IGA's New Digital Cookbook Inspires Shoppers & Drives Sales

Autumn is in full swing, with Halloween candy displays, fall pumpkins and gourds, and mums for sale inspiring shoppers to shift from lighter fare like summer salads and grilling to comforting fall recipes like soups, roasted meats and root vegetables, and decadent desserts.

Make the most of the new season and this year's harvest with IGA's new Digital Cookbook. This seasonally-themed cookbook lives on IGA.com and is constantly updated with recipes using seasonal ingredients, and many including IGA Exclusive Brand products. Better still, it features shopper-submitted recipes for the first time ever! 

Learn how the Fall Cookbook leverages shopper recipes and trust to boost sales through an omni-channel marketing experience that retailers can easily apply to their regular marketing efforts online and in-store. 

A Recipe For Success

As 2020 lockdowns led shoppers to get creative in the kitchen, IGA launched the Family Meals Made Easy! Sweepstakes to introduce shoppers to the new IGA Exclusive Brand look while inspiring them with new recipes. The results far exceeded expectations, and those shopper-submitted recipes now live in the Digital Cookbook as a continuation of that campaign.

"Our opportunity now is to keep shoppers cooking with great quality, great service, and inspiration like these recipes," says IGA CEO John Ross. "Whether shoppers discover these recipes in the media IGA buys nationally, on Facebook or Pinterest, on your own eCommerce site, or in store, shoppers who try a new recipe spend more, like their grocer better, and are more likely to come back."

With nearly 500 recipes submitted in the sweepstakes, IGA shoppers are eager to see those recipes published! IGA will continue to roll out those and other recipes from our brands and bloggers each season, meaning you'll have a virtually unlimited supply of new recipes to promote to shoppers this fall and throughout the holiday season, all the way through winter, spring, and summer of next year. Retailers can leverage that enthusiasm by sharing the recipes online and in-store, highlighting that they were developed by real IGA shoppers.

And with 60 percent of shoppers searching blogs and social media while in stores and 30 percent saying they buy products endorsed by their peers, boasting shopper-created recipes—especially ones that feature IGA Exclusive Brand products—is an immediate trust and sales-builder. After all, there's only one place shoppers can buy IGA Exclusive Brand products: IGA!

Recipes also deliver valuable, shareable content that gets noticed on social media—our Family Meals Made Easy! content garnered 2.63 million impressions, nearly 202,000 video views on Facebook, and 7,000 blog visits. That means one post with a shopper recipe on your store's social media page has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of shoppers, and bring them into your store to buy the IGA Exclusive Brand products featured in the recipes!

How to Engage Shoppers

With the Digital Cookbook released, now it's time for IGA retailers to engage shoppers online and in-store. Here's how.  

Social Media

1. Share this link—iga.com/cookbook—with shoppers on your social media page to announce the Digital Cookbook. Click the graphic below to download this and more social media graphics to include in your posts. We will update recipes regularly, so one link is all they need to access seasonal dishes.
2. Put the recipes into your weekly social media rotation. Visit the Cookbook and click a recipe, then share that specific recipe directly with shoppers, which includes a list of ingredients to make in-store or online shopping a breeze.
3. Point shoppers to our Pinterest page, where they can find Cookbook recipes and more. If your store has a Pinterest page, re-pin IGA recipes directly to your boards.
4. Share helpful education tips, which are constantly refreshed on the Cookbook page, like how to cut a butternut squash or healthy Halloween snack ideas.

Website

1. Update your store's website to include a link to the Digital Cookbook. One link—iga.com/cookbook—is all it takes for shoppers to gain access to seasonal recipes, no matter what time of year.
2. Publish IGA Family Meals Made Easy! recipe cards, featured in Cookbook recipes, on your website to encourage easy shopping with IGA Exclusive Brand items.
3. Highlight the IGA Exclusive Brand Double-Your-Money-Back-Guarantee on your website and eCommerce pages.

In-Store

1. The Quarterly Marketing Kit's Q4 signage references to the Cookbook. While the content in the Cookbook changes throughout the season, retailers can leave the signage up through the end of the year. That's the benefit of one link with constantly updated recipes!
2. Use the Cookbook recipes for in-store displays, like the Family Meals Made Easy! endcaps featuring recipe cards and IGA Exclusive Brand products seen below.