One of  My client, Hong Kong Food Market, is an international supermarket brand based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Established in 2005, it is the largest Asian grocery store in the city. The store underwent a change of ownership in mid-2024, and I began working as their technology and marketing consultant to support their transition and growth.

I got in touch with the new owners & they had a desire to improve store profits with promotions & digital marketing.

After doing a detailed research on the brand’s local presence & customer base, I went on a consultation call with the store owner & proposed strategies & action plans to promote brand loyalty & strategic way to improve customer walk-in rate. 

I found out through a little research that same brand name is present worldwide with 100+ stores & each store is operated by an individual owner which created a lot of confusion in digital space with so many different websites, logo’s, social media pages for the same brand name.

However when I started the store had ZERO digital presence apart from automatically created Google Business Profile by store visitors.

I proposed the strategies & a systematic way to implement those strategies to improve brand loyalty & increase sales which is discussed below

Strategy One: Built a Stunning Branding Website with a business email

The first implementation that I have done after taking control as a consultant for the store’s online brand identity is to rework the brand LOGO to display the city name below. I also requested to update the logo in all places inside the store & the public display board.  

Although this small change didn’t matter to the local shoppers in the store, it made a tremendous impact in the online world in setting apart the store from other stores with the same in different location.

Now we had a unique brand Identity to leverage online. 

I matched it with creating a unique domain name (HkMarketNola.com) with city name at the end.

The Logo & the domain name is a perfect match. I created a stunning website with actual photos & videos of the store with the store’s brand colours.

I also created a professional business email to create other social accounts. 

The website is sent to google index to aid SEO through google search console account & installed to track visitors with google analytics account all linked to the business email. 

The website name is updated on the every receipt of customers purchase to build offline brand. 

Strategy Two: Taking Control of Google Business Profile

Thanks to store visitors, the store already had an unclaimed Google business profile with plenty of user reviews.

The business profile has to go through multiple verification mediums & waiting period to claim a business profile that’s unclaimed for years. 

But I know it’s a hidden gold for us & encourages the store owners to be patient & explained it’s worth to go through the trouble temporarily to get access to variety of marketing tools offered free by google. 

I claimed the google business profile through the business email of the store made the profile strength from  POOR to GOOD in just a few weeks time. 

The profile strength is improved by providing latest logo, updated website link, recent high quality store photos & lot of other nuances including but not limited to responding to every good and bad review, responding to customer questions & posting regular updates about store events. 

Strategy Three: Creation of Social Media Pages for the store with unique brand Identity

Now that I have established an unique brand identity, it’s time to leverage it to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIN, Youtube & Google My Business. 

All these social profiles are created with same logo & with unique brand banner image that displayed prominent tag line of the store. 

All social profiles are submitted to google business profile & updated on the website for customers.  

We post weekly updates about store events, promotions, and new product launches on all our social media platforms. Additionally, we will publicly announce the monthly gift card winners on social media along with exceptional pictures they have shared to enhance brand loyalty online.

Strategy Four: Implemented QR Based Customer Loyalty Program increased sign-up rate from 10% to 30% in 30 days

The store already had a rewards program implemented with billing CRM through customers phone number, I analysed the sign-up rate is less than 10% of the walk-in customers when offered manually through checker.

I implemented a custom QR Based Web App runs inside website to improve the sign-up rate for the loyalty program & at the same time automate the sign-up’s without checker’s intervention. 

Now that QR Based Sign Holder for registration of Loyalty program is displayed at every billing counters & customers who had enough time waiting at these counters started registering by themselves scanning the QR through their phone & we started receiving 30% more automatic registrations for the loyalty program from the first week of implementation of QR Based Web App for Loyalty proram. . 

Obviously we incentivised the automatic sign-up’s by offering a exclusive joining bonus of $5 for voluntary sign-up through QR code. 

The $5 Coupon is automatically generated by the billing CRM the store used & I created the tight integration between the QR Webapp & the billing CRM so that this process happen seamlessly. 

With this simple move, The sign-up rate for the loyalty program tripled & at the same time we have also started collecting the users email’s automatically which is not done previously. 

The exclusive $5 coupon that’s promised for voluntary sign-up’s is sent exclusively to Email & SMS automatically from the billing CRM & we reminded them every week to use the coupon until it’s used, which encouraged the users to come back to the store once again.  

Strategy Five: Email List Built through Loyalty program is used to bring back customers by sending weekly offers.  

We now have a solid email list with thousands of subscribers, and it’s growing rapidly every week thanks to our new QR web app implementation.

The first email we send is an exclusive $5 coupon along with instructions on how to redeem it during their next store visit. In that same email, we also ask for feedback on their shopping experience by directing them to an interactive and easy-to-use feedback form.

As a result, we are pleasantly surprised by the feedback we receive each week. Some comments are simple, like “There’s no signboard for the toilets,” while others include requests for an express checkout for senior citizens.

While some feedback is implemented easily, others are still a work in progress. However, The store manager now gains new insights every week, receiving fresh customer perspectives to consider.

For example, We received feedback requesting that we notify customers when fresh vegetables are available.

In response, we began sending notifications the day before fresh fruits and vegetables are stocked. Our customers have appreciated these email updates.

Additionally, we include weekly offers, promotions, and new arrivals in those notification emails.

Strategy Six: QR Based Social Connect System Standees displayed across store doubled our social following in 30 days. 

On our peak business days, we see up to 1,000 customers walk into the store. To leverage this foot traffic, I developed a system designed to build our social media following and generate content automatically.

It’s called the Social Connect System.

We have life-sized standees and retractable banners displayed throughout the store to motivate customers to participate in the contest by sharing their images and videos taken inside.

This QR Based social connect system encourages customers to share photos and videos of their experiences in the store on their social media accounts by tagging our hashtag, #hkmarketcontest. 

As a result, we’ve started receiving fantastic photos and videos from our customers. We select the best submissions and feature them on our official social media page s.

We also provide gift cards to those who send us great content and publish a winners’ list every month on our social profiles .

This strategy not only generates social marketing content automatically but also turns our loyal customers into some of our best brand advocates .