Just Eat to plough further £8m into marketing as users increase by 59%
Just Eat is planning to up its marketing spend by £8m in the second half of the year, following a strong start to 2015 which saw a 59 per cent increase in active users.
It spent over £26m in the first half of 2015, up nearly £10m from the same time last year, to fuel the ‘Mini First Pump’ campaign which launched last September.
The activity was a departure from the ‘Don’t Cook Just Eat’ positioning which featured the ‘Mr Mozzarella’ brand character and sought to attract more female users. It played on the concept of someone suggesting a takeaway as being one of life’s winning moments.
Before its refreshed positioning, the platform had around 6.9 million active users; today it has over 11 million.
However, it has relied heavily on TV and offline media – including a three-year sponsorship of Derby County and sponsorship of ITV dating show Take Me Out. – to drive this brand awareness.Moving forward, the bulk of its increased marketing spend will go to fuelling the digital and data-driven strategy that was outlined by UK marketing director Lucy Milne earlier this year.
The company is also looking to ramp up its efforts on mobile, which also delivered strong results with 69 per cent of orders now being made via mobile devices. It plans to spend £5m on technology and has been testing a number of services including ‘Order on its Way’ to let people track their deliveries.
The app will also continue to be a focus for the second half of the year with currently a third of orders (38 per cent) being made through the service.
Overall, sales during the first six months of the year (ending June 30) rose 54 percent to £107.8m. Pretax profit rose to £14m from £8.6m in the same period a year earlier
The increased investment in marketing and technology is expected to help deliver full-year revenue of £230m.