Multi-Location Sandwich Franchise Drives Local Orders During Pandemic With OTT/CTV Advertising
Overview
ADVERTISER OVERVIEW
Sandwich restaurant franchise with more than 100 locations nationwide and has run digital advertising with Simpli.fi since 2017.
AGENCY OVERVIEW
Independent agency specializing in QSR, casual dining, and other franchises. Has relied on Simpli.fi as their sole programmatic provider for several years, leveraging hyper-localized targeting solutions for dozens of brands.
Corporate Marketing Team Supports Local Franchises
Local franchise businesses often rely on corporate support for operations, supply chain management, and marketing. In order to maximize efficiencies with flexible and granular digital advertising campaigns, the corporate marketing team for this sandwich franchise has worked with Simpli.fi since 2017 on behalf of more than 100 franchise locations across the country.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company recognized the need to promote takeout orders and their newly launched delivery service. Additionally, as consumers stayed home and increased their video streaming time, the brand wanted to reach their target audience with engaging video ads served on OTT/CTV devices.
The brand turned to Simpli.fi and their advertising agency, an independent organization specializing in QSR and franchises, to quickly shift strategies. The agency relies on Simpli.fi as their sole programmatic partner on behalf of all of their clients for hyper-lo- calized targeting solutions and granular reporting by location.
Together, the franchiser, agency, and Simpli.fi quickly developed a new strategy to drive business despite the required operational changes and new customer behavior. The corporate team and franchise owners were excited to have an additional marketing plan in place so quickly that reflected unique marketplace needs.
Activating Localized Campaigns Across The Country
Simpli.fi and the agency implemented a new programmatic strategy to inform customers that their restaurants were open and offered contactless delivery and take out. On behalf of 65 franchise locations, the team leveraged Simpli.fi’s Geo-Fencing with Conversion Zones and Search Retargeting solutions to capture unique audiences in local areas and track conversions. These location-based and behavioral targeting tactics helped drive in-person visits and online orders to individual franchise locations.
On behalf of 65 franchise locations, the team leveraged Simpli.fi’s Geo-Fencing with Conversion Zones and Search Retargeting solutions to capture unique audiences in local areas and track conversions.
With Simpli.fi’s Geo-Fence solution, the team built custom-shaped target fences around nearby relevant locations, such as competitor stores and neighborhoods, to capture users for targeting their mobile devices with display and pre-roll video ads.
Furthermore, Simpli.fi’s cross device matching allowed the advertiser to also serve those same users OTT/CTV ads on their large-screen devices within homes. Additionally, the agency tracked in-store attribution by drawing Conversion Zones around each of the franchise locations to measure the number of users who were delivered an ad and then visited a restaurant.
To complement the Geo-Fencing portion of the campaign, the agency also used Search Retargeting to reach people who indicated interest in local food options based on their online behavior. This allowed the agency to target users who were actively searching for relevant terms such as local restaurants, healthy takeout, food recipes, and much more.
The team implemented hundreds of keywords and proactively monitored the campaign to optimize to the highest-performing keywords. Simpli.fi’s unique ability to bid and report at the keyword-level gave the agency complete transparency and helped eliminate wasted impressions. In order to build awareness among the highest number of people possible, Simpli.fi optimized the campaign to prioritize maximizing total reach over frequency to each user.
Measuring Success of a National, Localized Campaign
The agency handles reporting on behalf of the advertiser using Simpli.fi’s robust and transparent Reporting and Analytics Center. Simpli.fi’s advanced technology provides valuable insights into KPIs for franchise retailers including Total Visits, Cost Per Visit, and much more. These foot traffic results can be broken down by specific location, tactic, and device type to get a full understand- ing of campaign performance at the franchise and corporate level.
Together, the agency and Simpli.fi achieved a $25.40 Cost Per Visit through OTT/CTV devices and an average Cost Per Visit of $8.32 on mobile devices for both display and pre-roll video. Additionally, the campaign optimizations to boost awareness resulted in a unique user reach of 7.1 million people and a frequency of 4.1 ads per user. Throughout the pandemic, the advertiser continued to submit IO’s and add additional franchise locations based on the success of the new OTT/CTV campaigns. Overall, the brand and the agency are both thrilled to continue partnering with Simpli.fi.