Bulls Head Pub - Social Media Case Study - Crest Social

The Brief

Make the social media channels more professional and consistent
Increase engagement

The Challenge

Local competition
COVID

The Result

Engaged Page
Succesful takeaway service launched
Increased following 1884 – 3350 (56% increase)
Instagram set up 0-1168 followers

Initial Brief

The initial brief was to make the social media at the Bulls Head more professional and consistent.

Pies and Humour

After some initial research it became clear that the pies where much loved and something that the initial strategy could be worked around. With the permission of the owners we also added some humour to the social media, which really connected well with the audience.

One of our other strategies is to build a community, getting people involved with decisions ranging from new drinks offerings to menu updates.

Reviews and social proof

We use reviews and testimonials to demonstrate social proof in order to persuade potential customers to give the establishment a try.

As well as looking at your website and menus, people will often visit your social media pages to see recent pictures of your offerings, check reviews and find out about any events.

We not only shared the reviews, but we also encouraged people to leave reviews following their visit.

Although not always the best-performing content at the time, these posts are a key part of the strategy.

Lockdown

Just a few months in the strategy was working and we had already seen an increase in engagement. Then COVID hit! We had a meeting with our client the day after lockdown measures were introduced. The Bulls Head acted quickly in launching an extended takeaway menu and then our job was to inform people that we were still open for business with a pub takeaway at home being the main message.

The takeaway offer was a huge success for the pub, but creating content from a closed pub became more difficult.

User Generated Content

At this point it become clear that user-generated content (UGC) was the way to go. We created a hashtag #BullsHeadAtHome for people to share their pub takeaways. We would then select the best one, who would win vouchers to use when the pub reopened. This gave us images of takeaways that we could then use to further promote the service.

Our company have had the pleasure of working with Chris from Crest Social for a long time. We were inexperienced in using social media and needed help. Chris has proved to be one hundred per cent committed to working alongside us and his knowledge is amazing. He is available at any time for advice and is always full of good ideas. We would recommend Crest Social for all your social media needs.

Julie Robinson

Previous Owner - Bulls Head

Updates

Coming out of lockdown, it was important to share timely updates at each stage to inform customers how we were doing business at the time. Whether it drinks in outdoor areas, open inside with added safety menu or full reopening.

We also shared excitement about returning to the pub asking people what they were looking forward too.

Once reopen it was important to try to give people the confidence to return, continuing to highlight safety measure, whilst at the same time demonstrating “business as usual”. For those who were not ready to return a key message was that we were still offering takeaways as many had stopped at this time.

A key strategy here was proactively sharing reviews that mentioned that people felt safe in our environment.

Results

We saw substantial growth in Facebook, but more importantly the page was very engaged with likes and comments on all posts. The Facebook page became as much as a community as the pub itself. We also started an Instagram page and grew it from 0-1168 followers.