Smart promo mechanics for fuel stations and c-stores

Promo marketing is a marketing trend that has shown great results within many industries not only online but offline as well. Applying promo campaigns makes seamless customer journeys and grows sales, loyality, LTV, ROMI and retention.

But promo marketing is a part of marketing strategy and should take account of fuel retail and c-stores specific traits:

• The gross margin (or markup) on gasoline in 2021 is 21.6 cents per gallon or 8,5% of the overall price. In-store purchases provide much higher margins and a source of gross profit for c-stores.

• People make a lot of trips to the pump—but not necessarily to the convenience stores, they’re attached to. That’s a lot of missed opportunities for retailers to increase convenience store sales.

• From the consumer perspective, all petrol stations tend to blend into one another. The gasoline fueling station industry is fairly homogenous across the board: prices, amenities, products, and even architecture are quite similar for a majority of petrol stations.

Taking these facts into account you can create your promo campaign more efficiently.

But to make a high-converted promo campaign you should granulate customers at first. Granularity is very important. It helps companies to divide customers into similar groups, according to their consumption models.

You can go further and apply machine learning to anticipate customers' desires. Once you uncover your own customer demand patterns, you can use in-store and on-pump promotions to market towards your unmet customer demand. This personalized promo approach saves money and helps to promote the right product to the right customer. Your promotion is 90% successful when you know your customers’ desires.

What smart promo mechanics can leverage your marketing?

1. Discounts

Petrol stations and c-stores usually watch competitors' prices and match or slightly beat the lowest price. With deep data analysis, you can direct special prices only to your current price-conscious customers without changing your POS prices.

2. Coupons

Catch customers that do not come up to your petrol station as often as they did previously. Promote data-based coupons to return them and make them more loyal at the same time.

3. Bundlings with/without discounts

Make product combinations’ promo coupons to encourage customers to buy more. When you have the group of customers that usually add one item to their check with the other you can suggest another similar group and promote them the same bundling.

4. Geofencing

Make promo campaigns that your nearest customers appreciate. Serve them breakfast or lunch and send notifications with/without discount to their mobile phones or apps. Promo-by-daypart can be useful to make your forecourt special for your customers.

Petrol will always be a low-margin, high-volume product. But technological advances now provide innovative ways to entice your customers beyond the confines of the pump and increase convenience store sales. Discounts, coupons, bundlings, geofencing are just a few methods to make this happen.