Ad Budget Blueprint: QSR + Fast Casual | 250K – 1M

This is for QSR and Fast Casual marketing leaders looking to stand out and “stand in.” That means helping you rethink the fundamentals, while being more present in your communities. I offer guidance on restaurant franchise marketing and advertising budget spend across 3 different scenarios.

I’m going to share some thoughts that you might not see everywhere. This is for the marketer that is hungry (pun intended) and ambitiously looking to build intimacy with their audience. It’s about creating an almost unshakable reputation with customers that lends itself to LTV more than instant ROI.

But first, who am I?

My name is Jarrel (Jay for short) and I’ve been an advertising professional for 12 years. I got my start at arguably the top ad agency in Chicago at the time, working on the McDonald’s account. Since then, I’ve worked for about every type of agency possible and in-house for 3 Fortune 500 companies.

Oh, and that’s me posing with a colleague from my first agency job at a McDonald’s 10K in 2015 below. (I’m always down for a good run)

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Budget Scenario 1: 250K

Success at this budget could look like solidifying the creative direction of your campaign and a sales lift at 1 or 2 locations. I call it “community lift.” This means winning more of the market that surrounds those stores and speaking to consumers in a thoughtful, localized way.

Have a struggling store? Have a new location? This could be the perfect plan to implement.

This is my approach to spending a 250K budget, the tactics to emphasize and why.

Hot Takes

• I would spend about 20% of this budget giving food away

• I would develop a small piece of physical media to share with select fans

• I would judge success by creative sentiment, net promoter scores and target location(s) sales

Suggested Spend

• Invest 60% into advertising (I.E. Strategy, creative, production, experimental and testing)

• Invest 20% into giveaways

• Invest 20% into media

Tactics

1. Build a Local Strategy: Target the neighborhoods around your stores to increase revenue by location. Work with your advertising partners to research and flush out a plan.

2. Personalize Your Story & Creative: Find the “fit.” Use your strategy to develop creative that meets your customers where they are.

3. Create and Test: Host local focus groups and test creative out in the wild. Scale in with your media buys and increase media on creative that gets a good response.

4. Go With Guerilla Marketing: Build a local street team and arm them with coupons. Treat them well and they will be future brand advocates.

5. Sample Your Food: Find innovative ways—and lots of them—to have your target audience taste your food wherever they are. Work with your agency partners for some fresh ideas.

6. Make More Meaning: Create a piece of exclusive physical media for select customers. This will help you drive lifestyle penetration, brand affinity and word-of-mouth.

Why?

• Local Strategy: Restaurants are places first. This means they are all located somewhere. Gaining community buy-in is a sure-fire way to connect with the people closet to your food.

• Personalized Story + Creative: The goal is what I call “lifestyle penetration.” This means presenting your stories and products in an informed way that lends itself to a native fit. If it makes sense for them, people will embrace it.

• Create and Test: This prevents waste and drives down costs.

• Guerilla Marketing: Hiring people from the community will help drive local word-of-mouth and show that you are authentically investing in the neighborhoods.

• Free Food: I’ve attended brand tastings and it’s a great way to get familiar with a brand and eventually become an advocate.

• Physical Media: Physical media is in – I’ve personally been trying to de-digitalize my life in different ways. It’s a great way to market in a unique way.

The Goals

• Solidify Your Approach: Find out what stories, messaging, and creative works for the markets around your stores and use this information to advise future campaigns.  

• Drive Word-of-Mouth: Create an offline viral effect. If enough people talk about your brand, you’ll experience inbound growth.

• Increase Single Store Sales: By isolating your marketing to the communities around your target stores, you hone in on increasing revenue in an intentional way.

The Wrap Up

Don’t forget the basics. Invest in your base campaign visuals, influencer marketing, earned and paid media. Work with your agency partners to develop your campaign and find the product/brand marketing fit that feels authentic to the communities you’re looking to reach.

*Marketing Sidenote: Try to have your store managers greet people that visit based on your tactics and set up a process for an in-person touch base to build community rapport. Think of it like a chef coming to your table at a full-service restaurant. A handshake and a smile goes a long way.

Disclaimer: None of this was written with AI – just human intelligence – thoughts straight out of my brain.

Stay tuned for part 2 covering the 500K budget next week on Monday, May 11th…