The Client
Frankie & Benny’s is one of the UK’s favourite chain restaurants, serving Italian and American classics in a family-friendly atmosphere. Originally founded in 1995, the brand now has over 200 nationwide locations offering everything from pasta and pizza to refreshing cocktails and indulgent desserts. We worked with Frankie & Benny’s in 2019 to manage their social media community.
The Brief
Frankie & Benny’s wanted to develop a database of Top Fans - dedicated customers who are exceptionally passionate about the brand, regularly engage online and frequently visit their restaurants. We were asked to identify these guests on social media, build a community from them, and assemble a tracking system to assess how often they were interacting with the page.
The Strategy
Due to Frankie and Benny’s already having a large audience on Facebook, this was the platform selected to source the Top Fans. After researching the best techniques to find them, we decided that Facebook’s ‘Top Fan’ feature would naturally be the perfect tool for the job. The Top Fan badge is awarded to Facebook users who consistently engage with a business page. Top Fans are automatically updated every month and our initial research revealed that they are usually those who like, comment on, or share every post published by a brand throughout the month.
To launch the campaign, we agreed to run a competition each month to award Top Fans with discount vouchers. Not only would this reward the brand’s biggest fans with a special treat, it would also allow Frankie & Benny’s to track the subsequent activity of those fans in their restaurants, such as their visit frequency and average spend.
The Results
Alongside the Top Fan competitions, we worked with Frankie and Benny’s to use their Top Fans as a market research group for new menu items, campaigns and partnerships. Not only did this provide the brand with qualified guest feedback and insights that helped them inform future business decisions, it also rewarded loyal diners and created greater brand affinity, which ultimately led to increased advocacy among Frankie and Benny’s Top Fans.