4. Get Target Market Involved with Interactive Games www.tacobell.com www.fourthmeal.com
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9. What Would You Do for Fourthmeal? *Winner Announced 12/1/10*
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Editor's Notes
Welcome to Taco Bell 2.0, the ultimate social media experience. Join me as we dive right into the meat of the matter.
Taco Bell Corporation is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. The first Taco Bell location was opened in Downey, California in 1962. As the nations’ leading Mexican-style quick service restaurant chain, Taco Bell sells over 2 billion tacos and 1 billion burritos each year. There are over 5,600 locations in the United States. Products sold include tacos, burritos, gorditas, chalupas, quesadillas, nachos and other specialty items.
Taco Bell markets their fourthmeal sales to young customers between the ages of 18 and 24. The typical fourthmeal customer is a college student with irregular sleeping habits. They love parties, drinking, hanging out with friends and eat at all hours of the day. This consumer wants cheep food, fast. The goal of this online campaign is to increase late night sales by 5% in three months. Challenges include overcoming the threat of competitors staying open later to compete for these target consumers. Also, 18-24 year olds do not respond well to traditional advertising. Creating a viral, online campaign will help Taco Bell target these hard to reach consumers.
Taco Bell has offered online games in the past on tacobell.com. They should build on this idea and create similar games to specifically promote fourthmeal to 18-24 year olds at fourthmeal.com. A name and email address will be required to play the games and record your score. This will allow Taco Bell to begin creating an email database for this particular target market. The participant with the most points from the combination of games at the end of three months will win free tacos for a year! In addition, each day, the person with the highest score will receive a free taco coupon sent to their email address. The coupon will be available to use after 9 p.m. This brings the target audience to the store at night, where they will likely bring friends and purchase more than one taco. Ultimately, these interactive online games will increase brand awareness and promote fourthmeal among the target market.
Taco Bell should use their Facebook page to promote the interactive game and incentives. Taco Bell currently has 953,191 fans. With the click of a mouse, Taco Bell has the potential to reach thousands of target audience members to promote their new games and fourthmeal in general. The games will in turn bring customers into the store for fourthmeal through coupons and incentives. It is also important to create conversation on Facebook. Asking questions about game progress and responding to questions personalizes Taco Bell and makes the company seem more approachable and friendly.
Twitter provides an excellent way to get the word out. Like Facebook, Twitter can be used to promote the interactive game and incentives. At the end of each week, Taco Bell should tweet to all followers who is in the lead for the grand prize - free tacos for a year! Twitter should also be used for other ways to promote fourthmeal. Random promotion codes or coupons should be tweeted by Taco Bell after 9 p.m. This promotes the idea of “staying up late and grabbing fourthmeal”.
Google AdWords offers pay-per-click advertising. This is an excellent way to reach the target market, only requiring payment when your ad is actually clicked on. Taco Bell should create rich media ads that launch the interactive games on Taco Bell's Web site when clicked on. Suggested key words include Taco Bell, fourthmeal, Taco Bell fourthmeal, Taco Bell 4th meal, 4th meal, tacos, Mexican restaurants, burritos, fast food restaurants.
The budget for this campaign will be allocated to four different areas including Games & Prizes, Google AdWords, Twitter and Facebook. The total budget is $75,000 over the course of three months. The budget breakdown is as follows: -Games & Prizes = $3,000 (6%) -Google AdWords = $42,000 (54%) (This breaks down to $500 per day) -Twitter = $15,000 (15%) -Facebook = $15,000 (15%) I figured these numbers and percentages based on a number of factors. The person who scores the highest in the online games will receive a free taco valued at $0.89 x 365 = $325. The winner of the entire competition will win free tacos for a year. Even if he or she goes to Taco Bell every single day for a year and spends $6.00 per day, it will cost the company a total of $2,190. The extra money in this category will go to additional coupons and promotions throughout the campaign. Google AdWords will cost $42,000 total, if Taco Bell budgets $500 per day for the three month campaign. Twitter and Facebook will cost approximately $15,000 each to pay the salary of a social media specialist who can create conversation and initiate special promotions through these social media tools.
This graph visual represents the timeline for the “What would you do for fourthmeal?” campaign. Games/Incentives (red line) starts out with 35% of the budget in September, 20% in October, and 45% in November. It will cost additional funds to create and launch the games and will cost a lot at the end for the grand prize. Google AdWords (yellow line) has a steady % of budget spent over time. Twitter and Facebook (green line) state out higher to launch the games and campaign and get the word out. It then levels off for the final two months of the campaign. The winner will be announced on December 1, 2010.
Unlike radio and television, Internet advertising is easy to track. Many metrics of success can be used to track results. Twendz and HootSuite are great ways to track Twitter. Facebook now sends fan page administrators updates each week that include how many new fans you have, how many wall posts, comments and likes you had, and how many people visited your page. This is an excellent way to see how engaging your page is to current and potential fans. Google AdWords offers the option to create reports to help track and analyze your campaigns. Google Analytics is also a great way to track advertising success and searches including your keywords. Counting the number of names and email addresses submitted to play the interactive games on fourthmeal.com as well as coupons turned in are simple ways to analyze campaign reach and involvement.
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