Jersey Mike's focuses on quality ingredients and custom sandwiches. Their digital marketing relies heavily on search engine traffic but lacks paid advertising. They have an outdated digital ad campaign and could improve engagement on their website by reducing the bounce rate and appealing more to their majority female audience. The report recommends Jersey Mike's implement search ads on Google AdWords targeted to specific regions and promoting online ordering. This would help compete with Subway's successful search advertising and drive more customers to Jersey Mike's.

1.
Jersey Mike’s Subs
Thomas Diedrick, Grayson Catania, Nick Hahn, Nolan Sweeney

2. Appendix
Page #
Background……………………………………………………………………………… 3
Digital Advertising ……………………………………………………………………… 3­4
Paid Advertising
Traffic Sources
Digital Ads
Search Engine Advertising……………………………………………………………... 5­6
Search ads
Importance of Paid Search
SEO………………………………………………………………………………………. 6­7
Title Tags
Meta­description
Keywords
Email Marketing……………………………………………………………………….... 8­9
How they capture emails
Email Content Analysis
Content Marketing…………………………………………………………………….... 9
Social Media……………………………………………………………………………… 9­10
How they use social media
Mobile Marketing……………………………………………………………………….. 10
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Graphs and Figures……………………………………………………………………… 11­17

3. Background
Opening its doors back in 1956 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey while originally named Mike’s
Subs, in order to survive within the mom and pop shops in town Mike needed to provide
exceptional quality products matched with outstanding service. In 1956 Mike introduced a
unique product that was relatively new in American society known as the submarine sandwich.
Unlike most of Jersey Mike’s competitors in the sub sandwich industry, what makes them
incredibly unique among the rest of the competition is the fact that they offer the highest quality
meats and cheeses from premium brands and actually cut and slice the meat right in front of you
on your sandwich. Competitors like Subway who focus on their made to order subs and Jimmy
Johns with their freaky fast delivery, Jersey Mike’s biggest difference lies within their quality
meats and service for each customer and sandwich made.
Within a target market mostly among college students from ages ranging between 18 and 24,
Jersey Mike’s offer student meal deals as well as family sized meals that accommodates to their
slogan, “Dinnertime’s in the bag”. In this document you will find a review of Jersey Mike’s
Digital Marketing efforts compared to it’s competitors such as Subway and Jimmy Johns. The
document is for the Jersey Mike’s Marketing department and how they can better themselves and
get a leg up on the competition. With the help from this audit, the marketing team should make
some changes in order to be the leader in the marketing industry for sub sandwiches.
Digital Advertising
As an up and coming sub sandwich shop entering a market with a large number of
competition, Jersey Mike’s advertising campaign is essential in order to separate themselves
from the likes of competitors including Subway and Jimmy Johns. Our group rated Jersey
Mike’s very high in almost all of the categories giving them an overall score of a 4 out of 5.
Subway is the industry leader within the sub sandwich industry and with only a half a rating

4. higher than Jersey Mike’s, there is a great potential for Jersey Mike’s to stay as digitally
optimized and take over some market share.
Paid Advertising
One of the biggest weaknesses in Jersey Mike’s marketing audit is that they have no paid
advertising at all according to figure 1 on similarweb.com. This is definitely an area that could
substantially increase their popularity as a small sandwich shop if they want to be anywhere near
the top of the sub sandwich shop industry. Subway has the highest percentage of paid search at
roughly 8% controlling the majority of the paid ads that are searched. Jersey Mike’s get 72.32%
of their traffic from Search which shows why increasing their paid search for their website to
rank higher than others would be drastically beneficial.
Looking into other sources of digital advertisement including Moat.com, the amount of
advertisements that are spread throughout the internet for users to see is extremely limited.
Looking at Figure 2, only 16 ads are shown to be found across the internet and in each individual
ad most of them were sent out in 2014 or earlier. Aside from the outdated digital ads, the
websites that Jersey Mike’s uses to advertise toward their target market was also very random
and almost irrelevant. Looking over each website with my team, none of the websites they post
on seemed to be recognizable at all which is also a problem for concern considering there may be
other consumers out there that don’t regularly visit those websites.
Traffic Sources
Comparing Subway to Jersey Mike’s when looking at their traffic sources, it was
surprising to see that Jersey Mike’s had an edge even at all throughout any of the categories.
Figure 4 compares Jersey Mike’s in blue to Subway in yellow throughout each of the charts and
right away it’s easy to notice that within the search of traffic sources that Jersey Mike’s has by
far the largest percentage. However looking into the other major categories including referrals
and direct traffic sources, Subway takes the lead and from what we’ve seen so far. Direct web
traffic is certainly one of the most crucial factors for any business with a website online because
it shows that customers are already aware of your business and are interested in a particular good
or service. Subway and Jimmy John’s in figure 5 double the amount of direct traffic to their
website compared Jersey Mike’s which is a big weakness in bringing in customers that know
exactly what they want and have a higher chance of making a purchase.
With customers being referred by others who have been to the store before help represent
a positive influence that translates to increasing the likelihood that the referred customers would
make a purchase. Although Jimmy Johns is up just over 3% in this category, it’s an achievable
opportunity that Jersey Mike’s can help facilitate increased referrals by continuing to spread
awareness of their digital advertisements and making sure they’re seen on popular websites and
social media.
Traffic Overview
Understanding website engagement whether it’s through a mobile device or on a desktop
computer is important for customers that want to have access to a site whenever they’re
interested. According to Figure 6, the website engagement for Subway is a steady trend with
over 1.9 million visits over the past 6 months with a Time On Site of over 3 minutes. These two

5. key factors are drastically different than the site engagement for Jersey Mike’s. The biggest
concern for Jersey Mike’s traffic overview is the fact that they have a 64% bounce rate, meaning
visitors only stay on one page of the website before they leave the site completely. Increasing the
size of promotions on any of the web pages on their website as well as advertise their company
involvement would be a big incentive for customers to search through Jersey Mike’s website and
decrease their bounce rate.
Recommendations
One of the most surprising facts that our group was surprised when looking at Figure 3
was that the majority of the gender population from the audience demographics perspective is for
females rather than males. This is definitely something Jersey Mike’s needs to take into
consideration when they are using digital advertising because if the majority of traffic is female,
they would need to at least make sure that what they are advertising would appeal and have a
strong impact on the female audience.
Display Ads
Looking further into search engine advertising, we can see that Google AdWords also
offers display ads. Now, display ads are something we have seen Jersey Mike’s use in the past.
From the data we researched on Moat.com we saw that they have used about 10 display ads in
the past. Also, another piece of information we picked up on was that Jersey Mike’s hasn’t used
a display ad since 2014. Looking over their ads, we noticed they lack presentation of their
products, and focus on sports themes. The ads are lacking creativity and seem a little irrelevant to
image they are trying to convey. Moving forward, we think it is in Jersey Mike’s best interest to
reestablish a digital ad campaign using Google AdWords.
Search Engine Advertising
Search engine advertising is something Jersey Mike’s hasn’t been focusing on in their
current marketing campaign. Searching relevant keywords no PPC ads could be found for Jersey
Mike’s. When first starting to look for search ads for the term “Sub Sandwiches” no PPC ads
showed up for either Jersey Mike’s or our competitors. However, after continuing to search
relevant keywords a Subway ad appeared as it approached lunch time. We see here how Subway
has implemented search ads triggered with a chosen time where there products are in high
demand. This is the type of innovation and creativity that both Jersey Mike’s and Jimmy Johns
lacks throughout most of their marketing campaign. Majority of the search ads revolved around
subs were by Quizno’s and Dominos, and both had direct landing pages that lead to online
orders. Clearly looking at the basics Jersey Mike’s could expand their digital marketing
campaign by using search ads to target more customers.
Search Ads
Looking into search ads, the recommendations for Jersey Mike’s is endless. Also, Jersey
Mike’s is a company with a lot of growth and offers a very unique product and service. Internet
users are all about growth and what is new. Search engine advertising could be a foot in the door
to promote growth and reach new customers. Having looked for search ads on sub sandwiches
not many ads were relevant, and look fairly easy to compete with. First, Jersey Mike’s should

6. look into using Google AdWords. Jersey Mike’s focuses most of their advertising through local
advertising, so if they targeted their search ads in geographic regions they could really improve
their marketing campaign. Second, Jersey Mike’s gives customers the option to order subs
online, our online ordering would be a great landing page for our search ads. This allows
customers to conveniently order subs during lunch breaks or directly to their households. Also,
this can reach customers who didn’t anticipate on getting Jersey Mike’s but planned on ordering
a sub. Lastly, Google AdWords allows us to set search ads at the pace we are comfortable with,
and offers no long­term commitment. This allows us to test search ads and figure whether this
can help out our marketing campaign.
Importance of Paid Search
As similar web has displayed (figure 7), Jersey Mike’s has 100% organic searches and
nothing for paid searches. This can draw some conclusions that Jersey Mike’s understands its
current position within their market and simply does not bother paying for ads while Subway
(92% organic searches and 8% paid searches) and Jimmy Johns (1% paid searches), has the
money and power to benefit from paying for ads. Another thing we can take from this is that
without having any paid ads like its competition, it really leaves them with no differentiating
factor when it comes to searches where they can separate themselves.
Recommendations
When implementing search ads into their marketing campaign Jersey Mike's should be
more consistent with what the brand stands for to keep ads more relevant than what they have
had in the past. Currently, Jersey Mike’s is running their ad campaign on “The month of giving”
for March. Jersey Mike’s current promotion states that all sales made on March 30​th​
will be
donated. In the local community 10% of sales made on March 9​th​
was donated to the
UW­Whitewater’s American Marketing Association. These promotions are a great start to
promote in our search ad campaign. Local donations can target customers geographically while
the majority of our search ads can focus on keywords our customers use. We found that women
buy our products more than men, so it would be in our best interest to target the “mom”
psychographic for our search ads. Jersey Mike’s should look to use shopping sites that mothers
frequently use. Already we can see how effective the use of paid search advertising could be for
Jersey Mike’s. Google AdWords would offer the easiest way to quickly launch our ads, allow us
to control our own cost, and keeps our ads relevant and up to date with our brand image.
SEO
SEO is very important for every organization to incorporate in its digital marketing. A
couple of reasons why organizations choose to implement SEO is to build and increase brand
recognition as well as improve the overall user experience. Through a variety of different sources
like spyfu and similarweb we were able to analyze the data between our focal company, Jersey
Mike’s, and its two competitors, Jimmy Johns and Subway.
Title Tags
Often stated, as the most important information on the page, title tags, is the bar at the top
of the page containing what people search for in about 5­10 distinctive/unique keywords that

7. defines the page. Title tags vary in their own different ways depending on which page you are
locating, usually consisting with the content you are looking for such as the menu (see figure 8).
All title tags were similar of nature in the sense that each title tag begins with Jersey Mike’s in it.
This makes sense as why Jersey Mike’s is their most popular keyword search term. Going
forward, for Jersey Mike’s we think as long as they are incorporating their most popular
keywords into the title tags they can be successful and gain the meaningful publicity/views they
need.
Meta­Description
Accurately summarizing the page’s content, creating unique descriptions for each page,
and boosting CTR are all vital factors that go into developing useful meta­descriptions for an
organization. A weakness that Jersey Mike’s poses for its meta­description is that the actual
description is consistent throughout all of their landing pages. Whether you are searching for the
home page, menu, or locations page you will always see the same message. The reason why this
is not necessarily good for Jersey Mike’s is that the chances people are going to type this
message in every time is slim. The message does not really hit on what most of the popular
keywords are, so someone using a popular keyword may not find this, which ultimately leads to
many Jersey Mike’s landing pages. Something that that Subway does differently is it takes
several of its popular keywords and incorporates them into the main meta­description for the
home website. Jimmy Johns uses exactly what Subway does where they are utilizing their
different keywords and displaying them in their meta­description.
Keywords
The first key word we used was “sub sandwich” where Jersey Mike’s came up fourth on
the list of organic searches. Looking at Jersey Mike’s, Wikipedia was the first site and rightfully
so because it has the most links pertaining to sub sandwiches including history and anything
related to it. The next two sites were Firehouse subs and Subway, and we noticed that both have
more bolded meta­descriptions of our keywords that would boost their rank to come before
Jersey Mike’s. In the second keyword search we decided to get rid of “sandwich” and just keep it
simple with “subs” and this actually gave us the best outcome (see figure 9). Jersey Mike’s came
up as the first and second organic search and we were able to see that the meta­description for
both had numerous bolded keywords within them. We then went to Spyfu.com and realized
what the top three keywords actually searched were by consumers. According to Figure 15 it
will display the cost per click for each term, est. click value per month, and how many times that
term was searched each month. Keeping the keywords simple using a one­word search gave the
best organic search outcome, but certainly doesn’t knock them down completely by using more.
Jersey Mike’s still shows up in the top four when using more than one keyword.
Recommendations
As we conclude the SEO section we have developed a few thoughts for Jersey Mike’s
and what they should possibly implement into their organization. Our first is that with everyone
on social media constantly using apps, Jersey Mike’s should create more direct landing pages on
the home website based on what the consumer is looking for. Another recommendation we have
is that Jersey Mike’s uses its different meta­descriptions for each organic landing page. They

8. need to mix it up, find out what the consumer is searching for and how they can incorporate
popular keywords.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an inexpensive way for companies to let their consumers know what
is going on with the company. With the world becoming more mobile, over 50% of open emails
are coming from smartphones. Emails can be either promotional or transactional and can be
personalized directly to the consumer so that it matches with the customer's location, device, and
what time to send it. The design and content of an email can have a huge impact on the
company's ROI. Some emails can even contain incentives for the customer to make their next
purchase which drives their sales.
How They Capture Emails
Jersey Mike’s uses a very simple way of signing up for emails. You can sign up on their
website for their email club by entering first name, last name, phone number, email address, and
zip code. When you enter this information you are agreeing to receive bimonthly emails letting
you know what’s going on with Jersey Mike’s, along with receiving great offers and coupons.
You can see an example of their sign up page in Figure 10. Once you sign up they send you a
confirmation email, and after you have confirmed you will get an automated welcome email as
you can see in figure 11 and 12. Jersey Mike’s is ahead of the game when it comes to email
marketing because other competitors such as Jimmy Johns don’t even have an email program.
Subway does have a program very similar for rewards members who want to see new site
features and current promotions. Subway sends out emails twice a week reminding customers of
their deal that is going on, which is usually a free bag of chips or free six inch sub with purchase
of a six inch sub.
Email Content Analysis
Jersey Mike’s announced that they would be sending out emails on the first and third
Monday of every month. That is a good time to send out emails because it’s at the beginning of
the week and people are getting to work on Monday morning and checking their emails on those
dreaded Monday mornings. In the first email in figure 13 and 14 you can see the subject line of
the message is titled “March is Jersey Mike’s Month of Giving”. The main message of the
content is that they are donating 100% of sales on March 30th. If we eat a sub, we are making a
difference because that money is going to a good cause. That is the call to action for us to go eat
a sub and make a difference. The landing page takes you right to their website where you can
learn about the month of giving and there is also a coupon featured in the email. It is for $1 off
any regular sub purchase. These align very well together and it is a very well designed email.
Jersey Mike’s is trying to show corporate responsibility by being involved in the community and
donating back while encouraging customers to help by offering a promotional coupon. They did
forget one major detail in this email. They forgot to mention where the money would be donated
to and that is a big question that people are going to have.

9. Recommendations
When designing emails for Jersey Mike’s there are just a few things that they should be
keeping in mind. It would be nice to see the product that they sell in the emails. They could
incorporate pictures of the subs and show the customers just how tasty they really are. In
addition to just sending promotions they can also display the subs so people start to recognize
what a Jersey Mike’s sub looks like. They shouldn’t leave out important details like they did in
the last email. They specified that they were going to donate 100% of sales on March 30th but
didn’t specify what cause they were donating to. The email advertisement they sent us offered a
coupon that last four days, and the coupon was sent on the first day it was eligible to use. We
recommend that Jersey Mike’s offer a variety of coupons to reach a broader range of customers
especially since the promotion only lasts 4 days. Finally, we suggest they send the coupon the
day or night before so that customers are given more time to think about using the coupon offer.
Content Marketing
Jersey Mike’s has many ways in which it uses content marketing in B2C. Many of the
content marketing focuses on inspiring as many of their promotions on charities/giving. Jersey
Mike's also sponsors events and focuses on the entertainment side of content marketing. They
host an annual all­american high school football game and also sponsored the NCAA basketball
tournament this year. On their site they have videos and articles to keep consumers up to date on
Jersey Mike's. They also have an E­mail club that keeps customers up to date on promotions and
news. They lack the education and convincing aspects of content marketing. Jersey Mike's
doesn’t focus on marketing what their products and services are about in their content marketing
scheme. One thing that Jersey Mike’s just added to their newly updated website is shore points.
This is the first thing you see when clicking onto their homepage. This is a good example of
content marketing because they want your customers to be loyal and sign up for their rewards
program.This is going to keep customers coming back for more. Currently if you complete your
profile you get a free regular sub from Jersey Mike’s.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is an easy way for companies to reach out to a large group of
people at a very inexpensive rate. Companies can send out tweets for free with certain hashtags
that will target towards certain demographics. The key contributing platforms in the social media
market include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and blogs. Today
75% of US internet user are on social networking sites. So it’s important that organizations
utilize this marketing strategy. The platforms are constantly changing and updating so companies
need to recognize which platforms are necessary and which ones aren’t necessary. The ratings
used to evaluate social media use were based on how relevant the content was to the organization
and how active they were in engaging with customers.
How Social Media Is Used
Jersey Mike’s currently uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, and Youtube.
Facebook and Twitter are Jersey Mike’s most active social media accounts. On Facebook they
are posting daily with pictures of subs and content that says “bite, sip, crunch, and repeat”. This
just shows they want to show the quality of their subs and let people know they are delicious.

10. They advertise what is special about Jersey Mike’s such as getting a sub “Mike’s Way”, which is
a special sauce they put on the sub. On Twitter they are very active using hashtags like
#ASubAbove which is a slogan Jersey Mike’s uses often. They engage with people who tag them
in tweets or use certain hashtags that relate to Jersey Mike’s. When they respond to people’s
tweets they are engaging in a conversation that hopefully attracts the customer and creates brand
loyalty. Their Youtube is used for showing events such as their month of giving. They definitely
need a lot of work on Youtube. A lot of their videos only have a couple hundred views compared
to Subway who has thousands of views. Jersey Mike’s, Jimmy Johns, and Subway all had similar
organizations to their social media marketing. The only thing I would say that is different is that
Subway uses social media to advertise their rewards program a lot. They talk about how you can
get a free sub if you purchase before 9AM. All of the companies have really good engagement
with their customers and they take care of problems right away if their is something the
consumer doesn’t like. One thing that sets Jersey Mike’s apart from others on Social Media is
that they use it to post memes and Gifs that are funny and relevant to the sandwich industry.
Social media enables a quick way of troubleshooting for the company while also creating brand
recognition and brand loyalty.
Recommendation
Make social media pages more unique than competitors by continuing to post funny
content relating to subs. We have less followers on most channels for social media so Jersey
Mike’s needs to keep using hashtags to get those followers. Promote Youtube through multiple
channels of social media. Jersey Mike's should focus on creating more shares on other social
media site like Facebook and Youtube. They also focus a lot on giving and donating, but
sometimes forget to hit on their product. Instragram would be a great platform to show pictures
of customers having a good time watching the game eat their subs, or a picture of a new items
that have been added to the menu.
Mobile
As of just last week, Jersey Mike’s had made new upgrades to not only their website but
also their mobile app. This was something we noticed made a huge different in their mobile
optimization when trying to access their website on a smartphone. It makes it much easier for
customers to find exactly what they are looking for without having to scroll or zoom in to get
there. With the new upgrades, Jersey Mike’s has a major advantage over their competitors,
Subway and Jimmy Johns and will only see increased traffic along with a decrease in bounce
rates with its simplicity. As apps have become increasingly popular, customers that download the
app have a variety of options to help with convenience. Locating and ordering, viewing and
scanning shore points, as well as quick order are a few of the tabs available when using the app.
Although both Jimmy Johns and Subway have apps for their customers as well, when trying to
access their website on a mobile device, Jersey Mike’s is far more superior in regards to ease of
use and functionality.
Conclusion
While looking at Jersey Mike’s digital marketing campaign as a “whole” it can be easily
observed that they are continuing to update and reformat their content to make platforms on all
channels more functional and user friendly. Their website and mobile updates have sped up page

11. loading time making these sites more optimised and user friendly for those users who are on the
go. Jersey Mike’s has also provided their followers on social media with relative content,
interactions with customers, and have shared their brand image through the creativity that lies in
their post. It has also been made clear that Jersey Mike’s rules organic search as they are
consistently displayed on the top of the search results when searching relevant keywords such as
“sub sandwiches.” Although Jersey Mike’s has proven to be great in SEO, paid search is
something that doesn’t exist in their digital marketing campaign. Paid search would be great to
implement, because if users are seeing “Jersey Mike’s” several time on the top of their search
results they are bound to click on of our pages. Display ads are another aspect of digital
marketing that Jersey Mike’s could implement. Using display ads correctly they could use
graphic images of their product or persona to sites that reach their target market (soccer moms).
Throughout this semester we have seen how Jersey Mike’s has made efforts toward making their
site, apps and social media platforms more user friendly. Moving forward, Jersey Mike’s should
continue to expand their digital marketing campaign with their large growth the company has
shown to have in past years. In the future, if Jersey Mike’s continues show the same innovation
and creativity across all channels of digital marketing along with optimizing their site and
staying user friendly they will be effective in reaching users.
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17. Figure 15