MARKETING CASE STUDY:
Building a Brand on Social from the Ground Up
Background:
In 2016, The Simple Greek, a national chain of fast-casual Greek restaurants, began franchising.
By 2018, 12 stores were open, and the chain was experiencing rapid growth. Early in the concept’s
history, local store marketing for the franchise owners, including social media, was handled exclusively
by the corporate marketing team and franchisees were not “allowed” to post on social.
Problem:
As the chain was growing and new stores were opening rapidly, it became more and more challenging
to successfully handle the service demands of existing stores while supporting franchisees who were
opening new stores. Social media was quickly becoming the preeminent medium for local store
marketing and soon, there were too many social media platforms to maintain, too much individualized
content to develop, too many missed opportunities to engage with customers and too many things that
seemed to be going wrong on a daily basis.
Solution:
Lynn Hoban made an active decision to create a model whereby franchisees would have access to the tools, information, and resources they needed to successfully manage their own social media platforms. Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and Instagram were chosen as the selected social media platforms to be supported by corporate. Corporate marketing handled the initial set-up for each new store as it opened. Hands-on “how to” social media training was provided for the franchisees by the corporate Social Media Manager via Zoom video conferencing. Photography, images and posting copy were made available on the TSG Marketing Portal, an online “library” of local store marketing tools. Franchise owners were also taught how to buy their own paid social media.
Results:
Franchise owners gained the confidence to lead and manage their own social media platforms locally. When “early adopter” franchisees began to attract new customers and increase repeat visits from existing customers thanks to their own local efforts on social, word quickly spread throughout the system and then, more franchisees jumped on the “DIY Social” bandwagon. Operators who actively posted on social achieved higher levels of customer engagement and were more successful at cross-selling additional product lines, including catering.
Effective marketing for any enterprise starts with providing the tools, resources and information store operators need to succeed. If you want to increase franchise owner satisfaction and achieve higher system sales, contact Lynn Hoban at Lynn@LynnHobanMarketing.com
to find out more.