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Navigating QSR social media 'landmines' on way to customer conversions

A digital marketing expert speaking at last week's Mid-America Restaurant Expo in Columbus, Ohio said all the data points to the fact that QSRs and social media advertising go together like peanut butter and jelly. In this report, she tells brands how to handle tricky social media situations en route to customer conversions.

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March 3, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

Your QSR's social media presence is about much more than just being "present" online, per se, as digital media expert, Leah Eaton, explained in the first part of this feature last week, which emphasized the value of active listening and responsiveness to brands' overall perception and presence among the quick-service customer community. Of course, it is neither easy nor straightforward to move and have an effective voice among this online audience.  Handling those tricky social media channel situations while en route to QSR customer conversions is the focus of today's report that's compiled with some of the information Eaton shared with a packed audience at the Columbus, Ohio-based Mid-America Restaurant Expo last Monday. 

Tricks … and not the good kind

When it comes to tricky online situations, those periods when the nation is gripped by some sort of shared tragedy, may be among the most potentially volatile moments on social media channels for brands that fail to act wisely. Of course, in such situations — like weather or wildfire events that incur widespread damage and/or loss of life, brands can either choose to stay silent or get involved. In this respect — as much as anything previously discussed in the first part of this report — Eaton advised brands to listen very closely to their online communities before deciding both whether and when to get involved in any way. In the interim, make sure to pause all planned upcoming posts as they likely have been changed by the circumstances of the tragedy.

"Social listening will give you an idea of when it becomes more appropriate" to get involved she said.

Belle Communication's Leah Eaton speaks to a crowd at the Mid-America Restaurant Expo in Columbus, Ohio on Monday. (photo: S.A. Whitehead)

Among the top other highly difficult situations that all QSRs face is, of course, the negative review posted online. In these cases, advance planning can be a brand's best friend, since it allows all the in-house leadership and expertise to think through situations, like problem orders and/or customer experiences, to determine the best ways to respond quickly and personally when such situations arise.

And in these cases, that 12-hour rule response time limit mentioned in the first part of this feature for customer comment response times is "way too long," she said, as are "cut-and-paste" responses that all sound alike, particularly those that refer customers to another channel to resolve his or her problem. 

Instead, it's important to solve the customer's issue immediately and in the channel the problem was aired. If need be, Eaton said, take the conversation to a direct message to resolve. But the point is, don't make the customer "jump through any hoops," so to speak by sending them a number to call or website to visit and don't make them wait, she said. 

One more "don't" she stressed with the audience, was this one: 

"Don't feed the trolls," she stressed, referring to those ne'er-do-wells online who exist and post solely to incite rage and raise eyebrows.

"If a comment doesn't make sense or doesn't really relate to your brand … it's probably a troll. … If (the post and those behind it) is always negative, don't respond. It's not a battle you're going to win."

But she stressed — and this holds particularly true with trolls — don't delete negative comments. If a post is extremely profane, she advised "hiding" it, but not removing it since this act tends to incite more troll activity. 

The real art of the game: Conversion

On the matter of social media and QSRs' abilities to convert potential customers to real brand-lovers and purchasers, Eaton said all the data lines up to point to the fact that social media advertising is worth the investment for most quick-service brands. She said today, half of Gen Z-ers and 42% of millennials have been shown to see social media as the most relevant channels for advertising, across the board. 

It's critical that brands take a measured approach to how they advertise and what their goals are by establishing their social media advertising goals for both the brand and its marketing and social media audience first. This means that QSRs must first build awareness of, interest in and consideration for the brand, as well as an initial quantity of customer conversions, she said. 

That's because channels like Facebook need a baseline level of at least 50 sales a week just to give their automated tools enough data to function and work their magic, she said. But when it comes to building social media brand magic at that point, the creative content brands use is pivotal. 

Here, "standing out" in an impactful way is naturally the goal. Eaton said some of the basics related to helping a campaign accomplish this kind of "unforget-ability" in its content, include: 

• Personalization: Eaton said that although millennials are worried about online invasions of their privacy, they also simultaneously expect brands to personalize ads to their individual preferences. 
• Timeliness: Consider pegging ads to time-sensitive events or items, like LTOs or holidays, as Eaton said this also helps with a campaign's overall impression. 
• Channel optimization: Tailor the campaign to the channel and to the brand, as well as specific customer actions that the brand is driving for, she said.  
• Avoid graphics, as a general rule: Eaton said often the use of graphics with other visual and written content in social media advertising tends to fight with everything else in the messages brands are disseminating via social media, defeating the overall end-goals. 
• A/B testing: If a brand is on the fence and uncertain about a couple of different campaign approaches to an end-goal, Eaton said A/B testing can often be a crucial aspect to success, since it essentially tests two versions of the same ad, which are both deemed viable, but may have differences in wording or visuals. The findings can make the difference in total campaign rollout end-results. In fact, the ability to cost-effectively modify digital campaigns may be the QSR's best buddy when it comes to communicating via these channels, Eaton said. 

"Define your KPIs (key performance indicators) … and then monitor for them daily," she told the audience. "So just don't set it and forget it … but tweak (the ads) and optimize them. … That's really one of the strengths of digital ads as a whole, is you can see the journey as you're in it. … It has a great level of transparency."

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.