Bruegger's Seeks Sales via Social Media
BURLINGTON, Vt. — A mid-size franchise chain is pursuing an unusual social media move by giving away six free indy-rock songs on Facebook. The results? The Bruegger's bagel brand now has over 95,000 Facebook fans and some of its franchisees are seeing the benefits.
The music download application was developed specifically for Bruegger's by Metablocks, Inc. and SocialGrub, a service of Restaurant eMarketing that develops social media marketing tools for the restaurant and retail industry. This is its first campaign with Bruegger's, a chain of 297 bagel bakeries in 26 states.
"Everyone benefits from this campaign," noted Sam Rubin, "chief grub" at SocialGrub. "Bruegger's fans are treated to free downloads, while the bands have a chance to exhibit their newest works to a wider audience."
Holly Ryan, director of social media at Bruegger's, was asked if she saw a correlation between the number of fans on a social media site such as Facebook and product sales. Ryan said that social media doesn't always equate to sales. "If you consider that the average Facebook user has 130 friends, and we're trending toward 100,000 fans, we have a relatively inexpensive venue for creating relationships with a lot of potential customers," she said. "And while a direct correlation is tough to measure, in 2010 we have seen our sales and traffic numbers grow as our fan base has grown. We have doubled our fan base in the last three months, and added more than 60,000 fans to our Facebook page in 2010. We also reported a 2.1 percent growth in revenue for the recent quarter."
Bruegger's could offer a wide variety of coupons and promotional campaigns to try to reach its customers and potential customers. So why use the hook of downloadable music?
Ryan stated that the chain is trying to target older teens and young adults, a group that heavily uses Facebook. She thinks it is a way to network with non-Bruegger's customers in a viral way. She declares, "This promotion also allows us to extend beyond Bruegger's Facebook fans and their friends and introduce the brand to a wider audience. We have the opportunity to add value for our current Facebook fans and reach the fans of every band on the Music Showcase. And not just Facebook fans, real live fans that might hear about the campaign when they go to see the show, or head to the bands' websites."
Reiko Beach, president of web marketing and consulting firm TRB Design, Inc. thinks Bruegger's has a great idea. "Bruegger's have defined a target market to appeal to and they are going after it through avenues that appeal to those demographics," she says.
Rich Gallagher, a franchise owner in the Greenville, North Carolina area, says that it has been helpful to use the franchisor's social media and complement it with his own social media pages. "I have my own Bruegger's Greenville Facebook page, which has 560 members." He uses his store's Facebook page as a vehicle to communicate to the community.
Beach thinks that Bruegger's and its franchisees could do more to integrate other social media tools that are particularly conducive to small business. She thinks YouTube, FourSquare and Twitter can drive people to each store. Beach says that if the brand expanded efforts to include more of Twitter, "They can send out tweets of the titles of the songs, the bands, and attract more people to their Facebook page." She also suggests the chain think about using bonus songs in Foursquare, where consumers can be a "mayor" of a particular Bruegger's location or receive a song download for being a first-time check-in.
With the social media efforts the store has made, Gallagher says he has seen their original target of local university customers spread to other college friends, and then the more general community. Now it is spreading to other communities.
He tries to tie that interest into product sales. "Anyone on my Facebook page gets a free cookie," says the franchisee. "Or if we have a lot of leftover bagels, I'll blast out a notice to come by between 2 and 4 p.m. to receive $2 off a dozen bagels. If the week's sales are slumping, I can use Facebook to try to drive it up."
Gallagher is not sure how much his social media efforts are contributing to the bottom line. "It's still new," he says. He talks about how it is difficult to quantify the people who walk into his store because of a recent radio campaign. "It's the same thing with Facebook," he says. "Maybe if I do more specials where I tell my Facebook users to bring in a coupon made just for the website, then I can better quantify it," he thinks out loud.
Reiko Beach suggests the value of YouTube in a brand's social media strategy, particularly when it comes to Bruegger's use of bands. "Spreading the word to where people might be searching for bands or songs will give Bruegger's access to more consumers who want to find the information, and thus find Bruegger's Facebook page," she advises.
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