Sparkle Markets

Local grocery chain goes digital.

Services Offered

Challenge

Sparkle Markets, a locally owned grocery chain with 11 stores across Northeast Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, had relied on print and television advertising for decades. After 67 years in business, the owners recognized the need to modernize their approach and reach customers through digital channels. They faced the challenge of maintaining brand awareness in a competitive grocery market, communicating consistently with their target audience on a reduced media budget, and delivering valuable content that would drive foot traffic to their stores.

Solution

McConnell Marketing partnered with Sparkle Markets to develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that complemented their traditional efforts. By leveraging social media, email marketing, and other digital platforms, we helped the brand maintain visibility, engage its audience with meaningful content, and optimize media spend. This modernized approach allowed Sparkle Markets to continue connecting with their loyal customers while attracting new ones, setting the brand apart from competitors in the grocery space.

Client Goals

1. Maintain Brand Awareness – Keep the Sparkle brand top-of-mind in a competitive grocery market.

2. Communicate Efficiently – Engage consistently with the target audience while optimizing media spend.

3. Drive Customer Traffic – Share valuable content that encourages current and potential customers to visit stores.

Social Media Management

McConnell Marketing developed a social media strategy based on consistency and quality content in order to maintain engagement with Sparkle’s followers. Regular content features recipes, sale items, how-tos, custom infographics, and more. Utilizing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube, audiences and target segmented audiences see posts and ads created specifically for each platform. Our commitment to responding to followers—quickly, accurately, and politely—with many interactions coming outside of business hours, has proven imperative to success. By providing current customers with valuable content and information, and enticing non-customers to choose Sparkle through paid posts and social advertising on Facebook and Instagram, Sparkle’s Facebook audience has grown by almost 4,000 followers, with an average of 15,000 post engagements per month.

Digital Cooking Show

For over 20 years, Sparkle shoppers enjoyed a three-minute cooking segment on local TV, building connections with the on-air personality and driving in-store purchases. To make the program more sustainable, McConnell Marketing transitioned it to a digital format, Sparkle Eats, airing on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. This shift cut media costs, reduced production time, and created a more relatable, home-style presentation. Featuring timely recipes tied to sale items, the digital series has generated thousands of views while encouraging customers to visit Sparkle stores.

Text Marketing

To reach a younger target audience, McConnell Marketing started a texting program for Sparkle Markets. Subscribers opt in by indicating what subject of texts they would like to receive (sale items, information, and/or recipes) and are then sent up to four text messages per month with the information requested. Text program sign-up codes were shared through social media, emails, printed weekly circulars, the website, and in-store posters. In the first year, the subscriber list grew to 2,444.

Email Marketing

Over the years, we have worked to build Sparkle’s email subscriber list and utilize it in a way that provides relevant information on a consistent basis to those who have said they are interested in hearing from Sparkle. All emails were redesigned to include cleaner graphics, enticing product and recipe photography, and clear headlines for skimmability. In addition to the weekly email, special, targeted emails are sent out featuring product specials, store-specific information, news and special sales – all utilizing list segments to reach specific members of the target audience. On average, Sparkle Market sees an average 30% open rate, 6% click-through rate, and 35 new subscribers per week organically.

“McConnell Marketing has handled our marketing for over 20 years. They have worked to significantly build our follower and customer base. The new digital initiatives they have created have not only cut our budget, but also helped us to reach and gain new customers.”

Tony Modarelli | President | Sparkle Markets

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