Hungry Jack's, Grill'd, Ali Baba divulge secrets to social media success

Which platforms and campaigns are most effective?

Australian QSRs have been focusing their social media efforts on a handful of the most popular platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Weibo – to push out their promotions and new product launches.

But more than using social media channels as a one-way marketing vehicle, stores are fostering a two-way dialogue wherein fans are encouraged to share their insights, participate in contests and even download apps.

All this interaction seems aimed at creating a highly involved community of fans who not only purchase products but also tell QSRs what they want from their favorite stores.

Pushing new offers

Still, QSRs use social media primarily for pushing new offers.

CIBO Espresso uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram to share product updates, store activities and food and coffee images, said Roberto Cardone, co-founder of CIBO Espresso, noting that Facebook remains the most popular social platform among its customers.

Cardone noted though that Instagram is also gaining traction as a great social platform for sharing photos that will entice the coffee-loving CIBO Espresso community.

“Instagram is a great place for customers to share their food and latte art photos. Baristas can get quite competitive about creating latte art, which is the design on the milk surface of your coffee. Instagram is a great platform for customers to show their appreciation, and for baristas to exhibit their art,” said Cardone.

Gelatissimo also uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to share breaking news, new flavour ranges, competitions, promotions, seasonal campaigns and special offers.

Some QSRs like Hungry Jacks are becoming more creative though in building buzz for their new products outside of the predictable Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. It created a special “Calm Zone” Facebook app and “chill out” hotline to support the launch of its new range of Angry burgers.

Engaging Constantly

But more than ever, QSRs revealed that social media platforms need to be constantly engaging their fans with a range of relevant content. Many like Chatime churn out daily updates to keep the brand top-of-mind among its over 30,000 Facebook fans and many other followers on Twitter, Instagram and Weibo.

“We engage and interact with our fans on a daily basis by promoting limited in-store offers, updating them on what Chatime is doing,” said Karen Leong, Head of Marketing at Chatime.

“Keeping them well-informed of our new drinks and encouraging our fans to provide constructive feedback on our customer service and product range helps us improve our offering.”

Leong said that as Chatime caters to a more global audience – its Weibo account was made to reach its growing Asian market – it plans to increase the level of interaction with more consumer competitions.

Like Chatime, Ali Baba publishes daily content on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels, and even budgets some media spending on Facebook ads that have helped boost its Facebook community size by 26.62% in several months.

Ali Baba also sees value in running competitions that will get customers hyped about the brand like its Ultimate Holiday contest in April that rewarded a total of $10,000 in prizes. The contest “proved to grow engagement,” said Dominic Cain, General Manager – Operations & Marketing at Ali Baba.

Creating Communities

QSRs are also learning that customers learn to tune out brands that drown their social media feeds with promotions. The trick is to balance the hard sell offers with informative content.

“Customers are skeptical of straight-up advertising, especially in a private forum like their social media feed,” said Andrew Pearce, National Marketing Manager at Wokinabox.

Pearce said that Wokinabox backs up its promotions push with more informative messages, like posting interesting facts and photos about Asian food and cultures that tie into the brand’s culinary heritage.

“We feel that helps position Wokinabox as genuinely credible – concerned with the heritage of our product,” said Pearce.

In order to have better control over its social media messages, Wokinabox decided to move its efforts from an outsourced company to its in-house staff which it said has produced a “much greater effect” on community engagement.

Grill'd, too, has seen success in conversing with customers through highly targeted messages and news.

“Conversation topics vary from platform to platform, with content ranging from mouth-watering shots of our healthy burgers to relevant and quirky news our customers can relate to,” said Simon Crowe, Founder of Grill’d.

The strategy helped Grill’d rack up over 37,000 Facebook fans, nearly 9,000 Twitter fans and around 1,600 Instagram followers.

Monitoring Feedback

With QSRs ramping up their investment on social media, some are installing sophisticated monitoring feedback systems to help them collate and digest the thousands of feedback streaming into their channels.

Companies invest time and money in social media but fail to monitor their return on investment, said Gelatissimo Joint CEO Domenico Lopresti, so the Gelatissimo engaged Australia’s leading social media company, Local Measure, to collect feedback being received across its more than 45 stores worldwide.

Using sophisticated cloud software, Local Measure condenses all the information about Gelatissimo coming from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare into an analytics dashboard, said Lopresti. It also provides Gelatissimo with a portal to engage with customers on the relevant social media and with clients who are posting in-store.

“Managing social media profiles for our multiple stores was difficult before we started using tools which help us get a quick snapshot into what our customers are saying, as well as identify our influential customers by their conversations and engage them on a store-by-store basis,” said Lopresti.

“The customer feedback Gelatissimo receives is valuable in future planning and ensuring that it is providing customers with the best experience every time,” he added.