How A Local Convenience Retailer Drove Deli Sales With Social Media

Would you like an increase in deli sales of 500%? With just a few strategic and carefully considered social media posts and €30 advertising spend per month, it's possible.

The Brief

In October, Daybreak (DB) Greenville Store, a local convenience store in the town of Enniscorthy, Ireland was looking to relaunch a deli dinner and Sunday carvery service that was reactivating after being dormant. The new menus were made fresh by a dedicated chef in-store and when they had originally been running were only generating four to six sales per day. The meals were a healthier option and great value for money compared to the takeaways/hotels in the area. DB Greenville wanted to create awareness around the offering and generate sales. Online ordering was not available at this time so the focus was on driving people into the store. As Socio Local clients for some time now they were comfortable with our platform SocioConnect but wanted a strategy put together to help achieve the objective.‍

The Objective‍

The goal was to drive awareness and increase sales for the newly launched services over a period of 6 months using just €30 advertising spend per month and social media posts.

‍Target Audience‍

Enniscorthy is a town in County Wexford south of Dublin. The population of the town is 11,000. DB Greenville is situated in a residential estate; they are a store that is very much part of their local community. The target audience for these campaigns were families who live around the store's location and individuals who were looking for a healthier option of takeaway food.‍

Content Plan‍

When promoting a new service or product you need to have photography to be able to showcase it.  DB Greenville availed of our photoshoot service when they joined us a client so they had imagery of the dinner and carvery menu already loaded onto their brand profile of our platform. We also suggested mixing the deli imagery with photographs of the store’s team. Using imagery of people in social posts is very important as it drives a higher engagement of usually 35%. Capturing a businesses team is part of our photoshoot process but even when taking pictures for your own business, do bare this in mind. If your team are happy to be photographed, people love a smile!

The posting frequency and schedule is something to consider when setting out a campaign. The schedule needs to be aligned to what you currently do but it also needs to give you maximum impact for results. This client had a weekly posting frequency of about four posts per week and it was working well so we suggested one post per week to be focused on the dinner and carvery campaign. For a timing schedule we reviewed the post analytics on SocioConnect from the previous three months which showed that posts scheduled between 9 to midday were performing better. However as one of the services was a Sunday carvery we also suggest a post later in the week and a reminder post for Sunday mornings.

The store was located in a very community-focused location therefore we wanted to use copy that customers could relate to and that related to their lives. We suggested using captions such as “Lazy Sundays = delicious Sunday Roasts” and “The kids need feeding. However the thought of starting up the cooking now seems like too much”.  If the customers liked and related to the store, they would be more likely to convert. We made sure that the copy also contained all relevant information about the service including availability and times; and of course a ‘call-to-action’. 

Timeline

DB Greenville had suggested a six month timeline for campaigns starting in October. This worked in favour of the campaign as the weather was colder, evenings were shorter and families would be staying in more. Christmas also fell into this period which meant people would be home and looking for roast dinners. For the first three months we suggested focusing on promoting the service with organic posts but also running social media advertisements at the same time.  Once we saw how this performed we suggested switching up the strategy in months 3 to 6 and proposed that they put the advertising spend behind the individual posts rather than runnings ads.

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Advertising ‍

Social media advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways of reaching potential customers right where they are. For this campaign we proposed starting with brand awareness and reach advertisements on Facebook and Instagram to start getting the word out about the store's new offering. 

All ads had a call-to-action, call now or get directions to the store itself. The audience would include people within a 5 km radius of the store as the focus was on the local community. With further interests in food, drink, roast dinners, and eating out. The target demographic included families, working professionals and residents in the area.

The ads were usually run for a few days (3-5 days), for evening dinners, the ads ran during the week and sometimes over the weekend. For Sunday dinners the ads started closer to the weekend to have more relevance and impact conversions.As the audience selected was relevant, the cost per results achieved were significantly lower than the industry average for similar ads. ‍

Results ‍

By the 5 months point, DB Greenville was getting up to 30 dinner orders per weeknight, this equates to roughly. €1,500 of extra revenue per week and a 500% uplift in orders.  Socio Connects analytics dashboard was also showing an increase in users looking for directions to the store on google.

The Sunday carvery which had been receiving 15 orders a week was up to an average of 100 by the end of the campaign.  That is an 86% increase in order frequency and was now equating to an extra €850 per week.

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And what did the store owners think?‍

“We saw a significant increase and uplift with our deli dinner menus, and our Sunday carvery orders have  also steadily increased. The dinner launch was very successful. We are now doing about 120 Sunday dinners, every week . We had to put a pre-order system in place to keep up with orders. We are very happy with the results” 

Eileen McHugh, Daybreak Greenville Stores.‍

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This campaign for a local store which only involved minor tweaks to what they were already doing on social media is now generating on average an extra €2350 per week. With the right photography and the right strategy social media made it’s impact.  Strategies will inevitably differ and have to be tailored to each individual location, but the overall blueprint remains consistent. Social media is a very cost-effective tool, that when used right, can generate brand awareness and sales.

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Chat soon, SL