Trader joe’s infectious popularity

Photo by Harrison Keeley | Wikimedia Commons

A couple of years ago, if someone were to have asked me where I could find a Trader Joe’s around me. I would have looked at them confusingly and answered: Maybe at the next Farmers Market?

From their limited seasonal products to their signature brown paper bags, Trader Joe’s has certainly built themselves what I can only describe as an intense and loyal fanbase. People (my girlfriend included), will *literally* drop what they are doing and head to Trader Joe’s in search for their latest and greatest product. It’s gotten to the point where there are pages that have amassed millions of followers such as “traderjoeslist” who specialize in highlighting what’s new every week the grocery store. 

On social media, the grocery store has amassed over 3 million followers across three primary platforms: Instagram, Youtube, and Pinterest. 

As we take a deep dive into the analytics of their presence on social media in the past year, Trader Joe’s averages about 112,694 Public Engagements per Year. According to Sprout Social, that averages to about 4,334.38 Public Engagements per post. Compared to other competitors such as Walmart and Stop & Shop, Trader Joe’s is significantly ahead in terms of engagement despite them all averaging a similar amount of posts. After reading Ch.2 of Olivier Blanchard’s Social Media ROI, it’s clear that these engagement metrics highlight the successful strategies that Trader Joe’s has implemented to their Instagram page.

Competitor Profile Analysis from SproutSocial

After evaluating their pages, it seems that Trader Joe’s brands themselves as “Your Neighborhood Grocery Store”. It’s a place that isn’t just a shop to purchase food, but other essential items as well and they seem to have a great sense of what their community wants. For example, when Trader Joe’s first released their frozen Kimbap. Social media went crazy for it. All of a sudden, there were several content creators creating authentic UGC highlighting the product and it only took a few hours to sell out nationwide. Another key point I noticed was that many of their posts also highlight potential recipes that their consumers can try to make at home with their ingredients. Similar to the teachings in The Marketing Playbook by Sharon Lee Thony, Trader Joe’s has an effective content creation strategy and is sticking to it. Therefore, building a sense of community as well as authenticity.

It’s clear that the buzz about Trader Joe’s has worked and as they expand. It’s been interesting to see how their strategy and vision clearly comes into display. Based on information found on Buzzsumo, I found that the word “Trader Joe’s”has a search volume of 11.1 M, its cost per Click is $1.47 and there have been over 2K articles published about them. To no surprise, their most related keywords ended up being “grocery store near me” or “Trader Joe’s near me” and the most engaging webpage is actually a link to their website, where you can submit a form and request a Trader Joe’s to be built somewhere near you. 

It’s clear the Trader Joe’s cares a lot about their community. Recently, they revealed their 16th Annual Customer Choice Awards winners which highlighted a selection of products that were their consumers’ favorites of the year. However, although it is a great concept and a community based activity. Based on their public engagement score, those posts didn’t perform nearly as well as their normal food-based content.

It is great that Trader Joe’s has consistent and engaging content, however I would suggest that the page implement some more variety in terms of the stylistic choice of their food photos and ways they involve their devoted community. When I view their feed, it seems to be a cluster of all of their different products, I would love to see more faces and people trying/reviewing their products. If Trader Joe’s were to tap into their consumers a bit more I think that would result in more public engagements. Another area of improvement I noticed was their podcast viewership, although it was difficult to tell accurate numbers of the amount of listens they get. On YouTube, their podcast episodes barely reach over 1k views per video compared to their recipe videos that receive upwards of 1 million views per video. 

The Trader Joe’s craze continues to be alive and strong. It’s fascinating to see how their company’s missions and values are clearly demonstrated from the top and all the way down to the bottom. There is a lot of trust that a Trader Joe’s product will be high quality and doubters do not need to look very far to find rave reviews about one of their products.