The Digital Marketing Strategies of McDonalds - Research Paper Example

McDonald’s Brief History Being the largest chain of fast food restaurants in the world, the American company McDonalds needs no introduction. It is currently operating in more than 100 countries, serving more than 60 million customers daily. McDonald’s digital marketing strategies are extremely popular at the moment. The company is using all major social networks effectively for the promotion of its products. This paper analyses the digital marketing strategies of McDonalds through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. McDonald’s and Facebook McDonalds has an official Facebook account through which the company is promoting its products. In fact McDonalds has different Facebook accounts in different countries in which the company operates. “The McDonald’s US page has more than 27m fans, and its local market pages have all attracted several hundred thousand ‘likes’”(Moth). Even though McDonalds was able to attract millions of people through its Facebook pages, the company is not much interested in posting too many contents on its pages. “McDonald’s generally posts fewer than five updates a month yet each one attracts several thousand ‘likes’ and comments, which is more than the brands that posts several times per day” (Moth). The company believes that too much postings may bring too little benefits to the company. It should be noted that today’s consumers are living in a world of advertisements. In fact they were fed up with watching meaningless ads. McDonalds knows this consumer psychology very well and places its ads and posts only sparingly in front of the public through its Facebook pages. On the other hand the company is keen on maintaining frequent updates in its Facebook pages in order to avoid the loss of attraction from the public. Unlike many of its competitors, McDonald’s is not much bothered about responding to the comments made by the people through its Facebook pages. The company believes that responding to user comments through Facebook pages may bring more harm than good. At the same time, the company is keen on informing the people about all its product promotions, offers and discounts. McDonald’s has recently conducted a Facebook campaign asking people to take their lunch hour back and enjoy it at McDonald’s. They used different posts for the success of this campaign. Some of them were simple photo images, and the others were questions, and video posts. This campaign was a big success for the company” Click-through rates of content-related interactions are currently more successful than ad click-through rates,” she says. “Companies are gaining ground with consumers when they find that magic mix that allows consumers to engage, react, and be a part of the action (Sung). McDonalds is trying to boost its relations with the customers through campaigns like this through Facebook. McDonald’s and Twitter Even though McDonalds is not using Facebook aggressively for the promotion of its products, the case is different when it comes to Twitter. The company is spending a lot of time, effort and money for the promotion of its products through Twitter. “It posts several updates each day to entertain its 995,000 followers, however it tends to avoid tweeting anything too quirky or off-message and instead remains resolutely focused on promoting it products” (Moth). Word Of Mouth (WOM) or mouth publicity is believed to be the most effective marketing channel in the modern era. Twitter helps the company get extensive mouth publicity to its products. It should be noted that the consumers of McDonald’s products usually express their opinion through tweets. The company monitors all such tweets properly and take necessary actions to control such tweets. Even though McDonald’s social team is not bothering too much to respond to the messages of its Facebook friends, they are ready to respond to the tweets. Even complaints handled by McDonald’s social team through its twitter account. “McDonald’s has a dedicated customer service feed that responds to customer complaints” (Moth). The company knows that the complaints posted on Twitter have the potential to damage its reputation. Therefore, immense care is taken by McDonalds to settle customer problems and complaints registered through Twitter. As in the case of Facebook account, McDonald’s has many local twitter accounts, in countries it operates. The company believes that local accounts are necessary since no two countries are alike in terms of culture, politics, economy and other aspects of business. McDonald’s and Instagram Since Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service, McDonalds is keen on using it for the promotion of its products. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Instagram is capable of sending or sharing photos with 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile devices. Moreover, it is possible for the Instagram users to edit, crop or stylize their photos before sending it to their friends. That is why Instagram is mostly used by teenagers when they wanted to share photos. “McDonald’s recently ran a number of sponsored ads on Instagram to promote the Bacon Clubhouse burger that was launched earlier this year to appeal to millennials and make up for slipping sales. Like a bunch of other millennial-focused marketers, McDonald’s likely picked Instagram to grab the attention of smartphone-toting youngsters”(Johnson). Smartphone usage among the new generation is extremely high compared to that among old generation. Older generation use mobile phones mainly for the calling purposes. On the other hand, new generation or generation Y uses smartphones virtually for everything. In fact, a substantial portion of the generation Y uses their social network accounts through smartphones. Therefore, it is easy for companies to catch the attention of the generation Y through social networks. Moreover, the preference for fast foods is more among the teenage community than that among the older community. All these factors prompted McDonalds to use social networks like Instagram for the promotion of its products. According to David Martinelli, digital marketing manager at McDonald’s, “Instagram allows us to share compelling and entertaining photos about our brand, food and more in unexpected and innovative ways” (Johnson). McDonald’s and YouTube As in the case of other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, McDonalds is using YouTube for the promotion of its products. The company is conducting various sales promotion campaigns through YouTube. For example, with the help of The Ask McDonalds YouTube campaign, McDonalds is trying to address the concerns of the public about the quality and traceability of their food. Since the introduction of this campaign, “over 20,000 questions were asked, of which each one was answered. They also set up a YouTube channel to showcase video responses to some of the questions” (Warren-Payne). “Our Foods, Your Questions” is another campaign conducted by McDonalds through You Tube. Many people believe that the idea behind these sales promotion campaigns through YouTube is the repairing of McDonalds’ reputation problem. The campaigns against fast food companies such as McDonalds are growing across the world at present because of the health concerns about fast foods. The call for banning fast food is increasing day by day. Therefore, McDonalds wanted to convince the people that its food items are safe and it causes no problems to human health. “McDonald’s is releasing behind-the scenes web vignettes and infographics, which will apparently illustrate the production process behind its products like Chicken McNuggets and the McRib, and how they go from “farm to restaurant” (Starkman). To conclude, McDonalds is using all major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram effectively to promote its products. The company is using You Tube to clear the doubts about the people about the safety of using fast foods. Works Cited Johnson Lauren. “McDonalds Gets Super-Sized Backlash With Instagram Ads People arent loving it”. Adweek. August 4, 2014. Web. Web. 10 December 2014. Moth, David. “How McDonalds Uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+” Web. 10 December 2014. Starkman, Naomi.What McDonald’s New ‘Transparency’ Campaign Is Hiding. TIME. Oct. 13, 2014. Print. Sung, Amy. “Lessons in Facebook”. QSR Magazine. December 2012. Web. 10 December 2014. Warren-Payne, Andrew. “10 Brilliant Digital Marketing Campaigns From McDonalds”. econsultancy. 10 July, 2013. Web. 10 December 2014. Read More