Christian Gilbert
Lowe’s
Smart Advertising
When I
started with this topic, I only knew the basic differences between how the two
major hardware stores advertised. I knew Lowes was more amateur friendly
towards their customers while Home Depot aimed to attract the professional.
Their main advertising campaigns seemed fairly self-evident, but there I did
learn more about how Lowe’s is using clever marketing techniques to perform
more effective advertising.
The unique
thing Lowe’s is doing starts with a handy little card. It is not a credit card
or business card, it’s basically a purchase tracking card called the myLowes
card. What this does is track the specifics of what you purchase, whether it be
a certain paint color, size of screws, or type of filters. While this is mainly
a very helpful way to help customers track their orders and remember what they
need, it also serves a great purpose in how they advertise. Everything that is
purchased is stored on a database, allowing Lowe’s to learn your purchasing
habits. If you were to be shopping for patio furniture and yard care, the
website would actively target you with products and sales in that interest.
This is clever by itself, but they use this to create wider sales and marketing
by seeing what people are buying. This is something Home Depot is not doing, or
at least not yet.
This has
shown me that even though they are still second behind their competitor, they
are making a large effort to change that by being more engaged with a larger
portion of people. I knew they were more engaging with the lesser experienced,
which is a larger population. That can attribute to why Lowe’s is just as large
as Home Depot. They also offer more support and knowledge for its customers.
They give customers specials like meeting installers every few months and a
helpful if not overly involved staff. Knowing now how Lowe’s is playing a more
engaging marketing game, it seems like Lowe’s possesses the basis to convince
more people to shop there.
If there
is a pressing need for the public to know something about this campaign, it’s
that Lowe’s gets advertising. It’s a different world now than when Lowe’s was
just a regional hardware shop, and they know how to use today’s tech to benefit
them in the most effective way. If you find Lowe’s to be more so the place you
would shop, know it isn’t a coincidence. They are playing their hand perfectly
and it’s no real wonder why they’re consistently giving America’s #1 hardware
store a run for it’s money.
