🍕 The $4B Marketing Strategy

It’s Friday night and someone says “We should order a pizza….”

Now the question is, from where?

There’s Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Domino’s Pizza, your local pizza spot…

For a pizza delivery company, all of their marketing leads up to this moment – the split second when customers decide where to order.

Turns out, most of us call Domino’s Pizza.

As of 2022, Domino’s dominates the pizza delivery market with 42% of the pizza market share and over $4B in annual revenue.

How do they do it?

Great question. Here’s what we got for ya:

• 💰 Collecting IOU’s
  

• 🤖 Pizza As A Tech Company
  

• ⏰ The 30 Minute Guarantee

Read Time: 5 min 6 sec

💰 Collecting IOU’s

In 2018, Domino’s launched its “Paving For Pizza” where Domino’s budgeted $100K to fix potholes in cities… for free.

To kick the campaign off, the CEO of Domino’s recorded what happens to a pizza when a city has too many potholes…

(Click HERE to watch the video)

Then, he announced that Domino’s would fix the potholes in cities with the most nominations.

Just one week after the campaign started, Domino’s had over 35K social media mentions and was featured on 37+ local and national news channels.

The Strategy

Instead of preaching about why everyone should order from Domino’s…

(AKA the marketing strategy of every other pizza restaurant)

Domino’s instead made every US buyer feel they owed Domino’s a favor.

Everyone hates potholes, and Domino’s was willing to fix it when no one else would… for free.

The Lesson: Offer something for free before you ask someone to buy.

EX - Free consultations, free trials, free webinars, etc.

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🤖 Pizza As A Tech Company

“We are as much a tech company as we are a pizza company,” - Former CEO of Domino’s

As far as tech goes, Domino’s does two things very well:

1. Improving the customer’s digital experience with features like ‘The Pizza Tracker’ and ‘5-click orders’.
   

2. Hopping on digital trends for free marketing.

Take a look:

#1 - Order on Twitter with the Pizza emoji

In 2015, Twitter users could order a pizza by tweeting a 🍕.

After they saw success with this, Domino’s launched the “AnyWare” Campaign which allowed customers to order on any voice/ messaging platform.

This includes Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, and WhatsApp.

#2 - Dom Juan On Tinder

Valentine’s Day is a big day for Tinder, and in 2018 Domino’s wanted a piece of it (pun intended).

So, Domino’s launched the Don Juan Bot with Tinder.

Dom Juan was a real Tinder profile that users could match with, which dished out ‘Cupid Approved’ pickup lines and helped you order a pizza.

To say the least, their work paid off. By the end of the Dom Juan campaign, Domino’s reached a 35x return on ad spend.

The Strategy

Campaigns like this did two things for Domino’s

1. Gave them a lot of attention from multiple platforms.
   

2. Made ordering pizza a frictionless experience. Twitter users can order by tweets, and Tinder users by matching.

So not only is ordering pizza 10x easier, but also 10x more fun.

The Lesson: Make it as frictionless as possible for customers to buy from you.

EX - Offering multiple payment methods, better customer support, a better onboarding process, etc.

⏰ The 30 Minute Guarantee

When people order takeout they want three things:

1. Great taste
   

2. An affordable price
   

3. Fast

In its early days, Dominos decided to capitalize on speed.

In 1973, Dominos released the ‘30-minute or less campaign’.

This promised that Domino’s would deliver your pizza in less than 30 minutes or your pizza was free.

This won them two major markets:

1. People looking for a reliably fast pizza
   

2. People wanting a free pizza.

The Strategy 

This is what Alex Hormozi calls the “$100M Offer.” Domino’s created an offer that buyers ‘felt stupid saying no’ to.

They either get a fast pizza, or they get a free one. It’s a win-win.

The Lesson: It’s not always about what you offer. It’s more about how you present it.

There are over 20K Domino’s locations in the world, all of which deliver in under 28 minutes on average.

Domino’s changed nothing about their business. They simply boosted their perceived value to customers.

Side note: The 30-minute campaign ended after Domino’s lost a $78M lawsuit for reckless driving. Domino’s then turned the campaign into “30 minutes of free time.”