Starbucks Coffee Ad Domination

     Starbucks has successfully taken over the gourmet coffee market category as a market leader.  The brand targets multiple audiences, from the average worker on their morning coffee run, to the college student cramming the night before an exam.  However, I have found Starbucks could be incredibly successful not only marketing to current loyal customers, but also venturing into the health conscious market, as well as to travelers seeking familiarity and convenience in their morning routines. 

        Based on past research on the brand, Starbucks thrives off of its 24-hour convenience, drive through options, and convenient and consistent national locations.  Consumers love the familiarity and consistency they experience when visiting any location.  However, sales tend to take a dip on the weekends when many workers have the time to brew their morning coffee at home.  Therefore, I propose a Google Adwords campaign that targets both travelers who may be visiting places on weekends and looking to purchase their morning coffee, while also finding a way to drive up weekend sales.  I propose offering a “Buy One Get One Half Off” deal, only available on the weekends with a cost per click of $2.00, seeing as this is approximately the cost of what half of the additional beverage would be.  The company will be effective influencing purchases of travelers as they may be more willing to purchase a familiar brand they trust, as apposed to local coffee shops, due to the purchase deal.  Starbucks could also market this offer as an idea for a cheap “coffee date.” 

        After using Google Analytics as well as Google Adwords to find keywords most commonly used to locate Starbucks online in contrast to the competition, I composed the following Ad Groups for split testing within this market:

  "Starbucks Speals / Enjoy our drinks for less / Weekend deals make best date ideas / Starbucks.com/deals," and

   "BOGO Half Off Starbucks / Deals on favorite seasonal drinks / Bring in on weekends for specials / Starbucks.com/deals"

  I would like to test whether having the deal visible to viewers before clicking on the ad is more effective than having the deal and coupon be something the consumer must actively pursue.

         I decided to take a different approach when addressing the increasingly health conscious market in the U.S. to keep sales high while increasing consumer awareness of Starbucks’ healthier options by bringing online viewers to the brand’s nutrition and drink customization pages.  I found that the words “nutritious” and “healthy” had different response rates and were words not commonly used in Starbucks search results, which is why I sought to influence this new association with the Ad Group testing:

   "Nutritious Coffee Items / Healthy Starbucks drinks and food / Find how fast food can be healthy / Starbucks.com/menu/nutrition" as well as...

    "Healthy Starbucks Items / Favorite items under 200 calories / Find how to make your drink healthy / Starbucks.com/menu/drinks"

   In this Adwords campaign I hope to promote consumer awareness of Starbucks’ numerous healthy customization options.

         Lastly, I found that loyal customers should have further incentives to continue shopping at Starbucks and abstain from purchasing from both local and national competitors.  In this way, I attempt to increase consumer awareness of the Starbucks rewards program and therefore increase further sales.  Since Starbucks rewards is completely free and can be used at any Starbucks location, I found it best to focus on the idea that loyal behavior is rewarded as well as the convenience of the brand’s service I attempted these traits in the following Adword campaign:

   "Get Starbucks Reward Card / Loyal customer? Get more for free! / Register a reward card for free offers / Starbucks.com/card/rewards" as well as...

   "Gree Starbucks Rewards / Be rewarded for your daily routine / Rewards that work anywhere / Starbucks.com/card/rewards"

   The idea is that the ad conveys enough information to be intriguing to consumers that already know a great deal about the brand and prompt them to learn how to benefit off of their routine behavior, therefore reinforcing their purchasing habits. Since Starbucks Rewards members are most likely the company’s most loyal customers to begin with, the budget for this cost per click should be greater than the budget spent on the coupon incentive and health conscious markets.  The average person works about 50 years of his or her life (with the average age to start work begin 17 and the average age of retirement being 67 in the United States).  This means, that the average worker, whether it is a college student, young professional, or senior executive, starts his or her day with a cup of coffee which adds up to about $4.00 a day for a Starbucks specialty drink. If you account for two weeks of vacation a year, loyal customers who start their work day with Starbucks coffee spend an estimated $1,000 a year on the brand, which amounts to $50,000 lifetime worth of the customer.  Therefore, the budget for this target market should well above a $2.00 limit, seeing as a loyal Starbucks customer will have a greater lifetime worth to the company, but should be limited probably around what the customer spends at their local Starbucks store each week, which is around $20 on average. 

        Some research I conducted with Adwords and through my own search engine optimization research, I have found it best to avoid specific demographic keywords (i.e. “young,” or “old,”) within the Starbucks ad campaign, and instead focus on both the items the company offers as well as the adjectives consumers most commonly associate the brand with.  This includes words such as: mocha espresso, double shot espresso, low calorie latte, sophisticated coffee drinks, frappuccinos, Starbucks, Starbuck, Starbuck’s, local coffee shops, dark roast coffee, caffe latte, caffe Americano, etc.  Although many of these words are used a great deal in SEO already, Starbucks already ranks very high up on search results due to its remarkable presence in the U.S. and on a global level.