Experience Advertising Director of “Empire Pizza».

Why our company started with social media

Advertising department in “Empire Pizza” I joined in March 2010, and then the basic tools that are successfully used by enterprises, it was time-tested distribution of leaflets on office centers and residential districts, search engine optimization, PPC and display advertising on the Internet. It definitely was not enough.

Distribute leaflets – effectively, but it is, unfortunately, has irritated some people, leads to clogging of the city, and in addition, the costs of printing and distribution are very high. And as soon as we reduce the number of leaflets distributed as sales at the area of ??the experiment immediately fell. And in the online promotion is war budgets: all trying to get into the top ranks “Yandex”. As a result, last year alone the cost of accommodation in the system “Yandex Direct” of the popular query like “pizza delivery” increased by about half.

More recently, the top ranks in the search engines really could give a perfect result, because hungry people do not want to continue the search for a long time, and they chose one of the top ten outstanding program links. But now the situation has changed, and it affects primarily the growing popularity of social networks. Consumers have become interested in a company’s reputation, which they order food, and not only the price and range of products. In this case, they all want to get the best price and quality offer, but to spend the time, money and effort not seek. Therefore, the choice of buyers affect friends and reviews on blogs.

It seemed obvious that these features need to be running a business. We have to take part in the discussions of our company, to create a platform for these conversations, which you can control the situation and prevent the negative reviews.

Choice Agency

Start was not easy. I seriously began to study the issue. Initially, the company had three offices in the internet social networks – LiveJournal community, an account in Twitter, which we discovered by PR-agencies, and a group of “VKontakte” that I created in order to understand the principles of work at such sites – what they do, how to work with what was written. It has become clear that we need a strategy of working with social media, part of the overall marketing strategy. Then I knew nothing about the size of the budget that it would require, nor on the key indicators that show the effectiveness of the process.

Leading digital-agency offers impressive stuff, but for a lot of money without a clear description of the effect. It was clear that they are focused more on the big brands that have already generated image and are willing to invest in the experiments. There were also suggestions the average price level coming mainly from agencies and even freelancers, but they were more strategic guidance implementing client.

I considered a variety of proposals to increase the number of fans even suggested that work with virtual characters and bots in social networks. But we are looking for clients, real people, not thousands of fake subscribers for the report.

In the end, I leaned to the choice of a small agency AdComm. At the first meeting, we discussed the five o’clock future cooperation, and agreed on the fact that the main objective of social networking – sale. But at the same time, we were clear that simply selling through social networks can not relate to the company’s desire to increase sales and user’s desire to have a private space. Brand can not use the social network as a sales channel, it has something to interest a user.

Virtualization restaurant

Around the same time, we realized that we would have to sell pizza by applications “VKontakte” and Facebook. With that it was not only our initiative, but also the desire of users – they began to wonder whether it is possible to order a pizza right in the Internet community.

Now, after nine months of work, we have an image of the application as a cafe. As cafes and restaurants in the real world, we do not (except for the brand “BigBurger”) applications become their peers and communities in social networks – visitors. We gave them the menu, and they have come to participate in competitions, have communicated with each other, in a review.

In April last year we started selling the application in Facebook, is now working on launching a similar service “VKontakte”. This will complete the first phase of our vision. We plan to launch a new idea in the community: in addition to the sales function in the application options will socialization users. For example, we plan competition, where participants will have to share their dreams.

Work with iPhone

From the very beginning of the development of our digital-strategy, we plan to create applications for selling iPhone.No leading developers to charge high prices, and had to delay ready concept at the year end and wait for an opportunity. And such an opportunity presented itself – our CEO, a lover of Apple, install it on your iPhone app “Tanuki”. And immediately there was a question: “What are we worse?”

Promptly after our first beta version of iTunes on the information about it has spread, and without our participation. Users download the application, make an order, and spread the news about it on specialized forums on the Internet. But after we released the revised release, the Agency conducted a resource and Mac fans in professional societies dedicated to this campaign, there was a real rush of customers. If the first month, users have downloaded the application about a thousand times, the PR-campaign after our application can be 2000 times a week.

Program was originally not quite right, because it was not fully taken into account the specifics of the owners thinking iPhone. However, it is still in demand as unique in the market a little. In the second, improved version of the application, which we will soon be released, taking into account all our shortcomings, and included the usual for iPhone «Tabbara” (name of the menu tabs, Tab Bar).

integration of social networks, website and applications for the iPhone

Our work with social media rather surprising effect on the company. There was a need to invest not only in marketing and promotion, but also in the IT-system, and improve the business processes of the company, working to create a more comfortable environment for users of social networks and the Internet. We made an adapted version of the site for smartphones, on the front page of the site placed aggregator entries from our LJ community, adds a button social networks, the ability to tell your friends in the social networks of any heading, and the ability to log into “My Account” with a Facebook account and “VKontakte “. All of these options have been added by our own team.

The launch of iPhone-application – the next stage of our work – has led us to restructure business processes. In the application, we have included the possibility of processing the products of all three of our brands have made a booking and a unified system of discounts. The effectiveness of such associations, incorporated in the application for the iPhone, has led us to implement this approach and for bookings that are made through the site. We are working on the integration of our websites and systems ERP. To associate a single system all accounts – in sotsestyah, the application for the iPhone and on our website. This is an important step in improving the loyalty program.

Results

During the period of less than a year we have the following results: in the search engine “Yandex” number of requests “Empire Pizza” has grown two and a half times – from 10 500 to 27 000. In my opinion, even more significant is another result – the query “Empire Pizza” in January 2011, was able to overtake the number of request “to order a pizza,” the most expensive inquiry Yandex. This means the emergence of a new Russian-speaking Internet brand “Empire Pizza” as well – that the impulsive approach to order pizza began to change in a more conscious way.

We also decided its main task – increasing sales. The share of online orders in the past year increased from 5-7% to 10-12%. These results may have led to the promotion of social media, but when placing an order, or call the operator clients do not report how they found us. But such a conclusion is obvious.

Release of iPhone applications has given us an additional sales channel. The number of installations of the application is stable at 50-70 week. Orders placed with it, also becoming more frequent, but not as fast as the setup. Characteristically, the average transaction size of customers using iPhone-app is 20-30% higher average ticket sales through other channels. The costs of establishing the application will pay for itself the first month.

Andrey Vasilyev, Director of Advertising “Empire Pizza”