How one bar and restaurant chain is measuring the impact of influencers
True cut through comes from building long-term relationships with micro-influencers that are “believable and trustworthy” according to All Bar One’s marketing manager, Michael Duffy.
Working with micro-influencers has helped restaurant and bar chain All Bar One increase its brunch sales by 28% across its 50 bars nationwide.
The aim of the three-month ‘Brunching’ campaign was to increase awareness of its food offering among professional women aged 25 to 34, which coincided with the launch of its summer menu in May.
“We felt that whatever we did needed to drive advocacy, recommendations and user-generated content that’s more believable and trustworthy than anything we could say as a brand,” explains All Bar One marketing manager, Michael Duffy.
Using micro-influencer platform Takumi, All Bar One sourced a diverse selection of 10 influencers with a combined reach of more than 200,000 people, who were challenged to take a visual report of their brunch.
We ended our year at 13% sales growth in the brunch time slot. In real terms, that increased the number of brunches sold by 1,800 a week.
Michael Duffy, All Bar One
As well as creating their own content around their brunch experience, influencers were asked to link through to All Bar One’s ‘Time for Brunch’ competition, which encouraged people to send in their own brunch selfies (or brunchies) to win a Mulberry handbag.
READ MORE: What’s the ROI of influencer marketing?
Despite publicising the competition using its own channels and paid social, All Bar One found the majority of the 200 entries and more than 4,000 engagements came via the influencers.
These micro-influencers generated a 5% engagement rate on each of their posts, helping to grow the number of followers on All Bar One’s Instagram account by 18%.
Sentiment analysis shows that following the ‘Brunching’ campaign All Bar One was able to grow both relevance and consideration by 2%.
The bar chain also saw a sales spike off the back of the campaign, reports Duffy, who appreciates that calculating influencer ROI is not always clear cut.
“It’s difficult really understanding the direct ROI from an influencer campaign when you don’t necessarily have a redemption mechanic that is directly attributable to that influencer,” he acknowledges.
READ MORE: L’Oréal says brands are using influencers the wrong way
“However, in May our brunch sales spiked to 28% like-for-like growth and then we saw a residual effect across the year so we ended our year at 13% sales growth in the brunch time slot. In real terms, that increased the number of brunches sold by 1,800 a week.”
Going forward all future All Bar One campaigns will include an influencer aspect. Duffy believes it is, however, crucial that influencer marketing is part of a wider strategy spanning owned social activity, promoted ads and posts which reinforce the message.
“If we were to put it [influencer marketing] in isolation, we would have achieved the same reach and engagement, but what it enabled us to do was to be part of a wider ecosystem around brunch, which allowed us to increase the longevity of the conversation,” Duffy adds.
