What is Taco Tuesday? Taco Tuesday started out as a promotion by Mexican-American restaurants that offered a special discount for tacos on Tuesday. This grew into a recurring promotion adopted by almost every restaurant that serves tacos.

Taco Tuesday is a great example of a marketing promotion. Taco Tuesday works on many levels because it:

• Is simple and includes the promoted item in the name
• Uses alliteration to make it easy to say and remember 
• Makes a holiday/event out of an ordinary day of the week

Most importantly, the promotion is recurring. It happens every week. Promotions that are recurring tap into the power of habit. A few years ago, best selling author Charles Duhigg explored the power of habit and its impact on our buying behavior. He believes that habits are formed by cues (e.g. time, place, emotion, particular people, etc) and reinforced by the reward delivered for performing the ritual. Over time, these cues and rewards form a habit. Taco Tuesday represents a marketing promotion that has crossed into habit territory. It occurs on the same day, every week and provides a reward in the form of a discount. Not only have restaurants embraced Taco Tuesday, but the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has  hopped on board. Riding on the popularity of the promotion, CPG companies encourage consumers to purchase their goods (e.g. taco seasoning, shells, salsa, etc.) and bring Taco Tuesday home. Other industries including spirits, beer, hospitality, and more continue to explore how to tap into the popularity of Taco Tuesday to increase sales.

So how can your business leverage the power of promotion and the power of habit? Ask yourself these questions to get started:

• Is there a popular promotion that relevant businesses are already advertising that I can leverage?
• Is there something my business offers that can be celebrated weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Annually?
• Can I offer a discount or something else of value on a recurring basis?
• How can I leverage alliteration for the name of my promotion?
• Is my potential promotion easy to understand?

Once you’ve identified your new promotion you can start marketing it via social media, digital networks and traditional media to get the word out. It is important to remember that promotions can take time to catch on, so stick with it for at least 3 months before you explore other options.

Victoria is co-founder, chief disruptor and a resident craft beer fanatic. In Victoria’s 15+ years as a consumer-focused marketer, she has led the digital and mobile marketing efforts (and other cool stuff) for several top and emerging brands. She has leveraged the latest web, mobile and social technology to increase brand awareness, user acquisition, engagement, conversions, and revenue for a variety of B2C and B2B brands. In 2011, Victoria founded the start-up, Gravy Analytics, where she developed transformative proprietary mobile marketing technology that provides unprecedented real-world location intelligence to advertisers and brands.

Victoria is co-founder, chief disruptor and a resident craft beer fanatic. In Victoria’s 15+ years as a consumer-focused marketer, she has led the digital and mobile marketing efforts (and other cool stuff) for several top and emerging brands. She has leveraged the latest web, mobile and social technology to increase brand awareness, user acquisition, engagement, conversions, and revenue for a variety of B2C and B2B brands. In 2011, Victoria founded the start-up, Gravy Analytics, where she developed transformative proprietary mobile marketing technology that provides unprecedented real-world location intelligence to advertisers and brands.