’t realize how interesting they really are.
If you are looking for more content marketing examples, let me know. And it often takes an outside writer/marketer to bring out what you do best for the world to see. Content marketing is much more than advertising…it’s an informative, engaging and sometimes even good-time publishing format that will grow your business.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Burns is an SEO web writer specializing in persuasive copywriting and content marketing. He provides clients a winning content strategy plus the special web writing to make it work. You can contact Nick here.
