Just Eat use social media to sell more stuff: brandgym book post 2

In this second post inspired by our new bookthe brandgym: A Practical Workout to Grow Your Brand in a Digital Age, we look at ensuring social media usage is anchored on the ultimate objective of marketing, which is to ‘SMS’ – SELL. MORE. STUFF. A great example of a marketing director doing just this is Matt Bushby of Just Eat, the online food delivery platform, who presented at the recent Festival of Marketing. His work is a great example of the first workout in the book, which is to ‘Follow the Money’ and create brand-led growth.

1. From following fads and fashion …

The main driver for marketing directors to use social media remains “Keeping up with the latest trends” (62%) according to our research, with only 23% driven by tangible evidence of business benefits. Matt explained how this was an issue at Just Eat, with four separate teams running social media, all focused on chasing ‘likes’ and ‘followers’. Measurement was inconsistent and there was no link with business KPIs (key performance indicators).

2. … to following the money

In a radical reorganisation of social media, Just Eat consolidated all activity into one team led by Matt. A unified strategy is focused on driving ‘brand response’ to sell more stuff, with measures in place to track clicks to orders. This approach has paid off, with social media now driving 16% of total orders and a CPO (cost per order) below the company’s benchmark.

3. Driving penetration with paid content

Just Eat are clearly focused on the key driver of brand growth which is penetration. The objective of social media is to drive incremental orders from new customers, with heavy users actually being filtered out of the activity.

And to drive penetration, Just Eat use paid social media to get into peoples’ newsfeeds. “Forget organic reach,” was the advice of Matt. Why? Because just creating content for your social media followers in the hope they see it means you are mainly talking to existing customers: 86% of Facebook branded page followers were already using the brand, according to our research.

4. Creating on-brand, “thumb-stopping” creative

I loved the clarity that Matt and Just Eat have regarding their social media creative. To drive brand response and sell more stuff, creative needs to meet the following objectives:

  • Stand out in the newsfeed: thumb stopping as they scroll on their mobile devices
  • Evoke reaction: make the audience feel hungry, laugh, cringe or even cry
  • Sell more stuff: every single piece of content should encourage people to order

Whereas in 2016 content was low quality and seeking likes and laughs, the focus now is on quality foods shots to drive orders. An example is the ‘Chewmongous’ campain which drove 72,000 engagements and more importantly 24,000 orders.

5. Link to business needs

I like the way Matt and his team are harnessing social media to address specific business issues. For example, Just Eat run locally targeted ads promoting restaurants in a customer’s area. The use of ‘Dynamic Product Advertising’ (DPA) allows the brand to show a range of different restaurant options, based on what they have expressed an interest in before.

6. Turbo charging brand activation

Just Eat being the lead sponsor of the X-Factor is a smart bit of activation: there are shared brand values of fun and enjoyment and Saturday night TV is a key usage occasion for take-away food. Social media has been used to help activate the X-Factor property to drive sales.

Just Eat ran a contest called “Unsung Heroes” to select employees from their partner restaurants to star in the ‘indents’ used throughout the X-Factor (see video below). This is smart on several levels. First, it is motivating for the parter restaurants, making the staff look like heroes. Second, it is clearly linked to the Just Eat service, by featuring restaurant staff preparing food and promoting the restaurants in question. Third, the search for the Unsung Heroes creates some nice content to use in social media.

In addition, social media posts during the X-Factor have been used to remind people to order food from Just Eat, driving sales.

On conclusion, hats off to Matt and the team at Just Eat for showing how to harness the power of social media to sell more stuff. Its great to see a company that has seen the light and is following the money, not following fads and fashion.