Unlocking the secrets of social media, as told by Guzman y Gomez, Chatime, and Facebook

Expert marketers share the strategies that work in the digital age.

In October 2018, a scandal wreaked havoc at the offices of Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez. A man who had ordered a burrito bowl from one of its outlets found a dead slug in his food, and posted a picture of it on Facebook, where it was picked up by the local news and shared by thousands of people.

No stranger to the double-edged sword that is social media, Guzman y Gomez (GYG) did the only thing they could do. They owned up to it.

“You have to be honest,” Lara Thom, Chief Marketing Officer at GYG, told the crowd at the QSR Media Sandhurst Fine Foods Conference & Awards 2019.

“The best brands have to be real and authentic. We said, ‘We're so sorry. We will investigate’.”

Eventually, due to GYG’s extensive efforts, it came to light that the slug had gotten into the burrito bowl in the park, when the man left it for a few minutes to play with his daughter.

“He was not only satisfied, he then came with us to the media to say, ‘You should see what these guys did to assure me that their food is safe’,” Thom said. “Social media keeps us honest at every point and if you're doing something wrong, you'd have to admit it.”

The anecdote speaks to the power of social media over the field of marketing brands. Social media, undeniably, is now as important for a brand's staying power as traditional media like television and print, if not more.

Thom recalled another similar disaster when early in 2018, Facebook suddenly changed its entire algorithm to favor posts made by users’ friends and family, instead of businesses and publishers.

“Like good marketers, we went through all the data, all the reports, all the things and we could not work out what has happened to our sales. And we found out that we were just reaching less people because Facebook had changed their algorithm. The beauty of that for us was it was proof positive that it drives our sales,” she said.

Using social media to your advantage
Daniel King, Head of Strategy QSR, at Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook & Instagram, admitted that getting people into stores is now the real goal of the platform. Before social media has matured into what it is today, the previous strategy was to garner as much engagement as possible, be it likes, shares, or comments. But rarely does this strategy translate to actual sales.

“All I would suggest is to look at things like, ‘How do we drive reach to ensure we're getting enough people into the shop and then how are we measuring that? What is the balance between offline and online? Look at all the products and the ways you can use our platform to drive your business and because I want to measure it, I want to prove to you that I'm bringing people in your store,” he said.

King added that the most powerful advantage that Facebook has available for businesses is its capability to scale to whatever market fits their target audience. Once brands can identify the kind of customers that they would like to reach, Facebook can then find similar people who match the same values.

“So we can look at things like lifetime value. We can look at specific values. We can look at specific segments of products that you might be wanting to push or that are more popular. There are a myriad of ways of using data to find the customers or find the opportunities that you want on our platform,” he said.

“You can act like a big advertiser in your area, as long as you define your catchment area, understand who your customers are, and then drive that reach and penetration. The basics of marketing can be applied to our platform. It's just easier to do. It's much more democratic.”

Derek Puah, who owns the upstart coffee chain Devon Cafe, fully makes use of social media to power his brand’s marketing strategy. Despite their small footprint, their Instagram account has 33,000 followers.

“We only have four stores, which is not very big. But for us, social media is pretty much the key for marketing, pretty much the way we can talk to our customers,” he said.

“Basically we're not there to drive numbers. We're not there to increase our popularity, but rather how we convey a message to our customers.”

Puah said that they have carved a niche for themselves simply by staying true to their brand identity, engaging customers with special events or promotions that they are doing and focusing on how they are doing things differently. Sometimes, they even let their customers vote on which seasonal menu items to add to their regular menu permanently.

“Personally, don’t be on social media channels to emulate what others are doing. Do your own thing, and be yourself,” he said.

Similarly, Tim Paton, Head of Marketing at Chatime, suggested that brands should make an effort to understand their customers to try and identify what they value in a brand.

“We think about our customers as if they are a friend sitting across a bar or a pub. What would they look like? What would they sound like? Who would they follow? What topics would they be talking about? And then it's just really understanding conversational trends and topicality and pop culture,” he said.

“We kind of have a rule: you always orchestrate on social, you never dictate. So how can you be a part of conversation and not constantly pushing your message at customers, but doing it in a way where you're talking with them, rather than at them?”

This is especially important if a brand wants to reach a new audience. The more relatable a brand’s voice becomes on social media, the more effective it is at reaching people.

“Really, it's all about topicality. How do we tap into conversations with our audience?” he said.

Thom agreed, adding that it comes right down to the fundamentals of marketing.

“It's the most important thing. Knowing your voice and knowing your brand and having an understanding how your brand speaks, how it behaves. You need to understand how your brand behaves on social. Would your brand behave that way?” she said.

“The brand personality, make sure it shines through,” King added.

“Remember that you're in an attention economy, that on a mobile phone, that attention is very fleeting. So ensure that you have a really distinctive brand and a distinctive message really quickly. That would be my number one tip.”