Today, we are exploring how Trader Joe’s became a rapidly successfulldsports乐动体育 case study by virtue of its raving fans-authentic influencers who prolifically produce user-generated content that requires little to no content marketing spend on the part of the company itself. Many of our clients ask, “Why is内容营销重要吗？“我们今天对一家广受欢迎的杂货店进行的案例研究揭示了真正的、自下而上的病毒式内容营销对品牌成长的作用。在深入内容营销案例研究之前，让我们先回答一个重要问题：什么是用户生成的内容？

What is User-Generated Content?

• User-generated content is any type of content (such as blog posts, social media posts, videos, podcast episodes, articles, and downloadables) created by users or consumers of a system, product, or service and distributed publicly for mass consumption.
• User-generated content is a powerful driver for positive brand promotion because people listen to those who they know, like, and trust. This is why becoming an influencer on something like Instagram is such lucrative business, andthe easiest way to grow your instagramfollower count是使用一些类似于社交Follow的东西，这会增加曝光率。当粉丝们创造他们自己的内容来大肆宣扬一个品牌时，影响会非常广泛。
• 用户生成的内容由于其可信赖性和病毒式内容营销效果，可以为公司节省数百万美元的传统广告和营销费用。
• No only limited to its impacts on sales, user-generated content can inspire customer engagement as well as employee engagement. Customers want to feel like they can go onto a site, use it for how it’s needed and be able to do it all smoothly, this is why having something likeccm softwarecan be very beneficial to businesses who want to engage fully with their customers and their needs.

TraderJoe的用户生成内容：一个内容营销案例研究

Since its founding, Trader Joe’s has been viewed by its patrons as a neighborhood grocery store. The uniquely cheerful and knowledgeable staff, and the variety of foods not found at typical grocery stores, create a unique shopping experience for a growing population of knowledge- and health-hungry clients. And although large organizations like Walmart and Kroger strive to create a similar experience in various ways (e.g., smaller stores, organic food sections, international food sections, etc.), it’s challenging to replicate the experience that has produced Trader Joe’s massive cult following. Today, we will explore how crowdsourced and branded content marketing contributed to the massive rise in Trader Joe’s popularity since 2013.

Trader Joe’s is a fascinating case study for content marketing because they do not use marketing campaigns traditional to the food and grocery sector (e.g., frequent shoppers cards, coupons, billboard ads, social media campaigns, etc.) to attract their customers. Their selection is much more limited than other grocers’, and their advertising spend is extraordinarily minimal. Instead of traditional approaches to customer growth, Trader Joe’s started building their fanbase through weekly, cheeky “fearless flyer” ads that feature their favorite recipes linked to products available at the store that week. Fearless flyers follow a straight-forward content “recipe” (forgive the pun), embedding product advertising within the highly utilitarian and practical format of cooking and baking recipes. The model of efficiency and suave evident in TJ’s limited marketing allows them to focus resources on maximizing their assets–two critical assets in particular: people and food. By building intimate, friendly experiences for customers and employees, and limiting their stock to high-quality products that don’t force the consumer into a state of overwhelmed decision-making, Trader Joe’s has cultivated a loyal base of fans who rave about the brand.

As a result, Trader Joe’s cult-like following of fans generate a significant amount of contentforthe company. For example, one Twitter user described the “yummy, healthy Trader Joe’s items” on her shopping list to her more than 39,000 followers. Do a quick search for “Trader Joe’s Haul” on YouTube, and you can spend hours watching massive influencers (some with 500k+ followers) walk you through their week’s grocery finds:

The Relationship Between User-Generated Content and the Net Promoter Score

Astonishingly, Trader Joe’s has no official social media accounts, relying instead on influencers to brag, share, and post their recipes, grocery hauls, and reviews. User-generated content like this enables TJ’s to harness the power of what Frederick F. Reichheld calls“你需要成长的数字”: the Net-Promoter Score. In his widely populararticle on this topic–the one reprinted in哈佛商业评论10必须读取的战略营销—Reichheld argues that “in most industries, there is a strong correlation between a company’s growth rate and the percentage of its customers who are ‘promoters’–that is, those who say they are extremely likely to recommend the company to a friend or colleague” (162). Public engagement drives promotion, which enables an organization to commit its resources to internal process improvement rather than external advertising. Content marketing, then, is in the hands of the consumers who believe in the brand and feel a genuine desire to promote it.

Increasing Value-Added Profit through User-Generated Content

When organizations gain genuine promotion from their users, they can more rapidly achieve value-added profit. Trader Joe’s reliance on user-generated content supports their commitment to Lean process improvement, which is a systems engineering methodology known originally as the Toyota Production System and focuses on increasing value-added profit by reducing waste. Numerous companies, hospitals and educators from around the world flock to Toyota locations every year to learn their secrets of manufacturing efficiency. Kaizen, a Japanese word that means “change for better,” is featured as a core value on Trader Joe’s website. The idea is to do more with less by eliminating waste (ormuda), not overburdening people and not creating uneven production levels. Lean-thinking is at the heart of much of the activities at Trader Joe’s, like SKU number reductions to eliminate overwhelming shoppers with too many similar products. Or like re-thinking advertising spend as more and more users become fans who rave… and rave and rave.

Even employees of Trader Joe’s add to the brand’s high level of engagement and bottom-up promotion. Employees seem to love Trader Joe’s thanks to fair wages, benefits, attitudes and a high level of respect for employees. TJ’s commitment to livable wages and respect for people allows them to attract a highly talented pool of artsy, creative and out-going young people who possess a wealth of intellectual talent, but may be struggling to establish long-term career positions directly out of college. Trader Joe’s builds upon the intellectual capacity of its workforce, encouraging their talented employees to develop an in-depth experiential knowledge of every product in the store. Joe Coulumbe, Founder of Trader Joe’s, frequently remarks on how SKU reduction efforts enable his staff to know more about their products than even those products’ vendors. Coulumbe’s vision requires a huge amount of mental capacity and investigative ability from employees. By building a brand that aligns with employees’ values of minimalism, creativity, health, and fair sourcing, TJ’s catalyzes brand promotion not only from its customers, but also from its internal stakeholders. (For similar insight into how other organizations, like Starbucks and Compassion International spark brand engagement by starting with the employee experience, check out this great podcast on“星巴克对参与的了解”特色Driving Participation. Improving employee experience is a commonly adopted manner of making the workplace a more positive one by way of implementing things like those suggested byBlueboardsuch as service awards in order to recognize the efforts of employees.)

为了增加员工的知识基础，Trader Joe's非常重视培训和持续改进。然而，培训并没有花费大量的时间在实际的基于技能的学习上，而是花在公司价值观的迭代上。受乐动体育266过大学教育的创意人员有能力相对容易地学习技能，因此公司花更多时间让员工准备如何塑造品牌，为客户创造积极的体验。对软技能和公司愿景的关注激励员工产生一种“友好的邻里杂货店”的感觉。此外，TraderJoe's鼓励员工参与他们出售的食品。因为很多员工都是有创意的，所以他们找到了独特的方法来尝试食物。这常常激励他们将所学到的知识和建议传递给客户。投资是在内部产生知识，换句话说，在改善客户体验方面起着不可或缺的作用。顾客求助于TJ的员工，不仅是为了完成任何杂货店所期望的平凡任务（即快速扫描和打包我的物品），而且还让他们参与菜单准备、产品选择、葡萄酒搭配、花卉布置和智能本地啤酒记录。（要了解更多关于TJ品牌体验的灵感培养——从在商店里藏毛绒玩具到用随意的慷慨行为取悦顾客，比如向似乎值得提神的顾客分发免费巧克力棒——请阅读以下文章）14 Tasty Secrets of Trader Joe’s Employees).

So what are the keyldsports乐动体育 快餐的探索的乐趣,古怪的brand like Trader Joe’s? Here they are:

Key Take-Aways on the Potential of User-Generated Content

• An organization’s health and potential for growth can be measured by the authenticity and impact of its user-generated content.
• User-generated content drives brand promotion both internally through employee engagement as well as externally through customer engagement.
• 知识的增长激发了参与。优先考虑员工知识的组织将创建受启发的粉丝群，他们信任品牌或组织使命的可信度和真实性。
• Companies can collaborate with raving fans to sponsor user-generated content that positively promotes their brands from the artistic viewpoints of users.

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