What Can Digital Marketers Learn From McDonald’s Change To “All Day Breakfast”?
For those of you that are not aware, McDonald’s will be serving ALL DAY BREAKFAST starting October 6th. This calls for screams of joy for those of us who have shown up at Micky-D’s at 10:32 AM craving our Egg McMuffin and Hash-brows only to be forced to eat a Big Mac. I personally find it almost impossible to believe that McDonald’s change to all day breakfast has taken this long. The question that I pose today is what can online marketers learn from McDonald’s change to providing all day breakfast?
Listen To Your Customers
The first thing that we can take from our new all day breakfast joint is that we should be listening to our customers. For a company the size of McDonald’s to almost double their menu for the entire time they are open is not an easy task. They now have to be prepared to quickly serve up a $1 Sausage McMuffin just as fast as an order of their famous fries….at 10:30 at night. The only way that they would be willing to take on the cost in doing so is by finally listening to their customers. Can you imagine how many people have complained over the years when they missed the breakfast cut-off? The take away for your Digital Marketing sales funnel is to not only listen when your customers are angry, but proactively ask them what they want. Ask social media questions, make phone calls, post sale surveys etc.
Give The People What They Want
It must have been a massive project to be able to provide breakfast all day long. I’m sure that many in McDonald’s leadership said 
that it would not grow the bottom line. The key here is pushing through what seems to be a challenge or to not make financial sense at first glance. If the people are demanding it, you need to figure out a way to deliver it. This is coming up with a plan or an idea that delivers on those customer requests or from your survey outreach. For the Digital Marketer, that means if you are contracted with a business, you should be doing this on their behalf. Providing your customers (the business) with new, inventive ways to market themselves based on the analysis of the surveys and other outreach you have done. If you see consistency around a particular theme, be willing to entertain it, regardless of how insane or expensive it may be. Figure it out.
Try to Expand On Existing Markets
I’m sure that some people eat at McDonald’s every morning. Those people may never hit up the massive fast food giant for lunch or dinner, but the breakfast menu has them every day. McDonald’s now has the ability to drive that business all day long. You never know, they may see someone eating some Chicken McNuggets and give them a try. Do the same for your clients. Look at the existing tactics that work, even a small amount, and focus on what can be done to grow that sector.
Make A Big Deal About New Promotions
McDonald’s will be promoting the hell out of their new all day breakfast. If your client has any new product or service, its a great excuse to create an entire social media marketing campaign around it. You may put on your web design hat and build a micro-website just on the new “thing”. You should use every tool in your toolbox to drive traffic around the new product or service.
Pay Attention To Trends
I feel quite confident that McDonald’s has been paying close attention to their competition and seeing how their “all day breakfast” programs have been doing. It wasn’t that long ago that McDonald’s decided to start serving frozen cappuccino drinks. Every good SEO Company does exhaustive Keyword Research when they take on a new client. Very few go back and do it again. Times change, what people search for change, products and search terms for products change. It’s important to go back to square one every once in a while to make sure you are pushing down the right road. Play close attention to the competitors to your clients and see what they are doing. If they are silly enough to use meta keywords, pay close attention to what they are. Run reports on domain statistics to see what type of traffic and backlinks the competition is getting.
In Conclusion
At the end of the day, we can learn a lot from what multi-million dollar, publicly traded corporations do. They are generally pretty methodical in their approach, especially if they are doing well. Don’t watch all of them! Large public companies that are in trouble may try radical things just to make a change. Even more importantly, attempt to digest WHY companies take on a particular marketing strategy, the thought experiment in itself may lead to great results.
