Tag: taco bell mobile marketing

Taco Bell tracks phone user habits to target its mobile ads

| March 17, 2016

The goal is to ensure that people will be swayed and will want to buy from the breakfast menu.

Taco Bell knows that the millennial generation is its primary target market, and the fast food company is now tracking its cell phone toting customers in order to be able to best design their mobile ads strategy.

The idea is to reach these mobile device users the moment they get up in the morning to make them crave breakfast.

Not just any breakfast, of course. The mobile ads are a part of a campaign to help to promote the new breakfast menu. Earlier this month, Taco Bell rolled out 10 new breakfast items with the highly affordable price tag of only $1 each. This is the latest step in encouraging people to think of their quick service restaurants for their first meal of the day – an effort that began back in 2014.

To make sure these mobile ads go out at the perfect moment, Taco Bell tracks customer phone activity and data.

Taco Bell Targets Mobile AdsAccording to the Taco Bell vice president of media and brand partnerships, Juliete Corsinita, “We’ve honed our media skills over the last couple of years.” As a part of this effort, the company is also working with Aki, a mobile advertising firm that attempts to “target mobile moments”.

The way Aki works is that it starts by tracking the phone activity and data of a mobile device user. This allows it to target its smartphone ads based on exceptionally specific habits and behaviors such as knowing which apps are used by a smartphone user first thing in the morning. It can learn the times of day when someone looks at a breakfast recipe as well as the favorite news apps for catching up on what’s going on in the world before the day begins.

Taco Bell has also been tinkering with the Wishbone mobile app that makes it possible for users to ask their followers to complete mini-polls that have participants choosing their favorite images. When the app is opened, they’re asked which between two pictures is the best. Starting earlier this month, one of these efforts in mobile ads in disguise has asked people to choose between a piece of flat bread or the new flatbread quesadilla sold at the restaurants.

Mobile apps from Taco Bell include location based marketing features

| February 21, 2014

The application uses the GPS built into the device to ensure that food is served fast and hot.

Taco Bell is about to join the latest mobile apps that will be bringing enhancements to ordering functionalities over smartphones and tablets, as they expand the testing of location based marketing and services using GPS technology.

Californian consumers will likely be the first ones who will be able to take advantage of the new app.

Though using location based technology in mobile apps may seem as though it is a little bit risky, as it closes the window for error quite a bit, this does not seem to be the actual experience at the Taco Bell test restaurants, so far. It could seem that people would try to make their food orders on their way to the restaurant and that this would increase the likelihood of long wait times, but so far, those who have tested it are often reporting that their maximum wait times are around two minutes.

Taco Bell is using the design of its mobile apps to better suit the needs of its primary demographic.Mobile Apps - Taco Bell

The consumers who eat at their quick service restaurants the most are, according to Taco Bell, young Millenials. As those are the people who are the most likely to have smartphones and to use them for a greater number of daily activities, it only seems to make sense that restaurants tap into that with location based marketing and services that can help to increase their sales.

Their latest report indicated that among smartphone owners, two out of every five will use their mobile devices for finding a place to eat. Providing these diners with a way to not only find the restaurant locations very easily using GPS technology, but also offering a way to actually order the food while on the go so that it will be ready upon arrival.

Though Taco Bell is not the first company to implement mobile ordering, its mobile apps appear to be the first ones that will be full featured and that provide the ability to order anything from the menu – including customizations of those menu items – while allowing the customer to tell the restaurant when he or she will be arriving at the location to pick it up.