What Can The Taco Bell Menu Teach Us About Content Strategy?

Today I want to talk to you about Taco Bell.

Granted, this is a topic that I will talk about pretty much any day of the week. This coming from a person who thinks that asking “what’s your normal Taco Bell order?” is a great icebreaker.

But today, we’re talking about Taco Bell + content strategy.

For my fellow fast-food aficionados, you know that Taco Bell uses a limited number of ingredients to create an expansive menu of deliciously unhealthy food items. They are masters of the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Reduce→ a pared-down ingredients list makes it easier to keep their menu consistent.

Reuse→ using a menu item as a template lets them reuse the same basic building process. Beans instead of beef? No problem! The blueprint already exists.

Recycle→ they’re not reinventing the wheel (or meal) here. A taco is a near-perfect food, but what if you took a taco and rolled it around in Doritos dust? Simple and brilliant.

Do you see where I’m going here?

Marketers can take a lot of cues from Taco Bell when developing their content strategy. Let’s taco ‘bout it.

You Can Make a Lot of Good Stuff From Just a Few Ingredients

Taco Bell has a very big menu based on just a few staple ingredients. I haven’t tried every menu item (I’m not that obsessed, and I’m a vegetarian anyway), but every menu item has a target audience.

Let’s take a look at the typical basic ingredients at a Taco Bell:

• Lettuce

• Tomato

• Beans

• Tortillas

• Meat

• Cheese

• Sour cream

• Onions

Let’s forget for a moment that they have multiple types of meat, beans, and cheeses. These ingredients are simply what make up the Taco Bell menu blueprint. How many different combinations can you get from these 8 basic ingredients?

247.

That’s 247 opportunities to create something that gets new customers to the window to buy Taco Bell. And that’s 247 ways to create one menu item. Have you ever really known someone to get just one thing from Taco Bell? That’s a rare customer, indeed.

Some customers will only want a cheesy rollup (2 ingredients), some will want a taco (3+ ingredients), some might want a combo (all 8 ingredients in multiple combinations). The point is there’s something for everyone.

This is the same mentality you should take with your content strategy. Your business has its own basic ingredients that, when used correctly, can create a variety of content that satisfies your audiences.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take an inventory.

As a business, you probably have the following content ingredients at your fingertips:

• Your brand story

• Client case studies

• Employee expertise

• Company milestones

• Audience research

• Keyword research

• Online reviews and testimonials

• Product/service information

...and a lot more, depending on what you offer! So with all of these different ingredients, you should be able to create multiple pieces of relevant, valuable content.

Off the top of my head, you could:

• Use customer reviews/testimonials for organic social media posts.

• Create a blog post that combines your brand story with client success stories.

• Develop an explainer video diving into your products/services.

• Write automated emails using company milestones to keep your list engaged.

Creating content doesn’t have to take a writer’s room of people. You need a few basic ingredients and some blueprints to get started. From there, you can get really creative.

But more on that next week…

I need to run a taco-related errand 👀

P.S. if you like this post and want to find out more about Taco Bell + content strategy, subscribe to my blog or follow #AmberRhodesWrites on LinkedIn!

Author’s note: When the idea of a Taco Bell content strategy first popped into my head, I thought “there’s no way someone hasn’t thought of this already!” I was right and came across this post by Heidi Bullock. Ultimately our idea goes in different directions but credit where credit’s due!