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Local 12, the CBS TV station in Cincinnati has 746,000 followers. Biggins Diggins a one location independent restaurant in Massachusetts has 5,200 followers.
So how did this small Mom & Pop restaurant with following 143 X smaller kick their ass on the posts below?
Well it’s actually quite simple, but let’s break down why I think this happened with my top 5 reasons…
1st – TV is DEAD! Channel 12 may be a big bad media company backed with big bucks, but their time is past them.
2nd – Channel 12 and other new channels are not the primary news source online for consumers. They get some attention, but much. While big media companies were busy ignoring the internet in the 2000’s, consumers and online media outlets became the leader in supplying news.
3rd – The story they posted is about a cable show. First I’ve gotta say, I love Guy Fieri, the show and what he’s done for the restaurant industry, but CABLE was dead 5 years ago. Triple D is a badass show, but it’s on a medium that people simply don’t watch anymore and with each day that passes they become more and more irrelevant.
4th – Consumers now have direct access to the news source. Like I mentioned in point #2 above, WE have become today’s news outlet. You and I, our business pages and online companies like America’s Best Restaurants. We have more of an influence over people that TV and Cable TV.
5th – The source. People LOVE other people and they want to see you win. The video by Biggins Diggins shows 2 people that are a part of that community and they will get behind that more than they will posts like Channel 12 made.
Now let’s examine one big factor that many restaurants don’t seem to take into account.
It’s 2024, what you have in your MIND of what a “TV” station is, IS NO MORE!
TV and Cable are dead, and this thing called Social Media is the new TV station.
Let me give you an example. There’s a friend of mine that is for some reason fixated with being featured on Triple D. He’s always talking about it in videos and making posts about getting people to tag Guy so he can get on the show. The funny thing is, his videos about Guy will get more local views that being on DDD 🙂
Is DDD a badass show, yes.
Is Guy THE MAN, yes.
Is one of my goals to get Guy as a spokesperson for the ABR Roadshow and America’s Best Restaurants, YES!
But, that doesn’t take away from the facts.
WE DON’T WATCH CABLE TV ANY LONGER!
Now will being on DDD hurt this restaurant, of course not, there will be a lot of benefits, but NO WHERE close to what he thinks.
Show’s like DDD are easy, really easy to beat at a local level with viewers that are LOCAL! A show like DDD might have big nationwide #’s, but when you break it down it’s literally a few hundred around your restaurant.
Now take a video like the one below from Biggins Diggins, that sits with 13,000 plays in less than 24 hours. Videos like that get 75-85% local views, meaning the reach of this 1 live Facebook video on the restaurants Facebook page will reach 10x+ more than if the appeared on a national televised TV show.
And the video doesn’t go away, in fact it can and will get better.
A TV episode only gets seen when it airs, which might be 1-2 times per year. A video on your restaurants Facebook page doesn’t go away. It has what we call in the marketing world “evergreen” opportunity. A video like this on Facebook will gain viewers over a few weeks, Instagram over a few months and YouTube over years. Plus, you can and SHOULD put a small advertising budget behind it and make it stick around longer.
And if I didn’t make a big enough point there, let me give you my experience.
On March 5th 2023 at 9pm I was a guest on one of my favorite all time shows on the History Channel, The Food That Built America. I was featured in the show 21 times I believe and got a TON of camera time. I was IMPOSSIBLE to miss. It was a blast and an honor. They replay the prior weeks episodes every Sunday, so for 6 months on Sundays my episode aired with all the others.
This was a big honor to be invovled in a show like this. I was in the company of rockstars like Adam Richmond, who wouldn’t be proud.
But I quietly wondered if it would do anything or our business. My team and I were curious how much this national exposure benefit for our company.
It’s been 15 months since the show aired and it’s aired no less than 50 times on the History Channel and it’s done NOTHING for us 🙁
I’m being dead serious when I say nothing. I’ve had aprox 20 people text or tag me on Social Medai regarding the show. I get an occasional text with a picture of me on the TV and a friend saying “I know Matt Plapp”.
And all of this makes complete sense, the show airs on Cable TV and NOBODY WATCHES CABLE TV!
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Now let’s take the fight ONLINE vs on TV, since we’ve already established we no longer watch TV.
As you can see above, this HUGE well funded media company can’t beat out the local restaurants video :). Heck, even on their video in the bottom middle with is a PAID feature, they only have 1,600 video views 🙂
They have a Facebook audience that’s 143X larger and a TV presence EVERY DAY hyping their socials. Yet a local restaurant with an audience a fraction of their size is DOMINATING THEM!
My friends, you have to update your thinking. You have to think about where we are TODAY. We are not on sofas watching tv. When we are on a sofa it’s on a streaming service and our phones. And the vast majority of the content we consume now is on our phone and away from the home.
I’ll leave you with this.
As I mentioned in episode 622 of my podcast, you can get MASSIVE attention, when you mix in some excitement. And in the video that sparked this conversation, linked below, they are announcing something exciting to their fans. The owners are giving great news to the people that support them the most and more importantly THEY control the story and get all of the engagement on their platform.
If they can beat the TV and Cable stations, so can you!