McDonald’s 8.8 Membership Festival brand promotion strategy!

This year's McDonald's 8.8 Membership Festival is coming to an end. Compared with last year's main discounts on single items, this year's discounts are set meals. A grilled burger, a pair of chicken wings, a cup of Coke, and a serving of fries are only 25 yuan, which is a full 30 yuan cheaper. It is an offer that is impossible to refuse.

So, I took some time to review McDonald’s 8.8 Membership Day marketing strategy.

1. See the moves

The first move: open low and close high with large profit margins

The food procurement process of large fast food chain restaurants is usually standardized and the costs are relatively fixed, so there will not be much change in the selling price, and customers who often go to McDonald's are also relatively clear about the prices.

Last year, on the first day of the 8.8 Membership Day, McDonald's offered a 5-yuan sale on a teriyaki chicken burger, giving a direct 10-yuan discount, telling consumers in a straightforward manner that "we are giving real and large discounts."

This year, in addition to the 5-yuan teriyaki burger in the first week of the 8.8 Membership Day, there are also buy-one-get-one-free spicy chicken wings and a half-price promotion for the second Angus beef bacon burger combo (new product).

It can be seen that McDonald's has tasted the sweetness of "winning the hearts of the people" at the beginning.

The second strategy: moving forward despite the difficulties and taking the right medicine

Seizing the pain point of consumers who “don’t know what to eat for lunch”, McDonald’s publishes a list of discounts for the coming week in the form of a calendar every Thursday, directly telling customers what is the most cost-effective thing to eat today and helping them make decisions.

Compared with last year’s 8.8 Membership Day discount list, this year more discounts in the form of packages are available.

The discounts directly cover all categories including snacks, beverages, staple foods, etc., there is always one that suits you!

In addition, compared to last year's event which focused on in-store users, this year we also launched a one-discount-a-day event for McDelivery users. 56 benefits in 28 days.

The third trick: extreme ultra-long standby

It is common for restaurants to launch single product promotions. In addition, it is also common to set one day of the work week as a promotion day, such as KFC's Tuesday membership day and the brand day that a certain JD platform is keen to create.

However, McDonald's is the first to extend this program to 28 days. For consumers who have completed the transaction, "buying is earning", and for customers who have not had the chance to go to the store to enjoy the discount, there is no need to rush. The promotion lasts a total of 28 days and you will be satisfied one day.

2. Breaking the move

The first technique: low-cost traffic bundling is king

An online store usually has three products. One is the traffic-generating model, which is used to expand traffic at a low price and attract as much traffic as possible to the store; one is the main promotion model, which is used to stabilize the sales of the entire store; and the other is the secondary promotion model, which increases consumption.

As a physical store, McDonald’s 8.8 Membership Festival actually adopts the same strategy.

A chicken steak for 5 yuan, a Chicken McNuggets for 6 yuan, a McFlurry for 6 yuan...it seems like a good deal, but think about it, would you only order a drink when you go to McDonald's? Who doesn’t spend forty or fifty dollars and come out with a big belly!

The Member's Day promotion, which seems to be a loss-making one, is actually intended to attract customers to the store through low-priced items . The real marketing purpose is to attract customers to buy a cup of half-priced milk tea after buying the staple food.

The second technique: reduce decision-making costs and increase customer unit price

Factors that affect consumer purchasing costs in marketing include monetary cost, time cost, reach cost, decision-making cost and many other reasons.

The 8.8 Membership Day apparently reduces consumers’ monetary costs, but it actually also reduces consumers’ decision-making costs.

The more you reduce the consumer's decision-making time, the easier it is to achieve transaction goals.

Having tasted the sweetness of profits last year, McDonald's has launched a variety of meal package discounts this year, which include staple foods, snacks and drinks. This not only solves consumers' decision-making troubles, but also increases the average customer spending without any effort.

The third technique: Online and offline development go hand in hand

McDonald's, which has more than 2,400 offline stores in China, has extended its reach to the takeout market this year after accumulating experience from last year's 8.8 Membership Festival.

That is to say, there will be two member discount products every day, one for in-store consumption (there are also exclusive word-of-mouth coupons that can be redeemed at the offline door), and one for takeaway consumption. Online and offline businesses go hand in hand, leaving no plate untouched.

Compared with stores, McDelivery's discounted products are concentrated on set meals, with high average order value, and most discounts are in the form of half-price for the second set meal, which matches the fact that the average order value of takeout is generally higher than that of offline.

The fourth technique: Immediate user retention and repurchase

What I admire most about the 8.8 Membership Day is not the efficient order conversion rate, but the accumulation of interested users.

In a market environment where the cost of acquiring new users remains high, McDonald's not only achieved its commercial sales goals through this wave of marketing, but also accumulated interested users at the lowest cost, paving the way for future member user operations.

Last year, users had to bind their membership to receive coupons for the same day and the next day. This year, members can receive coupons for the same day and the next 6 days. Behind each single transaction is repeat purchase that can be immediately converted into cash.

The fifth technique: Enhance brand memory with self-propagation attributes

Under what circumstances would you recommend a restaurant to a friend?

There are only two reasons: one is that it tastes good, and the other is that it is cost-effective. McDonald’s 8.8 Membership Day has already met the conditions for self-propagation in terms of the strength of the discounts. In addition, the discounts cover all categories and the marketing front is extended to one month, which completely achieves "many promotional categories", "wide coverage of the population", "long discount period" and "large price concessions". These four points are enough to make this wave of marketing have the attribute of self-propagation.

In fact, word of mouth spread by consumers themselves is the real word of mouth, and its conversion power is far greater than the extra efforts made by the brand.

3. Compare moves

During the period when McDonald’s is making a big push for its 8.8 Membership Day, I am also curious about what marketing actions KFC, as its number one competitor, is taking.

So, I made a simple comparison table to explore more.

Taking into account the campaign cycle and completeness, the data I used was from June to August last year.

Author: Mao Shiyi

Source: Shuying.com