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Blind Tiger Inns move to a Multi-Location Marketing Platform that Prioritises Local
Blind Tiger Inns was founded in 2017. Over the past six years, this British pub group have rapidly grown to over 20 locations in the North West of England and it’s safe to assume they are growing even more as you are reading this introduction. Their key brand values are community and value for their local audiences.
Before joining SocioLocal in April ‘23, Blind Tiger Inns used ContentCal to manage its social media across its locations. ContentCal announced it was shutting down at the end of Q1, 23. You can read more about that here. ContentCal was a SaaS product that made it easy for users to create, schedule, publish, and analyze their posts on social media. However, it was not created with multi-location brands in mind. When the company closed down, Blind Tiger Inns took the opportunity to rethink its social media strategy and its marketing team asked themselves how they could maximise the reach and community connection to each of 20 individual pubs!? Answer: SocioLocal 😉
We caught up with Amy Cutler, Marketing Manager and Alice Myerscough, Marketing Assistant, to ask them about their social media strategy, how they found their onboarding onto SocioLocal, what they have achieved so far and what they plan to achieve over the coming few months.
Kate (SocioLocal): How valuable is social media to Blind Tiger Inns?
Amy (Blind Tiger Inns): Social media is integral to our business, and we rely on it to inform our audience about everything we do in our pubs. I truly believe that without it, we wouldn’t be where we are.
Alice (Blind Tiger Inns): Social media is extremely valuable to us. Our MD is massively into social media. Every month, we have new, unique offers for each of the pubs. For each offer, there are print and social media campaigns. We know the value of social media. People don’t hear about these offers without it!
Kate: How are you monitoring the effect of social media on your brand?
Amy: We monitor the effect by analysing the sales and till data. For example, when we had Gordon’s Orange on offer in September, we compared how much was sold the month before in August and there was a 260% increase in sales in September. This is partly due to it being an offer and customers wanting the value but also because it is well advertised through social media and in the venue.
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Alice: The proof is in the pudding with the takings and knowing that revenue is increasing month on month. For example, we have a bottomless brunch this Saturday in one of our pubs - all of the marketing for this promotion has been done through social media on SocioLocal and it has completely sold out! So we know it works because of physical evidence!
Kate: How did you support your franchises/locations in social media prior to joining SocioCommand?
Alice: We scheduled content for all of our locations through ContentCal. However, one of the main reasons we wanted to move to SocioLocal was to enable our local pubs to post locally to increase engagement on our 20 local pages and decrease the manual effort we have to take for each bespoke, community post.
We have not taken advantage of the local element of SocioLocal but we plan to launch local enablement in the new year. It takes up so much of our physical time because we have to contact each pub to send us time-sensitive content and then rely on each store manager to see their email and send it to us in a timely manner. Because we are growing so quickly, this is not scalable.
Kate: How has BTI’s revenue been affected since joining SocioLocal?
Amy: This year has been a successful one for us. We have grown our business by adding more pubs so naturally this has helped increase revenue. We have also hosted a variety of different events all advertised through social media and this has helped us stay ahead of the curve and diversify our customer base. We do need to utilise the platform much more, which there are plans for next year and hopefully our revenue will continue upwards.
Alice: At the end of every month, we will launch an offer. For the end of October, we have a vodka and Monster offer (for Halloween). Up to now, *touch wood*, every offer that we have run on SocioLocal has increased our pubs’ revenue each month.
Kate: What do you think of SocioCommand?
Alice: We really like it! We love the support we receive from the tech team. SocioLocal are such a personable company which is great for us because we receive such bespoke support.
Kate: What is your aim for the next 6 months?
Alice: Our main aim for the months ahead is to get all of the local managers utilising SocioLocal. That, and, growing Instagram for all of the pubs as it is such an important platform!
Kate (SocioLocal): Well, I’m looking forward to catching up with you again in Q2, ‘24 and finding out how you have gotten on with that Alice!
