Marketing plan for GrabFood

Introduction:

Grab is a leading organization offering ride sharing services and on-demand food delivery services in the SEA region. Its strong presence throughout the region attributed to powerful technology and positive customer experiences have helped shaped and grow the business in recent years. GrabFood specifically, faces intense competition not only from other food-delivery services but also the convenience provided by simply heading over to local hawker centers and nearby restaurants. This competitive landscape calls for a holistic marketing strategy that will grow the business across many verticals. Ultimately, strong brand awareness, and furthering technological advancements and customer relationships through various marketing strategies will help GrabFood become the leading food-delivery service in the region.

Here is a strategic outline of the steps I would take in order to expand GrabFood’s business and help them grow within the region.

1.Situation analysis: an analysis of the current home food delivery landscape needs to be assessed in order to come up with a strategy that can make a difference towards the business.

• Who are the customers? 18–60 years old; male & female; middle — upper class; tech-savvy; students, employed individuals, senior citizens, retired folks
• What channels is Grab currently using? — Direct marketing efforts through Email, and the app. Grab also advertises on many social media channels such as Facebook, Youtube and Google network just to name a couple.
• Which markets are they currently in? — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines
• What is Grab’s differentiation? — no minimum order spend, acquisition of UberEats, advanced scheduling, GrabRewards, partner insurance, anytime cash out for partners
• Who are the competitors? What is the competitive landscape? — Deliveroo, Foodpanda, and Honestbee. Most of the competitors are offering more or less similar features such as centralized kitchens, free delivery, subscription services, heavy investments in marketing/ branding, cash on delivery, high number of credit card tie-ups, just to name a few. Honestbee has additional product lines such as laundry and grocery delivery. The main points of differentiation specifically in food delivery are coming from variety of cuisines & restaurants available, branding, delivery times, cheaper daily meal options, increased marketing spend, and offering compelling promos and offers.
• SWOT analysis

• Porter’s 5 forces

2. Objectives: these will vary depending on the customer lifecycle. As a leading food-delivery app with sizeable competition, here are a few objectives Grab should work towards.

For the purpose of this article, we will focus on building a marketing strategy for objective number 3 & 4; it is essential for Grab to expand (acquisition) in order to gain higher market share while also retaining customers by driving up the customer lifetime value in order to grow a sustaining and profitable business whilst keeping up with competition.

Goals and KPIs to meet objectives:

• Increase in Nth Day retention (In this case, a user is considered retained if the user places a successful order)
• Increase in the average order frequency
• Increase in the average order value
• Increase in number of orders

3. Strategy

What are competitors doing that already relate to GrabFood’s objectives? — Foodpanda and Deliveroo have centralized kitchens in SG where customers can come in and choose from a range of places to eat. Although the concept is similar to a food court, it’s the branding that makes the difference.

Strategy 1: GrabFood should consider opening centralized kitchens quicker than its competitors as it’s a great way to attract people in the offline world and put a human touch to the brand. A positive real-life experience can then push people to use the app more often, thus driving retention.

Tactics:

Online -

• Advertise the launch across all social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube ads (short 10 second non-skippable ads), and Google ads.
• Value proposition should center around convenience, easy click-n-collect options, and a new dine-in experience from a range of restaurants to choose from
• Create limited edition/ pop-up type meals that are only available during launch week.
• Encourage people to come dine with their family — create a “family week” where all families get 50% of all orders.

Offline:

• Digital billboards displaying targeted messages based on the time of day, driving people to the offline location. Lunch related messages should be displayed around lunch time while tea/ afternoon snacks should be displayed in the afternoon time encouraging people to come into the new facility. These billboards near MRT stations would prove helpful with the high amount of foot traffic.

Action

• Identify the best location to set up the new facility (prime location close to MRT would be ideal)
• Identify all logistics (costs, equipment, personnel, etc) needed to build another centralized kitchen
• Allocate the necessary resources for the new build out
• Plan a schedule of new facility set up
• Set up data collection platform in the center (to better understand food habits and order preferences)

Control

KPI’s to measure against:

• Average order value
• Number of customers entering per day
• Number of tables filled per hour
• Number of click-n-collect vs number of dine-ins
• Customer satisfaction of facilities and premises
• Increase in number of app visitors (assuming that a positive offline experience can in turn impact users to return to the app when at home)
• If the facility isn’t performing as expected, implement more rigorous marketing programs to drive traffic into the facility

Strategy 2: Launching a new product line can help retain customers. GrabFood should curate 20–30 different fixed meals (“meals of the day”/ “meals of the week”) from various restaurants within a fixed radius around the user, thus allowing users to order a meal-for-one, at a flat price, free of any delivery, or packaging charges. The meals would change on a daily or weekly basis as agreed with the partners. This new easy feature can help acquire new customers as well as retain existing ones.

Tactics

• Pre-launch PR — To create awareness and drive interest among the user — This should be scheduled a month before the product launch. Product preannouncement through online & offline publications. The aim of this phase is to gauge the pulse of the audience for this new product line.
• Launch PR — Initially, Grab should launch this feature to only one city and less than 5% of the total user base. Hence the marketing efforts should be adjusted accordingly. The goal is to ensure that users are convinced of the new product and they make a purchase. Grab should be using offline, online and app notifications to achieve that. Following are the two main points that need to be highlighted in the campaigns to drive purchase:
• The key value proposition of the new product line (affordability, ease, convenience)
• Affordable single person meals from known chains (Secondary brand associations should be made in order to create interest and drive purchase)
• Post Launch PR — The aim of this phase is to retain users. Based on the emotions from social media and user interviews, we should be narrowing down on one or two value proposition that customers value — for ex: “if you can’t make up your mind about what to order, let us help you. Here are 20–30 fixed meals you can order at the tap of a button, for a flat fee free of delivery charges!” These insights should then be used as the central theme for the offline ads, online ads and app notifications to drive repeated orders.

Action:

Sizing the problem:

• Understanding and defining a one person meal
• average item count in a typical GrabFood cart
• % of orders which fit into our meal-for-one definition
• % of orders which fit into our meal-for-one definition and were made from a restaurant offering free delivery
• % of order flows which fit into our meal-for-one definition but had a delivery charge applicable and were abandoned at the cart.

Creating a solution that benefits all three key stakeholders in the marketplace: Eaters, Merchants and Delivery partners.

• Eaters — No paradox of choice, No delivery fee, No packing charge, Faster delivery and Budget friendly
• Merchants — Predictable orders, better real estate exposure on the app and increased orders and revenue.
• Delivery partners — Considering that the preparation time is less than 3 minutes per order, we can club orders thus resulting in higher payout per day for delivery partners.

Go-to-market strategy — We need to clearly identify the launch city and area, our first set of merchants, and the exact dishes from them.

Implementation — Instead of opening up just about any meals from any restaurant, it’s important to make manual polygons in the entire city such that the distance between any two farthest points in these polygons is less than 3 km. Next, dishes need to be manually curated from certain restaurants within that polygon.

Control:

KPI’s to measure against:

Eaters

• Avg number of “Meal for one” orders per month per user
• Increase in Nth Day retention (In this case, a user is considered retained if the user places a successful order)
• Increase in the average order frequency
• Increase in the average order value
• Decrease in order placing time.
• Decrease in delivery time
• Decrease in cart abandonment
• Need to monitor the trend customer rating for food quality and delivery quality to ensure that the system is working as expected.

Merchants

• Decrease in average food preparation
• Increase in order volume
• Increase in revenue

Delivery Partners

• Increase in daily payouts
• Decrease in delivery time per order

Which market should GrabFood target? Should they expand? — GrabFood should consider expanding to new cities in countries it already operates in and a completely new market that it’s currently not operating in. A fast to market strategy can give GrabFood an edge over competitors in gaining the initial market share and traction and ultimately, brand awareness.

Strategy 3: GrabFood should expand into 3–5 new cities, and 1 brand new country by end of 2019

Tactics:

Online:

• Pre-launch PR — Use all social media channels to announce the launch into new cities. Lead ads on Facebook, video ads on youtube and Instagram can prove to be effective. The aim of this phase is to drive awareness and interest.
• Create new launch promos and freebies to get users to download the app. (for ex: free delivery on first 5 orders, or 10 SGD voucher to order a free meal, etc)
• Email marketing campaign announcing the launch and providing a referral scheme for friends and family living in the new areas can prove to be effective.

Offline:

• Tie up with local businesses, corporations (corporate discounts) and universities (student deals) and promos.
• Ads in local newspapers and radio channels
• Billboards and banners spread across the city can spread a lot of awareness.

Action

• Demographic analysis should be conducted to identify regional consumer behavior, preferences, incomes, etc
• New cities should be selected per most potential; new merchant-partners should be identified
• A plan consisting of 3–6 months of milestones and events should be developed
• Appropriate personnel should be allocated to the work. Hiring consultants in the local areas would be useful in better understanding the new areas.

Control

KPI’s to measure against:

• Number of new customers acquired
• Cost per acquisition
• Retention rate of new customers
• Number of merchants added per week
• % brand love and equity
• Monitor if competition is planning to enter the same area

What is GrabFood’s value proposition? Positioning? In order to better retain customers, GrabFood should create a unique value proposition/ positioning based on something more intangible, such as emotions.

Strategy 4: GrabFood can position itself as the go-to service when one is missing mom’s cooking, or simply miss being home. GrabFood can also hit the sentiments of those who work late and don’t have enough time to cook delicious, healthy meals that taste like those made at home. Connecting to eater’s emotions can help bring them back to the app, driving retention.

Tactics

Online:

• Strong branding campaigns across all social media channels revolving around emotions of hunger and missing home food can help position GrabFood as a comforting app. Create special hashtags to track the campaign.
• Branding elements such as feelings and imagery (in the visuals/ campaigns) should be the focus.
• Youtube, Facebook and Instagram ads would be especially useful in conveying these emotions and sentiments around home food, and healthy food. User should be triggered to reorder from the app every time they crave home food.

Offline:

• Billboards and banners conveying these sentiments should be spread across the city. GrabFood can partner specifically with universities as these are group to most likely miss home food. Visuals across campus and incentivized tie-ups would help retain old customers as well as acquire new ones.
• GrabFood can consider sponsoring university events as well.

Action:

• Create a long term content calendar of compelling visuals specifically to use for branding purposes.
• Identify all hunger-related and home-related emotions to use as the central theme
• Shifting customer mindset as the comfort/ go-to app through perceptions and distinctiveness

Control:

KPI’s to measure against:

• Campaign reach on social media
• Hashtag reach/ engagement rate
• Comments and interactions on the hashtag
• Brand buzz
• Number of app visitors
• Increase in orders
• Increase in order frequency

Optimize existing app/ features — Technological advancements will be essential to keep the app fresh, interesting and exciting enough to return to.

Strategy 5: New in-app features such as calorie count, “top 10 most ordered meals of the week”, and “top rated restaurants near you” and recommendations based on previous orders can be implemented to keep the app exciting and engaging, driving retention of eaters and orders.

Tactics:

Online:

• Spread word about the new features on online channels such as Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. As people become more health-conscious, iterating a feature such as calorie count meals can trigger people to come back into the app.
• Email marketing campaign introducing the newest features and encouraging people to try them

In-app:

• In-app pop-up notifications (immediately when the user opens the app) highlighting the new features

Action:

• Identify all the trendiest features people are looking for in food delivery apps, for ex: calorie count for every item, “top rated restaurants” within a 3km radius of the eater, “top ordered food this week” within a 3km radius of the eater, and new food recommendations based on previous orders or user’s food preferences.
• Work with Product team to suggest ideas and understand a schedule for each feature launch

Control:

KPI’s to measure against:

• Increase in number of app visitors
• % usage of the new features
• % of people ordered through the new features
• Average order value (as provided top recommendations will likely increase orders/ trials)
• % email open rate
• Increase in revenue (for the top rated merchants)

These are just a few strategies I would like to work on in order to grow GrabFood’s business and market share in the region. Thank you for taking the time to read my ideas!