2022 wrap-up: our marketing wins of the year, ft. Slerp
2022 has been another year of twists and turns for the digital marketing and hospitality industries! We’re thrilled to be teaming up with online food ordering system Slerp for our end-of-year wrap-up blog, looking back over the wins and weirdness of the past 12 months and gazing ahead to what’s coming in 2023.
1. The TikTok hype train shows no signs of slowing
by Trapeze Media
One of the freshest social media platforms of the bunch showed the oldies (looking at you, Instagram) how it’s done this year, with TikTok users watching 197million cumulative hours of short-form video every day, compared to a rather more humble 17.6million hours each day watching Instagram Reels.
2022 also saw TikTok start to dominate search. One Google exec shared a staggering statistic: almost 40% of young people are using TikTok for search, particularly for lifestyle-related topics. That makes it a must-have for hospitality brands.
We’ve been working more and more with the app this year, and are stepping into 2023 very confident in our TikTok strategies. Here are seven key tips we’ve learned along the way:
Don’t assume it’s ‘easy’ just because it’s a short video
Clear brand vision will give your team some guidelines to follow, so that they’re free to get creative without straying too far from brand values and aesthetics
Give your content creators the liberty to go a bit wild (within reason) and just see what happens — TikTok throws out yesteryear’s social media marketing traditions
If you’re going to have an opinion on content, you must understand the content on the app — it’s different to what you might be used to on Instagram
Your creative team need to get to know your in-house team. Invite them to meetings, menu tastings, staff events — TikTok’s got to feel like it’s born from the inside of your business, and should tap into the subtle nuances of what makes you unique.
Set up a group chat on WhatsApp, iMessage, etc. — an easily-accessible space where your creative team can share ideas with your chefs, managers, mixologists, et al, to jump on trends as soon as possible
If you don’t have a face for your brand, don’t be too nervous to bring in TikTok creators. Experiment with who captures and presents the videos you post.
Marketing via SMS messages has made a comeback
by Slerp
SMS has been big this year, our friends at Slerp tell us. Early in 2022, they started implementing SMS (Short Message Service) campaigns into their partners’ marketing strategies.
The fact is, 90% of text messages are read within the first three minutes of receiving them, making SMS a really fast and efficient way of reaching your audience. Consumers use their phones more than ever, and social media is the noisiest it’s ever been — it’s a perfect storm for a nice simple text message.
A short sharp message is all that’s needed to grab the attention of your audience. For example: an offer with a time limit (i.e. free delivery for 48 hours) creates a sense of urgency, which can help drive sales.
But it’s not just the immediate uptake in orders that makes SMS a great marketing channel. Throughout multiple campaigns, Slerp have seen a halo effect with a spike of orders even after the offer has expired. One delicious dessert partner saw their revenue increase by as much as 190% several days after the original message. Definitely a win worth celebrating.
Using Google Ads to drive bookings and venue visits for restaurants
by Trapeze Media
We’ve been working with London-based restaurant brand Dirty Bones since 2019, and 2022 has been the year we were able to really show what we can do for increasing footfall in venues.
This is a core focus for us in 2023 as we see the hospitality sector’s need for support in getting bums on seats continue to grow. Restaurant, lifestyle, and travel brands increasingly need confidence and clarity on ad spend and impact.
Without giving away all our secrets, here’s how we generated venue bookings at an average of £0.93p per booking AND tracked venue visits at £0.27p using Google Ads.
We track three main things: ad engagements, venue bookings, and venue visits. We know when customers visit Dirty Bones after seeing our ads on Google.
We use location data to show venue-specific ads for maximum relevance, so our ads are perfectly personalised, and bookings/visits are easy to attribute.
Direct-to-inbox: email marketing is stronger than ever
by Slerp
Email marketing — one of the OG advertising channels — is still a really effective way of communicating with your customers, and your audience remains yours as social platforms rise and fall.
Whether it’s a regular newsletter with general updates or a mailing list used to let customers know about a new product or offer, email marketing remains a relatively straightforward and cost-effective form of promotional comms.
Slerp have recently worked with a partner to launch email marketing for their pizza concept. Their first Friday email send saw a spike in sales of 20% compared to their average Friday sales! Since utilising Slerp's marketing services, they’ve seen a 12% increase in month-on-month sales.
Email marketing will continue to be a core focus for us at Trapeze Media and the team at Slerp as we head into 2023.
The state of Facebook and Instagram: Meta ads in 2022 and beyond
by Trapeze Media
Every year, I’m asked:
“Should I still be focusing on Facebook?”
“My Instagram engagement has gone through the floor. Is it even worth it anymore?”
I’ll be honest and say that we’ve found it a lot harder to drive sales through Facebook and Instagram in 2022, and engagement is a challenge these days as well. Yet another reason to get to grips with TikTok.
However...
The Meta platforms are still the best performers when we look at our paid advertising campaigns for lead generation.
We’ve had a lot of success running lead-gen campaigns for clients in 2022 — especially in the hospitality and tourism sectors, where you’re not always looking to drive a quick sale. The customer journey is often longer in these industries.
Here’s how we’re driving leads for two niche clients with very different goals using Meta’s paid ad tools on Facebook and Instagram.
First of all, we’ll look at the work we’re doing for Precious Homes.
Precious Homes are a social care provider we’ve been working with since 2021. They came to us looking for help recruiting staff for their care homes across the country.
After some A/B testing, we discovered that in some areas of the country we were getting more applicants with and without experience in care, so we changed things up.
We amended the campaign copy so that it was clear training was made available on the job, and we increased the number of applicants by encouraging those without experience to apply.
All leads are passed directly onto the recruitment team so they can follow up by email or phone.
Another very successful lead generation campaign we are running is for Goodnestone House.
This is a gorgeous manor property in Kent who are looking to increase wedding bookings in 2023, as they’re building a new orangery in their already-stunning gardens.
We started by researching the area and determining the specific postcodes that would a. be likely to travel the distance to visit, and b. have the budget needed for a venue like this.
Again, we ran lead generation form ads across Facebook and Instagram and included specific qualifying questions — one in particular related to what budget they had available. This then qualifies the lead, so when we pass it onto the house manager to book a tour, he can prioritise who he speaks to.
We’re generating between 30 and 40 leads per month — largely people who have a wedding in the summer and a budget of £30K.
Even if you’ve moved on from older platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they’re still some of the most popular social networks out there, and they have every motivation to keep making their ad tools more powerful. Whilst many agencies have waning interest in Meta, we see Trapeze Media using it even more (for the right campaigns) in 2023.
Offline in a digital world: the power of QR codes and print
by Slerp
Though the world is becoming more and more digital, offline marketing channels like print can still thrive as part of your marketing strategies, particularly in the world of hospitality.
It goes hand-in-hand with common customer touchpoints, such as ordering at the table. There’s evidence that QR ordering increases both AOV (average order value) and the number of tips that staff get, whilst also reducing some core admin needs.
Slerp have worked with countless partners to print thousands of QR codes for both table ordering collateral and promotional flyers in 2022. Having signage in your shop can help build your online audience by encouraging your customers to shop online, too — while waiting for orders to arrive, for example.
Online ordering doesn’t detract from in-person business. In a poll, 74% of respondents said they order in to replace cooking, not eating out.
Challenges of communication: inclusive language, and dealing with trolls
by Trapeze Media
Our Senior Account Manager Sarah has been making a name for themselves this year as the person to talk to you if you want to be more confident in how to handle trolls online, or how to use more inclusive language in your marketing content.
It was Sarah who wrote our blogs about dealing with social media trolls on the brand account, and navigating challenging conversations in customer service on social media.
Challenging conversations, in the form of bad reviews or just trolls ‘having fun’, aren’t going anywhere. With the hospitality sector getting more competitive and being forced to recruit so many new staff, how we handle these reviews is really important.
You can read the full articles to get all the details, but one of the main things to remember is: these conversations can be turned around. You can regain customer loyalty and build an even deeper trust, but if they’re a troll, there’s often not much good to be done, and it’s often best to block and walk away.
(Unless you’ve got a great comeback and the brand team is on board 😜)
If incorporating inclusive language into your daily communications — both internal and external — isn’t a core consideration for you yet, put it high on your agenda for 2023.
We are making sure we build accessibility elements into all the work we do: videos always having subtitles, images with alt text for screen readers, using CamelCase when writing hashtags, keeping copy non-gendered and inclusive, and more.
You can see Sarah’s talk on the importance of using inclusive language in your marketing communications here.
As always, looking back on what we’ve done this year and gazing ahead to what’s next has been fun!
I couldn’t write a 2022 wrap-up about our wins without mentioning the award we literally won this year, of course: Best Social Media Specialist & Marketing Agency UK 2022 at the SME News Business Elite Awards! Being a largely remote agency, we had mini trophies made up and sent to every member of the team. This was the cherry on the top of our year.
Collaborating with Slerp on this blog post was a good time, and we’re looking forward to what we do together in 2023.