How to Increase QSR Market Share and Awareness

The Brief

A QSR client was faced with uncertainty as the pandemic hit the United States in March 2020. Coegi was tasked with coming up with a flexible media strategy to address the new dynamic.

Highlights

32%
Increase in Delivery App Purchases


$5MM
Incremental Attributed Sales

Challenge

Most of this QSR’s franchised-owned stores had a 50%+ decrease in traffic and sales in the second half of March 2020. With a limited challenger brand budget, we needed to boost market share while addressing the shift in consumer behavior.

 

Solution

We focused specifically on growing market share among loyal customers. Initially, we drove them to make delivery purchases and later to in-store. To do this, we leveraged existing first-party data that was tied to point-of-sale. 

The outcome was a proprietary scoring model, dubbed “The Crave Score.”  This custom scorecard analyzed brand lift attributes, visitation, and point of sale data to dynamically align budget allocation and creative strategy. It also allowed us to segment based on store visit frequency and share of wallet.

For high share of wallet customers who hadn’t visited recently, we focused on high frequency with ads promoting top-selling sandwiches. We focused spend on areas with high pre-COVID brand recognition, knowing that consumers would be more selective during this time.  

Then, as stimulus checks were distributed, we applied lookalike modeling against the strongest customer segments to identify high potential new consumers. 

These were the key results: 

  • 32% increase in delivery app purchases in 6 key markets.
  • $5MM in incremental attributed sales in the Q2 post-COVID period
  • Positive press write ups in Bloomberg and Restaurant Business

The Power of Creative in Building Brand Awareness

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a powerhouse creative agency to launch a full-funnel digital campaign, building brand awareness as well as sales for a high-growth wine brand.

Highlights

10.6%
Lift in Standard Ad Recall


1.8%
Lift in Unaided Brand Awareness


1.4%
Lift in Purchase Intent / Consideration

Challenge

The brand tasked the team to produce a campaign that was not only effective in building brand awareness and emotional connection in a very cluttered, complicated category, but also drove trial and consideration across a broader set of consumers. 

Solution

The team executed a performance branding study on Facebook to evaluate brand lift as well as conversion lift for key website events. By comparing control and exposed audiences, incrementality was able to be evaluated. This blended approach allowed for valuable insights into multiple stages of the consumer journey, from brand awareness to purchase intent. 

The study showed positive lift across brand categories, surpassing CPG benchmarks. Ad recall was particularly pronounced, signaling that the creative was successful in driving memorability and that the selected audience resonated with the messaging approach.

Using TikTok Ads to Reach Potential College Students

The Brief

Coegi used TikTok ads to help a higher education client drive better results in their marketing campaigns. Our client is a private college located in Kansas City, Missouri which recently lowered their tuition costs. They were looking to boost brand awareness among potential students and encourage them to research more about their institution.

Highlights

82%
Higher CTR than Snapchat


$3.53
Cost Per Page View Conversion

Challenge

A younger audience can be hard to reach effectively in the right place, especially on social media platforms. Reaching a potential college student was top of mind for the team. In the summer 2020 planning stages, it became clear TikTok was the right platform. The app was rapidly becoming one of the most popular apps among high school students. However, the platform was unproven in terms of in feed advertising, as it was a fairly new capability from TikTok.

Solution

The team took a risk and proposed TikTok ads in tandem with Snapchat and Instagram to reach their target audience of high school students.

Snapchat and Instagram were set up as conversion campaigns driving users to complete a form fill or research the brand as a whole by visiting pages with information on campus visits or majors.

The TikTok campaign began as an awareness campaign. It was optimizing towards video views as this aligned with the organic user behavior on the platform. Ads were shown in-feed on TikTok, where users spend the majority of their time on the app. 

Targeting started off relatively broad, reaching potential students interested in education across Missouri and Kansas. The platform only narrows to state level geographic targeting.

The ads focused on key competitive advantages of the college such as optional standardized testing and lower tuition. These were both major decision factors for potential students in light of the pandemic.

The TikTok awareness campaign was so efficient in terms of CPM and results after just one month that the objective was adjusted from video views to driving site visits and actions. 

The TikTok platform saw extremely strong results, driving a 82% higher CTR than Snapchat and 688% higher than Instagram. Users on TikTok were also more efficient to convert at a cost of $3.53 per page view conversion tracked. 

Driving Retail Traffic and Sales for a Beauty Brand

The brief

Coegi created an omni-channel campaign to drive in-store retail traffic and attributable sales for a beauty client during a key sales period.

Highlights

$0.25
Cost Per Store Visit


4.6M
In-Store Conversions

Challenge

Coegi’s beauty brand client sells skin and lip care products online and in retail locations across the US. In-store retailer purchases drive the majority of their revenue and were the priority for our marketing strategy. 

However, it can be challenging to track and measure the impact of paid media on in-store purchases. Coegi needed to show how this campaign drove sales and purchase consideration during the holiday season.

Solution

Coegi used three core audiences to target this campaign – Eco Consumers, Millennial Moms and College Consumers. Additionally, we used high-intent holiday shopping audiences to maximize the time of year.

We activated these audiences across display and video campaigns, optimizing for reach and completion rate to drive in-store traffic. This was reinforced through retailer-specific creative to ensure shoppers knew where the brand was available. A foot traffic study was also implemented using mobile app ID data to correlate ad exposure with store visitation. 

We took a test and learn approach, using traffic and purchase data to determine top performing retail locations. We then reinforced those top stores in key geos, further building upon sales momentum. This campaign drove over 4.6 million store visits, with an average cost-per-store-visit of $0.25 across all media and millions in sales. This was highly efficient for driving brand consideration compared to the $3-7 product price point. 

Q4 sales reports indicated that the strong revenue numbers were directly tied with efficient cost-per-visit metrics. Analysis of foot traffic conversions also helped identify top markets for the brand. This campaign displayed the importance of combining advanced measurement studies and non-media data to determine the incremental impact of digital media on driving retail traffic and sales. 

Driving Action from a Niche B2B Audience

The Brief

Coegi helped to drive leads from a highly niche B2B audience by pairing LinkedIn’s on-platform lead generation with the clients onboarded first-party data. The results exceeded client expectations and established foundational data for future campaigns.  

Highlights

292
New Leads


$36.55
Cost Per Lead


0.41%
Click Through Rate

Challenge

Our client needed to drive leads from a niche B2B audience – but they meant niche niche. They were only interested in reaching European film, gaming, and television licensing professionals who were in-market to connect with American content owners. They hosted a magazine and website portal where global licensing professionals could make connections and discover new opportunities. The client challenged Coegi to provide a solution to drive this audience to their website, where they would be prompted to share their email address to access the portal. 

Solution

We recognized this request necessitated using an audience-first approach to inform our channel strategy. LinkedIn proved to be the channel with the widest reach of second-party data. Historically, the fewer steps to conversion asked of your audience, the higher the ROI. Knowing this, we used LinkedIn’s on-platform Lead Generation creatives to encourage our audiences to share their contact information without needing to visit the site.

Our client offered two products: an industry magazine and a website portal. The media objective was to drive 150 new email contacts over three months. 

Prioritizing budget on LinkedIn allowed Coegi to craft a strategy that balanced the need for some awareness while focusing on the lead goal. Pairing LinkedIn’s data, lead generation objective and creative, and the client’s first-party data allowed us to nearly double the goal of 150 new email contacts. 

Gaining Traction on YouTube for an Agriculture Brand

The Brief

An agriculture company needed assistance driving reach and video completions for a video series on their YouTube channel. Using in-stream, bumper and discovery ads on YouTube, the team was able to improve the brand’s overall organic presence.

Highlights

53MM
Impressions


55%
Completion Rate


$0.04
Cost Per Completed View

Challenge

An agriculture company produced a video series for its YouTube channel. But they saw few views and low channel engagement, despite having dozens of videos and a dedicated in-house YouTube team. They wanted to expand reach and video completions to see a greater ROI. However, this proved to be tricky. Most of the video content was longer than 5 minutes, which often loses the user’s attention, unless they are highly invested or are already brand loyalists.

Solution

Coegi worked alongside sister agency, True Media, to amplify content on YouTube to meet the client’s upper-funnel goals. View in-stream and bumper ads for their series introduction video helped increase awareness, with the goal of encouraging users to watch the full series.  Additionally, users who watched the full bumper ad or 30 second in-stream videos were retargeted with other relevant content in the series. 

We also recommended adding in Discovery ads that appear in YouTube search results and video suggestions. In this placement, users are redirected to watch the full video on the brand’s channel, thus meeting the goal of increased video views. 

Despite a quick turnaround time, the team achieved outstanding results from this campaign. With a roughly $100,000 investment, the campaign drove over 53MM impressions across the US and Canada. The average completion rate was 55%, exceeding the 40% benchmark. Cost per completed views were also efficient at just $0.04. Finally, this improved the brand’s overall organic presence. They also achieved over 100,000 earned views across videos that offered added value outside of the campaign investment. 

Using Digital Out-Of-Home and CTV to Drive Full-Funnel Performance

The Brief

Coegi partnered with a multi-national technology brand to simultaneously drive awareness, consideration, and purchase lift using digital out-of-home media, mobile retargeting, and connected TV.

Highlights

6%
Brand Awareness Lift


3%
Consideration Lift


9%
Purchase Intent Lift

Challenge

In our first year working with this technology brand, we identified an erosion of brand equity. This was due to a gradual shift in budget focusing solely on lower-funnel, promotion-based tactics. 

To reestablish their premium product positioning, we were tasked with eliminating crossover between their two key audiences (small business owners and IT decision makers) to drive awareness, consideration, and purchase intent with prospects across the United States. Challenge

Solution

We planned and executed a campaign to build brand affinity and awareness with small-business owners and IT decision makers and measure the effect on full funnel KPIs. By using data-driven campaign insights, we knew we could justify spending on brand awareness tactics. This would expand the organic prospect database and achieve sustainable growth through improved brand positioning. 

We honed in on two channels: Connected TV (CTV) and Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH). Throughout the campaign, we served over 55MM impressions. These spanned over 37 DMAs with high concentrations of small business owners and IT decision makers. To measure success, we implemented one of the first brand lift studies in the industry that incorporated CTV and programmatic DOOH channels by using IP and wifi targeting to obtain survey feedback.

DOOH media drove lift across all KPIs (awareness, consideration and purchase intent), with the greatest lift in purchase intent (+9%). This campaign messaging also drove a greater lift in awareness over the control group than previous campaigns, illustrating the long-term impact of this strategic messaging. Cross-screen exposure drove the strongest lift over the control at 13%. 

Additionally, the campaign drove:

  • 50% increase in purchase intent from CTV
  • 6.5% increase in SMB website visitors vs. previous period, seen in increases from direct and organic search traffic
  • 60,000 attributable site visits at an estimated $1.2MM in value

Finally, we discovered the awareness campaign had a trickle-down effect on the evergreen performance-based campaign we were running concurrently, surpassing bottom-line goals at a 5x ROAS.

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