How Domino's Facebook Ads Sold Pizzas Worldwide

From Kalamazoo to Korea, one-day campaign drove 542,000 sales leads.

dominos-ads-body-imageFacebook drove 542,000 users to Domino’s ordering sites on Dec. 8, 2011, celebrating the brand’s 51st birthday with half-price pizzas worldwide. The one-day campaign ran in 19 international markets and was pitched via Facebook like-gate ads in 10 languages.

“It was wildly successful,” Dennis Maloney, Domino’s VP of digital marketing, told ClickZ. He said the promotion broke sales records in multiple countries for the brand. Dubbed “Global Domino’s Day,” Maloney said the campaign used 20 country-specific Facebook pages.

“It was the first time we activated a single promotion worldwide,” he said. “We actually think it’s the first time any [quick-serve restaurant] company has been able to do that, which is really exciting. It got great participation around the world.”

While 50 percent of Domino’s stores are in the U.S., Maloney said his Facebook campaign saw terrific sales results in Korea, Israel, the U.K., and Canada. The social platform has evolved into a worldwide digital broadcast center for brands, he said.

“Facebook has become a single point and language that translates almost across the entire globe,” Maloney said. “That opens up the door to promotions like this.”

App and Ads Build Up Awareness

Here’s how the promotion unfolded:

  • During the week leading up to the campaign, a tab on Domino’s Facebook page alerted viewers that “something big is about to happen,” according to the brand, while providing a share button.
  • A second version of the tab was launched three days before the event, revealing the half-price offer and allowing Facebook users to share the message in 14 languages.
  • In days prior to the campaign, Facebook Marketplace and Sponsored Stories ads were posted to create awareness. And premium ads on the social site encouraged users to RSVP to the event.
  • Premium and Sponsored Stories ads ran on Dec. 8, 2011 driving click-throughs to the app, where they could select their country and go to their local/regional Dominos ordering site.
  • Once users “liked” the brand, the app added the discount offer to their Dominos.com shopping cart.
  • Then, a pop-up encouraged people to share the offer with their friends.

Domino’s, which currently has 6.3 million Facebook fans/likes, picked up legions of new ones – particularly in the U.K. and Canada, Maloney said – due to the campaign. When asked to give specifics about sales versus spend, he said, “The ROI for this program was phenomenal.”

Challenges Precede Global Sales

At the same time, Maloney said, globally scaled social media campaigns entail a lot of preparation. His brand’s one-day promotion – from concept to launch – took six months to ready, the marketing VP said, much longer than normal digital campaigns due to language issues and nation-specific regulations. St. Louis-based ad agency Ansira assisted with the effort.

“It definitely took some time and coordination,” Maloney said. “Going through that process for 19 countries is literally 19 times harder than only doing a promotion for one country…We had to prepare the [ad and app] language for each country separately.”

Though the results, he suggested, speak for themselves in any tongue. “In almost every market,” Maloney said, “it was a record-breaking day. It either broke the record for orders or for how many people visited [that country’s] Facebook page.”

Update: This story’s original version stated 542,000 orders were completed during the promotion.

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