Ali Noodle House
Rapidly growing noodle chain.
Started with one small store front in a small city in the province of Henan, China, Ali Noodle House grew to become a 200 stores, province-wide noodle chain – and Baidu played a huge part in its growth (of course, the noodle is good, too!).
Client
Ali Noodle House
Project Scope
Baidu / Search Engine Marketing / Website Development
The Restaurant
Ali Noodle House started out as a single-store restaurant. The restaurant’s key selling point is its noodles, which were tasty and could be made almost instantly. This allows Ali Noodle House to serve much more customers than a typical full-service restaurant of the same size and at the same time operate as a quick service restaurant. This characteristic also appealed to the on-the-go people. So the business was good, but it hit a plateau. The owner, Ali wanted to expand but was unsure of how to attract the right crowd.
The Solution
The answer to Ali’s expansion plan was Baidu. With a combination of search ads and display network, we were able to zero-in on the target demographic within the given budget.
Website
Before jumping into running campaigns, we first had to bring Ali Noodle House from a strictly offline business to an online business (kind of). This meant we needed to create a website where the ads will be directed to for Ali. Our development and design team produced a distinctive brand for Ali Noodle House, and took on a different style compared to most other restaurants.
Geo-Targeted
Ali Noodle House did a really good job positioning its new locations in traffic heavy areas. The challenge then was to get these people into the restaurant. Through Baidu, we geo-targeted specific zones that formed a 5 km parameter around the location to drive immediate traffic to the restaurant. This way, we know the ad spends are going into ready-to-convert customers.
Time
Ali’s target demographic includes basically everyone. But the target market around the new locations, which are located in traffic heavy train stations and malls, are mostly commuters. To capture this market, we schedule our campaign to run during morning and nightly commute, as well as a two-hour time frame around lunch.
Results
The results were astounding. We were able to generate a ROI of 21:1, and the average CTR on the keywords was 4.9%, which was more than double the industry average.