Earlier we did a SWOT Analysis of Sam’s Club, an only membership retail warehouse club. This time we will conduct the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés.
El Corte Inglés is one of the world leaders in department stores and a benchmark of Spanish distribution. They have been operating since 1940 and have seen some great achievements throughout their long journey and their future looks just as bright. Why? Because they have remained authentic and true to the customer’s choice and needs.
Another factor that helped El Corte Inglés remain a giant has been its marketing efforts. As the world switches to the virtual mode in the current scenario and if you are interested in learning about the latest – check out our Free MasterClass on Digital Marketing 101 by the CEO and Founder of IIDE, Karan Shah.
Do you want to know how El Corte Inglés became so successful in the retail industry? In this blog, we will learn the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés and decode the answer. But before digging into that, let us learn more about El Corte Inglés as a company, its founders, products, competitors and other details.
About El Corte Inglés
El Corte Inglés is the largest department store group in Europe, headquartered at Madrid, Spain. It stands among the third largest department store groups worldwide. The products of El Corte Inglés range from clothing, footwear, accessories, bedding, furniture, jewellery, beauty products and more.
El Corte Inglés’s journey began initially in 1934, Ramón Areces Rodriguez and Cesar Rodriguez Gonzalez, bought a tailor’s shop and made it into a limited company.
Areces had travelled to Havana, Cuba and worked at the famous retail chain Almacenes El Encanto, where he learned about the basics of the department store business. In 1940, he established the tailor’s shop into the current corporation El Corte Inglés.
| CEO | Isidoro Alvarez |
|---|---|
| CMO | N/A |
| Area Served | Spain |
| Industry | Retail |
| Market Share/ Revenue | €15.783 Billion |
| Vision | Constant adaptation to the new trends and needs of society. |
| Tagline | The store for all your shopping |
Marketing Strategy of El Corte Inglés
Let’s learn about the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés! And how El Corte Inglés carries the marketing campaign etc.
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
El Corte Inglés focuses on the younger generation as its target market and offers a lot of opportunities to younger people for scholarships or half prices to name a few. Whilst, they target younger people. El Corte Inglés also tends to play the long game when it comes to repeat customers.
El Corte Inglés also offers a mix of high-end products which were once accustomed to at a young age. The youth of today will return to and potentially even become buyers of other high-end sophisticated products.
El Corte Inglés has positioned itself as the smartest of the people. Creating a sense of belonging. However, it has also managed to create a position wherein they are not only catering to the middle and lower middle class but has products for which even the rich buy.
Marketing Campaigns
As discussed earlier, El Corte Inglés is a very public company and that is noticeable in the way they market themselves. They don’t market themselves, rather they market their customers.
El Corte Inglés sought Planet’s data scientists to assist them in understanding how they could increase sales more effectively, with a focus on international shoppers.
As a result, shoppers from these three countries were given priority for the campaign because they represented the greatest potential for sales growth.
Even so, knowing who to target is one thing; getting them into the store to spend freely is quite another.
Planet’s solution was a digital marketing campaign that specifically targeted visitors from each of these countries in order to increase foot traffic to the Barcelona store. The campaign aimed to increase and measure footfall to the store as well as increase in-store sales by 10% from each source market.
It may appear simple, but in order to be successful, we needed to ensure that we were reaching the right people at the right time through the right channels. Especially in such a crowded market.
The campaign was a great success, delivering 1,139 Store Visits from 1,080,713 Impressions and 5,434 clicks.
By working with Planet, sales in-store increased by 49% to Middle Eastern customers, 61% to Russian shoppers and 39% to Latin American customers, far exceeding all expectations.
Social Media Marketing
El Corte Inglés has ensured that its social media footprint grows every day. The food recipes and DIY videos spread access to all forms of media and attract a lot of eyeballs. The company can be found everywhere from Linkedin to Instagram to Facebook to Twitter and Youtube.
Facebook: 2.1 followers
Linkedin: 572K followers
Instagram: 932K followers
Twitter: 306.1K followers
Facebook is definitely the strongest social media platform for El Corte Inglés when it comes to followers. However, this does not signify a different strategy, but rather just the time spent on a particular platform.
El Corte Inglés has a very well-organised posting routine which makes sure that each Social media platform gets equal attention.
SEO Strategies
With over 288,234 Keywords and over 452,940 visitors per month. It is fair to say that El Corte Inglés has its SEO strategies rather sorted out. A majority of their traffic is organic from the posts they make and for a supermarket, the visits also act as enquiries about their products. A wide range means the average conversion rate is better than most other sectors as well.
Influencer Marketing
El Corte Inglés has seen a record-breaking ROI on its influencer projects. The most recent campaign with CLA received over 5.6 million Weibo views and 6.2 million WeChat views. During the campaign, both WeChat and Weibo followers increased by more than 100%.
Inbound inquiries to the retailer’s official WeChat account increased dramatically, providing El Corte Inglés with valuable insight into potential customers and allowing them to kickstart digital CRM efforts. El Corte Inglés also created valuable, engaging, and one-of-a-kind content that can be used in the future.
E-commerce Strategies
A place where you can shop with the guaranteed quality and service you have come to expect from El Corte Inglés.
El Corte Inglés has successfully recorded 750+ million visitors to its website which makes El Corte Inglés website www.elcorteingles.es become the most visited Spanish commercial website in Spain.
Mobile Apps
The El Corte Inglés app is operational at all the locations the company has physical stores. The App has a store locator which helps you recognize the nearest store to you. The App like other Supermart applications also rewards frequent customers with points that help them avail discounts.
The UI is interactive and easy to use as well. The App cannot be compared to the scale of Amazon but at the same time is enough to serve the store’s purpose of allowing customers to avail of their services online.
Content Marketing Strategies
As said above, El Corte Inglés has become successful in the market due to its constant development and change to more personalised communication with digital users. Their digital applications like El Corte Inglés Plus and Click Express have introduced easement and helped increase the business 2x more than before.
When it comes to marketing strategies. El Corte Inglés keeps it simple yet effective. As discussed in this article, the emphasis is on the employees and the customers when it comes to marketing.
A major benefit of this structure is the variance of people they can use ranging from different demography, economic backgrounds, race etc. There is no reliance on only one celebrity.
El Corte Inglés also keeps its content interactive, giving a personal vibe to its client base. Informational content is also a major boost to their imprint as more and more people refer to each other and help them build a community.
This ends with an elaborative marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés. Let us conclude our learning below from the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés.
What ‘s Unique in El Corte Inglés Marketing?
El Corte Inglés has not tried to go global yet and that is probably its biggest strength. They know that they have a story that resonates with the area they run operations in. They have been visited by members of a family for generations and the family-based marketing has created a homely bond with the brand.
Digital marketing is crucial since it links a company with its clients when they are online and is effective across all sectors. It links businesses with ideal consumers through SEO and PPC on Google, social media marketing, and email marketing. If you would like to learn more and develop skills, check out IIDE’s 4-Month Digital Marketing Course to learn more.
Alternatively, you can enrol in one of our free online masterclasses led by IIDE’s CEO, Karan Shah, to gain insight into the field of digital marketing.
We hope this blog on the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés has given you a good insight into the company’s marketing strategies.
If you like such in-depth analysis of companies just like the marketing strategy of El Corte Inglés check out our IIDE Knowledge portal for more fascinating case studies.
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