3 Restaurant Facebook Ad Campaigns that Make You Hungry and Buy

Everyone loves a delicious, restaurant-prepared meal, right? And, unlike old times, there are endless choices for food lovers today. To stand out, restaurants are not only constantly improving their offerings but are also investing massive amounts of money into advertising to continue attracting and retaining customers.

Facebook is a very popular platform leveraged by restaurants as it has more user interactions on a daily basis. Almost all food brands use Facebook as a marketing platform. Read on to view 3 case studies that are guaranteed to not only inspire you but also make you salivate.

3 Restaurant Facebook Ad Campaigns that Successfully Converted Hunger into Cash

1) KFC

Run Time:

2 weeks from August to September 2018

Target Region and Audience:

Malaysia

Performance:

The 2-week campaign bagged marvelous results for the brand. KFC witnessed around 36,000 new conversations on the Messenger.

Goal:

The fried chicken restaurant chain’s major motive was to enhance user engagement. For this, they used a bot in Messenger that received orders and help in the successful delivery of those orders.

Approach and Buyer’s Journey:

To make the ordering process easier for the customers in Malaysia, KFC followed a simple approach. The brand created a Facebook Messenger bot to interact with the customers and help them register their orders.

KFC created video, photo, and link ads that directed the users to the bot to place their orders. These video and photo ads highlighted the delivery option and the pros of online orders.

Moreover, these ads were targeted to people who were in the 1-2 km of a KFC store. The bot, along with taking orders, also provided users with additional information like pickup locations, delivery time, and menu.

For extending their outreach, KFC created lookalike audiences based on its existing customers. For handling the campaign effectively, KFC partnered with Universal McCann Malaysia.

After playing a teasing food ad for the customer, the brand added a CTA of “Click here to order” to redirect the users to the Facebook messenger.

Results:

The 15-day ad campaign designed by KFC registered various remarkable stats for the brand. The brand saw:

• 36k new conversations on Messenger.

• Around 1200 transactions started by the customers offline and online.

• 100k messages sent and received over messenger.

Products Used:

Photo Ads, Video Ads, Custom Audiences, Messenger, Lookalike audiences

2) McDonald’s

Run Time:

June to July 2018

Target Region and Audience:

Malaysia

Performance:

The performance of the precisely designed marketing campaign by the brand was completely stunning. The campaign reached around 17.5 million and hiked sales by 22%.

Goal:

The key objective of the ad campaign undertaken by the fast-food brand was to boost their in-store visits and promote their new Rio Burger.

To do this in an interactive manner, the brand added the context of Football to it as it was designed in the period of the FIFA 2018 World Cup.

Approach and Buyer’s Journey:

The state of the art campaign was backed by a planned approach that had the following steps:

• The initial phase of the McDonald ad campaign consisted of partnering with the local influencers. Local influencers named Jinnyboy and Reuben were hired to review the Rio Burger in their Facebook Live session. Later, this session was segmented and used in video ads.

• During the campaign, the video ads were played to make people aware of the availability of the burger and about the nearest McDonald’s location that would telecast the football match. This was solely for boosting store visits.

• Moreover, the brand also ran Instant Experiences that allowed the user to discover the Rio burger and Brazilian culture after they clicked on the ad. This also allowed the brand to encourage McDelivery.

• These ads were targeted to people who were interested in the FIFA World Cup and football. The “See Menu” button allowed the users to discover the menu and place orders online.

Results:

The campaign carried parallel to the FIFA World Cup 2018 ended with flying colors for the brand.

• It reached 17.5 million people.

• The campaign recorded a 12 point lift in awareness for McDelivery.

• 22% lift in sales in June 2018.

Products Used:

Photo ads, Video ads, Facebook Live, Ads in stories

3) Pizza Hut

Run Time:

8 weeks from April to June 2019

Target Region and Audience:

Singapore, 18 to 44-year-olds

Performance:

The conversion of their long-form TV commercials to short Facebook ads turned out to be a masterstroke. The pizza brand witnessed an upliftment of 8.5% in online sales.

Goal:

The Licious pizza firm aimed to explore new ways of boosting the performance of their ad campaign. Besides, it also wanted to boost online orders for its new pizza.

Approach and Buyer’s Journey:

The key driving factor of the approach was the creation of mobile-first video ads in various formats by using long-form TV commercials. The long-form TV ads were cut and made to play as per the mobile screen.

They were converted into a vertical format for stories, square format for Facebook feeds, and 16:9 for in-stream video placement. The ads introduced the brand in the initial few seconds, and then the new pizza was highlighted in the ad.

These engaging video ads created by Pizza Hut were targeted to the people of Singapore in the age group of 18-44 years. Pizza Hut Partnered with Mindshare and Facebook Marketing Partner VMG Digital for creating these mobile-first video ads.

After creating these ads to tease the users, the brand also included a “Shop Now” option that allowed the users to check the latest deals and order the meal.

Results:

The eight weeks long ad campaign by the Pizza slinger concluded with some remarkable results like:

• 15% higher return on ad spend

• 8.5% lower cost per purchase

• 8.5% more online purchases

• 68% more reach

All these stats were calculated with respect to TV commercial ads.

Products Used:

Video Ads, Ads in stories, Facebook Pixel

Thinking of building your own ad campaign?

If you are, it is necessary for you to plan everything well. Your approach, your targeting tools, your audience, and your target area are the must considering factors while planning the whole process.

Moreover, it is also necessary to study the methods that you can implement; for instance, just like McDonald’s, you can plan your ad campaign parallel to an event. As people interact with social networks more during special days, it will become a bit easier to reach out to more people.

Rest assured, if everything is planned and executed well, your campaign will definitely yield wonderful results.