This is one of those moments you never forget. One where you want to hop in your car and drive as fast as possible to show anyone, everyone what you’d found. You see, for years I’d been preaching about the importance of social media to build a database and recently I’d discovered how the effectiveness of some of the campaigns were a product of the ownership and not our campaigns. But it wasn’t until this day that I had the proof.
Earlier that year we had started working directly with two pizza franchise locations on our Facebook Messenger VIP program. The goal of the program was pretty simple, use Facebook posts and ads to build a database and then drive those customers into the restaurant to buy pizza.
After 30 days of crushing it with these 2 stores the corporate office called to add 2 struggling stores to our program and another franchisee called to hire us as well. Over the next few months all of the program operated at different levels and I could not put my finger on the WHY. Our program was exactly the same at each location and the stores all had similar demographic and geographic profiles. Meaning, the customers and neighborhoods looked very similar.
Stores 1 and 2 were both crushing it. The owners of the 2 stores were what you’d want as a restaurant owner. They were involved in the store every day and very hands on. They were also exactly the types of clients you’d want for a marketing company. They had a positive mindset, were growth oriented and collaborative.
Store 3 was doing decent, but the owner wasn’t like the first two stores. She was negative, always complaining about customers and broke. When I say broke, I mean mind and bank account.
Stores 4 and 5 were not doing well at all with our customer acquisition program. From dealing with the owner of store 3 I knew why her program wasn’t doing well, it was her and the way she ran her business. But on these last 2 stores we worked with the corporate office. They’d hired us directly to help 2 struggling franchisees, so we didn’t know the owners and they were not involved in our programs.
A few months into working with all 5 stores I decided to pull the basic stats of each store for 2 months and compare the social stats to see if their was a story.
I pulled the following stats for their social media campaigns over 60 days:
– Reach – unique people reached
– Impressions – this is a multiple of your reach based on your ad frequency. If Matt Plapp saw your ad 3 times he’s only in your reach once, but here twice.
– Comments – commented on the posts and ads
– Shares – Shared the posts and ads.
Then I looked at the results of the campaigns. All of our campaigns are built to get customers to give us their contact info and then we add them to a marketing funnel to drive them into the restaurant.
– Opt-ins – Email, Cell #, Birthday, Visit Frequency
– Redemptions – Customer came to the store and spent money
– Redemption % – The percentage of the customers who used their promotion
– Sales – Sales generated from the redemptions
The stats above are from the 5 stores.
You’ll notice the reach and impressions are very similar, which makes sense due to us spending the same amount of money on campaigns and the stores being located in very similar types of communities.
Where the results start to show cracks is the comments and shares. Both are a sign of the people around the community either loving your brand or not. You see, excited customers of yours will see these promotions and go crazy. They’ll comment to show love, tag a friend and get the promo. The hardcore ones will share it and announce their love for what you’re doing and encourage their friends to take action.
The lower your comments and shares are, the worse everything else will be and it’s honestly a true reflection on YOU and your product.
Here’s an example:
Both stores post a “Comment Below & Get A Free Pizza.”
– Store 1 customers comment “this place rocks, I love the meat lovers pizza. The employees are always friendly and the service is fast. ” and many of them will share the post with comments just like that. Many times they tag a friend.
– Store 2 customers comment ” I’ll take a free pizza” and don’t share.
What stores 1 and 2 saw is what makes campaigns go viral and what stores 3-5 saw is what makes campaigns NOT GO VIRAL!
Next up is the customer acquisition part. The better your Facebook campaign works the higher your opt-in % and remption % is. In this case, we’ll focus on the redemption % since that is what DRIVES SALES…what you all care about right?
See how store 5 is almost half of what store 1 is on the redemption %. And see how their opt-ins are a 3rd. Well, that lead to sales that were 4 times lower as well.
As I gathered this data I thought, what do I know about the owners and what can I assume from this. Well I knew stores 1-3 and the fact that stores 1 & 2 dominated was a direct reflection on the owners, the level of service they provided, the way they were viewed in the community and the support they had by their best customers.
Store 3 had a little of that, but the owners toxic attitude was the big difference maker and it was visible in her online reviews.
But what about stores 4 and 5? Well, store 4 had awesome reviews, not a lot of them, but they were good. Store 5 did not have great reviews. As I said, I didn’t know anything about these owners. So when I drove to the corporate office to meet with the CMO and owner I made a bold prediction.
Store 4 is owned by a person who LOVES back of house operations and who never steps a foot into the dining room to shake hands and kiss babies.
Store 5 is owned by an attorney or accountant who bought the franchise as passive income and never comes into the store.
I WAS RIGHT! The owner of store 4 was a former Chipotle GM who dominated the operations side of things and despised customer interaction. Store 5 was owned by an attorney.
HOW DID I KNOW THIS? The LACK of social engagement on their campaigns when compared to stores 1 and 2 showed me they treated customers like a number and had no relationships. The crazy thing for me though, was seeing how it dramatically impacted the bottomline. This was the first time I’d see proof at this level across the exact brand with the exact marketing campaigns.
Moral of the story, be an active owner and remember you’re in the sales business. Sell your vision, your food and be kind! And apparently it’s worth at least $5,000 per month in sales to do things right!
I also talked about this topic in episode 635 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, CLICK HERE and have a listen!
