A quick anecdote about Deliveroo’s wasted marketing budget

In marketing, if you get your targeting right, your communications/media plan should fall in to place beautifully.

Here is a personal anecdote that suggests deliveroo aren’t quite getting that quite right.

Right message, right person…wrong time

I love the idea of deliveroo; real restaurant food delivered to your door. The only problem is they don’t deliver to where I live, at least not until recently (or so I thought).

A deliveroo leaflet had been pushed through my letter box telling me they were now delivering to where I lived. That was that night’s meal sorted straight away!

The problem was when I went on to their website to start my order I was informed they didn’t deliver to my postcode. Gutted!

But I was also confused why they had posted their leaflet when they knew I couldn’t use them.

I assumed they’d messed up that particular leaflet drop. However, a couple of weeks later I got another leaflet as part of their follow up campaign.

I checked again. Still can’t use them.

I appreciate one leaflet isn’t going to break their budget, but how many other households around the country are getting this marketing they can’t act on?

Leaflet drops are targeted at the street level, so there is no reason why this should happen except for poor planning by their marketing team or poor execution by the agency they hired to fulfill the job.

Deliveroo’s poor targeting and execution all adds up to:

• Wasted budget
• Wasted opportunity
• Wasted brand equity

Creating a targeted media plan

Whether you are advertising on a national or local level, they key component of your media plan has to be your target audience.

Where do they live, how old are they, what are their interests, what offers do they respond to, what media do they consume…etc?

Each one of these questions builds a profile of your target audience that enables you to deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time.