The beauty of social media is its versatility and wide range of applicability. Creativity is highly encouraged within the social realm and evidence of it often determines success or failure. Qdoba’s social media efforts focus on “fan” involvement and incorporate creative games, contest, and promotions to meet this goal.
Recently, I spoke with Doug Thielen, head of non-traditional marketing for Qdoba. During our conversation, we tackled the topics of a starting strategy, audience monitoring, and responding to negativity. Below is our interview, which highlights the key points of our conversation.
How did you immerse social media with your existing marketing?
During the election we started a marketing campaign called Taste Bud Politics. The campaign involved a quiz that connected certain Qdoba foods with a political party or candidate. From the quizzes, we created Facebook pages/groups so that the participants could post videos and engage with one another. Through this marketing initiative, we were able to get a better feel for social media and it also became our activation piece.
From your initial step, how did you decide where to exert your efforts?
Listening was one of the most important parts when making our transition into social media. Using a social media monitoring program, we listened to the conversations occurring in order to see what was being said and where it was happening. With the results of this “digital snapshot,” we made a decision to focus our efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. After getting involved in social media, we realized the importance of extending our efforts with each regional franchise.
How were you able to maintain continuity among franchises?
Before extending our social media initiative to regional franchises, we wanted to empower them with tools to succeed. In order to provide continuity, training was necessary, so we created “Social Media 101-A Guide to Social Media.” Along with the guide, we also included the colors, logos, and backgrounds needed to create a profile, page, etc. With continuity in place, each franchise was then able to become more relevant to their local audiences, but also remain connected to Qdoba as a whole.
How much time do you spend on your social media efforts?
Currently, I am the only one running our social media campaigns. As our fan base has developed and response increased, some of the opportunity was being lost because I was unable to interact as much. Since this increase, we have decided to hire an additional member to facilitate this social demand.
How do you measure the success of your campaign?
Our goal is to engage with people individually, so we often monitor which posts elicit the best customer responses. On Twitter, we utilize hashtags to measure volume and mentions. We also refer to our “digital snapshot” to gauge our progress. This snapshot allows us to measure the ratio of positive to negative comments and to see if our influence has increased.
How do you respond to negativity?
There isn’t one specific way, because it is often dependent on what kind of response we are dealing with. I have found that taking negative comments off isn’t a good practice, because it will often fuel the individual’s anger. If it is a specific complaint about the service or food, we often respond directly to that person to resolve the issue. I have found that responding correctly to a negative situation can often turn a customer into an advocate for the brand.
Qdoba’s most recent campaign, Craft for Life has become quite popular and was even mentioned on Jimmy Kimmel.
*Qdoba is not a client of Starkmedia
