Offered Local Blog

Is your restaurant as socially influential as the big guys?

Posted by Ed Loessi on March 30, 2011

Social Influence

There was an interesting post and infographic that I saw in SocialCoco written by @paulbarron it was titled 2011 Most influential restaurants in the U.S. The post and info graphic outlined the many ways in which larger restaurant brands had influence in the market and where they ranked by the numbers.

One of the key comparisons from a social media marketing and location based marketing perspective was the number of Twitter followers that some of the larger brands had:

Papa Johns Pizza – 21230

Dominos Pizza – 24,789

Panera Bread – 21420

On the surface a local pizza restaurant or cafe of any sort might look at these numbers and think “Wow, can my local restaurant or my small/growing multi-state chain be as socially influential as these large brands that have big huge budgets?”.

This is a really good question and one that keeps the smaller restaurateur or marketer that works for the restaurant mulling the value of their marketing efforts. As I started thinking about this, it dawned on me that location based marketing in particular is really focused on the influence that an individual location can create. So, rather than thinking about having to compete against a big brand everywhere it is really just about competing with that big brand in the locations that you actually operate.

So, as an example, Papa Johns Pizza has 3,500 restaurants in all 50 states, which in rough numbers means that their influence could be as low as 6 followers per location (21230/3500), not really that impressive a number. By contrast there is a much smaller local chain in Boston where we are located called Upper Crust Pizza they have 19 locations and 3495 followers a ratio of 183 followers per location, a much bigger number and potentially much bigger level of influence in their local market, simply because you can only go so many places to get their pizza.

Essentially that means that each Upper Crust location has as many as 183 people that can vouch for their local store, think about this for a minute, that is a very powerful possibility.

The above numbers probably need to be flushed out a bit more but you can see that in fact it is probably more likely that a local business can create a far larger degree of social/local influence for its brand than a national brand can in the same market, it’s of course the reason there are so many great restaurants of all types in many areas that national chains compete.

So, what is the take away here? (no pun intended).

Do not fear the big guys, they are much less influential on a local basis then their big budgets and large numbers of socially oriented followers would indicate, especially when broken down on a local basis

Embrace social programs even if the early numbers seem small to you, it takes time, just like building a business it does not happen overnight

Combine social media marketing and location based marketing to create locally focused campaigns that bring people to your specific locations, don’t try to be a large brand, be a strong local brand, your customers are local and so are your locations

It’s easy for marketing to seem daunting and we often make the mistake of comparing ourselves to large successful companies when in fact the comparison is not really relevant. Remember, when web sites became common place there was a general leveling of the playing field between big and small and now with social media and location based marketing it would appear that in some senses the field is tilting in favor of the local business, which can create a much more influential customer base.