This article is being presented for the company, Tim Hortons to make recommendations that will improve Tim Hortons’ digital presence.
Brand background
Tim Hortons was founded in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1964. Today, Tim Hortons has nearly five thousand restaurants worldwide and is the largest fast-food chain in Canada.
Initially, Tim Hortons only offered two types of products: coffee and donuts. Today, Tim Hortons offers an array of assorted beverages, meals, and desserts.
Assessment of Existing Digital Properties
Tim Horton’s digital presence includes:
- Facebook: 3,366,118M followers
- YouTube: 28.4K followers
- Twitter: 653.784K followers
- Instagram: 414,004K followers
- Website: 836.94K total traffic
- Mobile App:150.000 traffic
In summary, Tim Hortons’ digital presence is not consistent across all their platforms. Although the company posts regularly and promotes products, services, and customers; its overall brand engagement is low.
SEO and SEM
For search engine optimization (SEO), Tim Hortons has a high average score of 83. The website performance could approve by:
- Links do not have descriptive text (Descriptive link text helps search engines understand your content).
2. robots.txt is not valid (crawlers may not be able to understand how you want your website to be crawled or indexed).
Lastly, Tim Hortons’ website relies mainly on organic search: 85.63% organic search, compared to 14.37% for paid search.
For paid search, the main 5 keywords bought by the company are Tim Hortons, Tim Hortons menu, Tim Hortons’ login, Tim Hortons, Tim Horton’s cold brew.
For organic search, the website is using 5 important keywords: Tim Hortons, Tim Hortons menu, Tim Hortons careers, Tim Horton, Tim Hortons jobs.
This means the search engine results page (SERP) reveals that the website relies more on brand awareness as the ‘Tim’ keyword was the only one that appears on the first line and the first page comparing to other keywords such as Donuts Canada, Hot chocolate Canada and Coffee Canada.
Tim Hortons competitors
When reviewing the digital presence of Starbucks in comparison to Tim Hortons, HubSpot Grader ranks Starbucks website performance higher than that of Tim Hortons – 3 times faster and lighter pages, 3.5 times higher page load speed.
with the help of many following and tailored customer relationship management (CRM), McDonald’s McCafé receives 5x more engagement than from Second Cup and 2X more engagement from Tim Hortons.
In comparison to Tim Hortons, Second Cup Ltd. receives more website (desktop and mobile) traffic. For instance, in May 2021 Tim Hortons has 840,000 visits vs. Second Cup Ltd. with 80,000 visits.
In terms of the average duration of a website visit, Tim Hortons beats Second Cup Ltd. with 1 minute and 46 seconds while Second Cup Ltd. is 59 seconds.
Recommendations to Improve Digital Presence for Tim Hortons
The recommendations to improve Tim Horton’s digital presence is to
1. embrace Canadian diversity through engaging with a new crowd of customers.
2. enter the health and wellness market using influencer marketing.
3. Tim Horton’s audience engagement across its social media outlets.
Tim Hortons can improve its digital media presence by getting close to a local diverse crowd, extending influence, and/or engaging with social media users.
A comprehensive and holistic digital marketing strategy is an integral part of Tim Hortons or any company’s marketing plan.
References
Social Insider. (2021, July 5). Tim Hortons Twitter. Retrieved from Social Insider: https://app.socialinsider.io/dashboard?appview=proj&projectname=Tim%2520Hortons&view=profile&profile_id=382177545&platform=tw§ion=overview&ds=1622952000000&de=1625543999999
SimilarWeb. (2021, July 5). Retrieved from SimilarWeb: https://www.similarweb.com/website/timhortons.ca/
CBC News. (2015, June 25). Tim Hortons releases Canuck-themed ‘Ehmoji’ keyboard app. Retrieved from CBC News: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-releases-canuck-themed-ehmoji-keyboard-app-1.3127220
Callaghan, S., Losch, M., Pione, A., & Teichner, W. (2021, April 8). McKinsey and Company. Retrieved from Feeling good: The future of the $1.5 trillion wellness market: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/feeling-good-the-future-of-the-1-5-trillion-wellness-market#
Written by: Shiva Ahmadi, Digital Marketing Analyst at The International Institute of Digital Marketing™.
