How to Increase QSR Market Share and Awareness

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.

32%
Increase in Delivery App Purchases

$5MM
Incremental Attributed Sales

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.

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