Lowe's maintains a healthy balance between push and pull marketing techniques, which both makes potential customers aware of the role the brand could play in their lives as well as entices them to make a purchase from the home improvement store. Lowe's advertises on TV, in print publications and on billboards across the country. This puts their products -- or even just the idea of a home project, as demonstrated in the billboard below -- in front of consumers.
These techniques get customers thinking about what Lowe's has to offer, even if they didn't have a home project in mind at the time. If you saw this commercial on TV this summer, it might have inspired you to revamp your back deck, too.
And if you had seen these inserts in your daily or weekly newspaper, you might have decided to go to Lowe's to buy a product you didn't realize they had or something the circular reminded you that you wanted.
Online, Lowe's allows customers to opt in to emails that alert them to online and local sales, as well as ideas for new projects.
Lowe's balances all the pushing with a considerable amount of pulling -- enticing customers to visit their site and perhaps one of their stores. They host a Creative Ideas community blog, where users can upload photos and a story or how-to describing projects they've completed or ask questions about ones they're working on. This rewards the customers who want to share their project stories, as well as provides inspiration to other customers wanting to do something similar. Building this community on lowes.com creates good content and draws more people to join the home improvement customer community there.
Lowe's also creates its own content to draw readers/customers with the How-To Library. This content is pulled together by experts who help customers do things such as pick color schemes or repair drywall. It's valuable information that could pull a customer in who knows they need to stain their back deck but doesn't know exactly where to start. With help from the Lowe's How-To Library, that customer can see step-by-step instructions for the project, and then it's likely that the customer would then purchase the materials needed from Lowe's, the place that helped in the first place.
The home improvement store also has an app that allows you to shop from your mobile device as well as locate products in the store (which, let me tell you, is super handy when you're going in there with a very specific list). There's also the MyLowe's feature that allows you to track your purchases, which may eliminate the need for the very specific list if it's not your first time buying a certain product. And if you're not an app person, you're in luck -- lowes.com is mobile friendly.
Lowe's is active on social media, which I talked about in another Lowe's-is-awesome post, and which is another marketing technique they use to pull customers into their site. Lowes.com has social buttons in their footer to allow customers to easily connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and Google+.
It's difficult for me to come up with a criticism for the home improvement store that I have visited so many times since my husband and I bought our house last fall, but I do have one bone to pick with Lowe's. Up to maybe half of the times I've been to one of our local Lowe's stores, I've been "helped" by someone who did not know much about the department they were supposed to be covering.
In order for Lowe's to successfully market themselves as the home improvement experts that their website and advertising efforts make them out to be, the people in the stores need to be knowledgeable about their products. After all, the point of the pushing and the pulling Lowe's does is to get customers into a Lowe's store. And if the customers happen to be assisted by someone who doesn't know what they're doing, that experience, along with customer loyalty, is ruined. So Lowe's, beef up your employee training. Because like many homeowners, when I walk into a home improvement store, I need help!
