All Day Breakfast: An Example in Listening to Your Target Market

October 13, 2015 Andrea Rowan

On October 6, 2015, after years of injustice for those who are not ‘morning people’ and can’t summon the energy to get out of bed before 10:30 a.m. to hit the nearby drive-thru, McDonald’s started serving its version of All-Day Breakfast.

Once the inevitable malaise of the McGriddle not being available passes, we will have a better understanding of just how successful the All-Day Breakfast campaign has been for McDonald’s.

A giant in the fast food industry, McDonald’s has been suffering from an array of what can be best described as identity problems as they tried to look toward the present and future and the fact that they’re losing younger customers who see them as more of a last resort option and not a destination.

Listening to your customers is crucial, and never before than in the age of social media have customers provided so readily almost instant feedback for you to use to improve your position. Social media platforms provide the perfect arena for you to engage with your customers on a meaningful level.

The move to All-Day Breakfast wasn’t a sudden development for the brand, and the collaboration between management and marketing teams in launching the campaign has been quite strong. They went back as far as 2006 to uncover social posts of customers who were blatantly telling McDonald’s exactly what they wanted: All-Day Breakfast.

And McDonald’s listened, creating GIFs and other social elements to let those customers know their voice was being heard. The impact of the social element on this campaign is even evident in the corresponding television commercials, as McDonald’s has taken to showing the Tweets and Facebook posts of customers along with their branded response to promote their new All-Day Breakfast offerings.

It really is a savvy attempt by a globally recognized brand to embrace the crowd-sourcing mentality that social media provides. So many social posts have been written over the years by customers disappointed they were not able to buy breakfast after the old 10:30 cutoff that McDonald’s actually decided to change the game in hopes of bolstering sales.

The move is bold for a variety of reasons, at its impact could trickle down to other similar fast food chains like Burger King and Carl’s Jr. who, like McDonald’s, have a cutoff time between their breakfast and all-day menus. In addition, Taco Bell, who earlier this year jumped into the fast food breakfast game for the first time, might even be compelled to extend the availability of its breakfast offerings, or get out of the breakfast game all together–

If you listen to what your customers say, they will tell you what they want.

Apple: King of Brands

September 17, 2015 Andrea Rowan

Fewer brands have the global brand presence of Apple. At last week’s #AppleEvent, the tech innovator debuted some evolutions on current products, including the iPad Pro. But perhaps the most buzz-worthy thing to come out of the iPad Pro is the inclusion of a stylus, dubbed the ‘Apple Pencil’.

The Apple Watch was the first major Apple product in recent memory not to carry along the “i” branding (instead of the iWatch, it was the Apple Watch). And while the Apple Pencil continues that branding trend it also completely reverses course from the Steve Jobs era at the company. Jobs himself claimed that nobody wanted a stylus and thought the finger was the preeminent pointing device.

But even though Jobs was so ahead of the curve in relation to so many of Apple’s most iconic products, perhaps he hadn’t considered the place of the stylus in the future as it relates to content creation. As it can detect position, force and tilt, it poses immense benefit for tasks such as photo-editing, graphic design and so many other creative based content creation applications.

During their event and unveiling of the Apple Pencil, Microsoft and Adobe were invited on stage to demo uses with their suite of products. Among them, you can use the Apple Pencil to annotate documents, to circle items in documents, and draw shapes on PowerPoint slides among other things.

It’s such a simple evolution of the Apple product line but yet so smart for the company to convert a simple idea into on that is potentially ground-breaking for many who not only own iPads, but are using their technology to create high-quality imagery and branded messages on their own.

Even though your brand will likely never gain the global recognition Apple has gained since its creation, staying innovative in your industry can help your business retain an amazing level of trust with your customers that can almost never be besmirched.

One of the things your business can do to foster that level of trust is to align your digital marketing suite with your long-term business goals. Social media is one area where you can make your brand stand out and feel free to be innovative in order to elevate your brand messaging for your audience.

If you need a hand thinking about how to be innovative with digital in your industry, there are teams of experts eager to help improve your company’s social presence. Contact Smart Reach Digital for a free analysis or sign up to attend our next free webinar that will be packed with insights on social media for your business!

You Are Your Business in the Digital Forum

September 3, 2015September 3, 2015 Andrea Rowan

Every so often on social media, a story will start trending that follows this basic narrative: Patron doesn’t tip their waiter, waiter snaps a photo of the blank tip line and posts it online and people console the person for having to deal with such a callous and ungenerous person or group. It’s an understandable reaction to a disappointing night at work, but I would guess that the disappointed waiter isn’t thinking about the potential impact their actions might have on their employer’s digital reputation.

In a world where your digital persona is paramount, doing something individually can have a much wider impact. Protecting the digital reputation of your business is extremely important in today’s world – it’s important for business owners to learn to recognize personal behavior can also drastically impact a brand.

71% of customers say online reviews make them more comfortable purchasing a product or service. For your business, the individual behavior of one employee can lead to a massive upheaval with your brand’s digital reputation.

There are steps every business owner can take to protect their online reputation. Ensuring all your online listings are updated and accurate is a great first step and has far reaching benefits to your online and search presence. Next, subscribing to new review alerts will help you take action immediately when a new review pops up. Look—not everyone is going to have a 5 star experience with your business, every time. Recognizing reviews where customers may have visited your business when not at its best is critical—then do what you can to rectify the experience with the client and respond, professionally (aka without emotion)! Finally, encouraging new (and existing) customers to write reviews and promoting positive reviews is a great way to further your digital persona. Who doesn’t like to read good news about their business? Let your customers be your online megaphone!

Proactively taking control and managing your online reputation can not only maintain current business – it can also help you grow new business through a strategic, integrated approach. Find out what your customers are saying about your brand by signing up for an analysis with a team of professionals today.