Bonchon Chicken, a South Korean-based international fried chicken restaurant franchise, struggled with a lack of brand awareness but enjoyed an almost cult following among food enthusiasts with their crispy fried chicken wings and unique flavors. They needed a media partner that could help them not only gain awareness and new customers but drive online orders while indoor dining was restricted due the pandemic. It was also critical that the strategy be scalable to accommodate the anticipated growth in the number of franchise locations. After being introduced by their creative agency and long-time Mindstream partner, we began collaborating with the Bonchon marketing team to create a recipe for success by leveraging a digital-first media plan with mouth-watering creative.
Challenge
Lift awareness for 90+ locations and capture demand for delivery and online order options during the pandemic shutdown.
Design a streamlined grand opening media strategy to scale with the growth of franchise locations quickly and efficiently.
Solution
We took a holistic, full-funnel approach with a variety of tactics to reach consumers at every stage of the customer journey. Multi-channel digital marketing campaigns including paid search, paid social and programmatic display were deployed around each of Bonchon’s 90+ locations driving customers to order online for delivery or pick-up at their local restaurant. Lifting awareness and capturing demand for these options during key (pandemic shutdown) times played a pivotal role in generating a positive outcome.
Our account setup and structure created efficiencies that allowed the ad budget to be utilized to reach a more relevant and targeted audience. We implemented first-party data to exclude current customers from prospecting and search campaigns. For a more relevant ad experience, messaging was also segmented to serve different creative to previous and new website visitors. Tracking on the online order site allowed campaigns to be optimized to the conversion point furthest down the funnel while Google Local campaigns were optimized to helped increase foot traffic and sales as well. Our responsiveness to creative changes, starts/stops, Grand Openings and LTO promotions also contributed to the success of the campaign.
Focused on the customer journey, we activated a multi-channel campaign and optimized towards KPIs that aligned with each tactic’s position along the path to purchase.
Results
Mindstream helped introduce Bonchon to new audiences who were hungry for something different; Bonchon did the rest. Year-over-year performance shows significant growth in sales as well as gains in efficiency.
- Sales: 19% increase
- Online Order CPA: 18% improvement
- Paid Social CPA: 32% improvement
- Paid Search Conversion Rate: 59% increase
Vice President of Marketing at Bonchon, Christina Coy loves our work. “I just wanted to thank you for all the time and effort you’ve put forth for Bonchon. We’re loving these numbers and appreciate all the support you’ve provided whenever we had issues with LinkedIn or with the online ordering site.
You’re an amazing team and I’m thrilled we brought you on board to be a part of the Bonchon team!
Thanks again for being such great partners.”