Tag: local social media

Case Study: How Local Content Boosts Engagement and Follower Growth for The Spice & Tea Exchange

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 15, 2022

The Spice & Tea Exchange is a multi-location franchise that offers 140 fine spices, 75+ hand-mixed seasoning blends, sugars, salts, teas, gourmet gifts and accessories. With stores throughout the United States, the company was founded in 2008 by a group of talented individuals with a passion for life and food.

What started as a small shop in St. Augustine, Florida, has quickly grown into a nationwide franchise powered by flavor, passionate franchise owners, and a desire to bring flavorful ingredients to their customers’ kitchens. Spice & Tea franchise owners are the heartbeat of the organization, creating a “close-knit family you’d enjoy sitting with around the dinner table,” the company notes.

Challenge

With a mission of “creating and sharing the experience of a more flavorful life,” The Spice & Tea Exchange strives to provide guests with quality products and flavorful memories. Toward that end, they began working with Rallio to generate a local content strategy that would allow them to better share their high-quality, diverse assortment of products with a larger audience via social media.

In the absence of the type of sensory shopping experience that one might have when stepping into a Spice & Tea Exchange store, the company sought to re-create on social media the feeling of opening jars, taking in the rich aromas, and speaking with knowledgeable in-store staff. They also needed the right technology to manage their social media posting and presence.

Solution

Rallio has been able to provide both the social media technology and the localized content and strategy that aligns with Spice & Tea Exchange’s mission and values — tapping into a captive social media audience that craves their content just as much as their teas and spices.

Spice & Tea franchisees were given the choice to either use the Rallio dashboard alone for their social media management needs, or opt into the Rallio Local program in order to increase followers, engagement, and brand awareness in their local communities.

Results

For locations that have opted into Rallio Local services, Spice & Tea franchisees receive weekly custom local content, targeted ads and boosts, and daily responses to messages and reviews. Not only does the combination of Rallio local-specific technology, artificial intelligence, and social strategy do all of the heavy lifting to save them time — but they have also outperformed the locations that have not opted into Rallio Local in terms of follower growth, post and page engagement, and review response rate.

In 2021, locations in the Rallio Local program had:

77% more new fans
75% more daily engagement
9% more reviews left by customers
88% faster review response rates than locations not on Rallio Local

Conclusion

Spice & Tea Exchange locations that have opted into Rallio Local have experienced great success month over month and continue to see impressive results.

With the help of Rallio’s team and technology, they are able to rely on Rallio to handle all aspects of their social media marketing — alleviating the burden of growing their online presence themselves. This also leaves them time to focus on growing their businesses and connecting with their local customers, one cup of tea at a time.

Tags local social media

Social Uncategorized

Case Study: Why Localized Social Media Matters

Post author By Rallio
Post date October 7, 2021

As a franchisee, you buy into a system that includes brand recognition and certain business processes. Instead of starting from scratch, you can lean on the corporate brand to an extent as you get up and running. There are, however, certain things you shouldn’t rely on completely — including localized social media marketing.

It’s true that most parent brands provide assistance with social media at varying levels. Some brands supply branded content and social media guidelines. Others leave it to their franchisees to create a social media presence. But in all cases, it’s important to have localized social media, and that’s something that can’t come from the corporate office.

By localized social media, we’re referring to social media posts and advertising that takes place on a franchisee’s local page. So you have a franchisor with a national page representing the brand, and individual pages representing their specific locations. Ideally, there’s a balance between the two — but in reality, that localized presence often falls short.

Challenge

Franchisees are faced with no time and, often, no desire to post on social media. At Rallio, we see franchisees make the mistake of ignoring their local social media pages.

These franchisees may have corporate-syndicated content on their pages — a process that’s streamlined for them through our technology platform — but they aren’t building a localized presence through real-life images, videos, special offers, recruitment posts and advertising.

They are therefore missing out on opportunities to connect with their local communities, respond to customer reviews and inquiries, build relationships with their followers, attract new talent, and give people a reason to visit their location or pay for their service.

Essentially, they are invisible on social media because not only do they lack localized social media, but they also aren’t doing any advertising, an essential component of social media marketing success.

Solution

Our Rallio Local division automates the process of posting locally, gathering assets via uploads from team members, and boosting posts for greater visibility. Franchisees who want extra help are paired with a dedicated Strategist who connects one-on-one with owners.

Social media posting, reputation management, directory listings and employee advocacy are wrapped up into one platform to serve corporate and franchised locations alike. We’ve seen many of our brands go from zero following and engagement to month-over-month gains.

Results

The results below provide an idea of the results franchisees experience by posting localized content with our help. The goal is to flood their pages with hyper-local content that shows the personality behind the location.

With some franchisors that we work with, franchisees have a choice of whether to opt in to our Rallio Local program. Others choose to implement a systemwide rollout of Rallio Local.

We have found that Rallio Local locations consistently outperform non-Rallio Local locations month over month in terms of followers and engagement.

Over a six-month time frame from March to September 2021, one spice and tea brand had a 58% increase in the number of average daily engagements and a 66% average following growth.
Over the same six-month time frame, a laboratory services franchise had a 225% increase in the number of average daily engagements and a whopping 7,229% average following growth.
With a pet supply franchise, we have an agreement with corporate to publish localized content to all franchisees’ pages. During the pandemic, the localized content combined with boosted posts has helped franchisees to introduce new services, such as curbside pickup and delivery, and build awareness of how the franchise is serving its communities. As a result, in 2020, over $1.7 million in purchase conversions was generated brand-wide, thanks to localized social media.

Conclusion: Localized Social Media Makes a Greater Impact

Every brand will experience different results of their social media marketing efforts, depending on factors like franchisee buy-in and contributions to their localized social media as well as ad spend budget. However, one thing remains consistent: hyper-local content is more engaging, entertaining and likely to connect with audiences than mass-syndicated content.

To learn more about how localized social media can help you, go to https://www.ralliolocal.co/ and explore our various packages.

Tags local social media

Social Uncategorized

Reverse Case Study: How the Pandemic Proved the Value of Local Social Media for Massage Heights

Post author By Rallio
Post date April 8, 2021

When Shane Evans and her husband, Wayne, co-founded Massage Heights back in 2004, they had a vision to provide professional, affordable massage therapy services. Now a thriving franchise with dozens of locations across the United States and Canada, Massage Heights continues to expand. Their Retreats offer not only a path to wellness for guests, but also career opportunities for countless massage therapists, estheticians and franchisees.

As the preferred technology supplier for Massage Heights, Rallio provides the social media SaaS and employee advocacy platform needed to manage, schedule, optimize and grow Massage Heights’ entire social media presence — from corporate down to the location level. Individual Massage Heights locations are paired with a Social Strategist to help automate their social media and execute a unique content calendar each month.

Since implementing Rallio technology and services, Massage Heights has experienced month-over-month growth in the number of engagements and followers on social media. Still, faced with unprecedented challenges and the forced closure of their Retreats when the pandemic first hit, Massage Heights needed to pivot quickly and decide how best to move forward with their social media.

In the following “reverse case study,” we’ll walk you through the process of how Massage Heights handled pandemic-related decisions and where they are in the present day.

Challenge

At the start of the pandemic when lockdowns began, Massage Heights Retreats were mandated to close temporarily. Given the marketplace unknowns and the nature of their services, conducted in close proximity to their guests, it was hard to imagine when franchisees would be able to reopen.

Solution

Faced with these closures, Massage Heights wanted to be proactive in trimming costs for a short time to ensure they could weather the pandemic. As such, they elected to pause their Rallio Local services for all locations starting in April 2020. The plan was to restart their social media services with Rallio on July 1.

Yet even with most locations temporarily on pause with Rallio, a small number of locations chose to continue posting locally three to four times a week. A total of three locations posted consistently throughout the lockdowns and the halt of their Rallio Local services.

Results

For the brand overall in March 2020, before pausing their Rallio Local services, Massage Heights’ average daily engagement had reached its highest point ever, at 46 average daily engagements. With everyone turning to social media during the pandemic, and Rallio Local continuously posting for them three to four times per week, they were seeing amazing results.

However, once Massage Heights paused their services in April, their average daily engagement dropped by 86.9%. Throughout the three months they were on a pause, from April through June, they averaged 6.34 daily engagements brand-wide.

In July 2020, Massage Heights was back open with many different safety protocols put in place, such as mandated masks and enhanced sanitization procedures. Guests were asked to bring their own water bottles, and couples massages were out of the picture. At this time, Massage Heights restarted their Rallio Local services — and their numbers tell a story. In the first month alone, they increased their average daily engagements by 216%.

In addition, the select locations that continued to post three to four times a week on social media during the hiatus experienced the following results:

Number of followers

750% higher in April compared to brand average
200% higher in May compared to brand average

Engagements

23% higher in April compared to brand average
45% higher in May compared to brand average

Conclusion: Local Social Media Is a Must

Massage Heights experienced a severe drop in engagement after pausing their Rallio Local services. Without regular local content getting posted on their social media pages, followers simply weren’t hearing from their local Retreat anymore.

The select locations that continued to post on social media continued to see growth on social media, demonstrating the need to continue marketing efforts despite the pandemic or any other interruptions to business as usual. A year into the pandemic, our advice holds true as written in Why You Need to Keep Up Your Marketing Despite the Coronavirus:

“People are social distancing, self-isolating or quarantined. Now, more than ever, they need to hear from you — with messages of hope, reassurance that either you’re still up and running or you’re following necessary safety protocols (depending on the nature of your business), and perhaps some levity here and there.

Moreover, with more people likely to be on their phones, using their mobile devices to stay in touch, order online and connect with the world, you have an opportunity to connect with your audience like never before. While now is not necessarily the time to blast people with your usual promotions, you can, and should, adjust your strategy to support current times and be of service.”

Let Rallio Help

While hitting pause on your marketing during uncertain times may feel like the best business decision, consider your long-term goals before deciding to cut your marketing budget. More often than not, the continuation of marketing efforts will position you for growth following any bumps in the road — as demonstrated by Massage Heights’ results after restarting their Rallio Local services.

In these uncertain times, it helps to have a company like Rallio on your side. We understand that franchisees have many responsibilities in running a successful business. And in recent years, social media and reputation management have become critical items for your success.

Engage the Rallio Local team of social gurus who will do the heavy lifting for you to create ridiculously engaging, hyper-local content; make sure local targeted audiences actually see and engage with that content; respond to all your social comments and online reviews; and make sure you’re highly visible even in the event of a business disruption like COVID-19.

If you’re looking to maximize your results on social media with a team that cares about your results, we would love to chat with you. It all starts with a quick demo that you can schedule with our Rallio Local team.

Tags local social media, social media marketing