The Power of Snapchat

We've taken a huge liking to snapchat here in Macaris. With so many local teenagers and over 10,000 students in Dublin City University we feel SnapChat is the perfect marketing and communication tool for us. Its advantages are:

• Its "in the moment"
• Allows us to directly connect with customers
• Offer snapchat friends special offers/incentives
• Food items only available on our snapchat menu
• Run fun realtime competitions
• Behind the scenes videos
• You can snap an many times as you like a day

We love it. What we love most about it is that its not an agency posting updates, its all done in house by staff members and that gives it originality, true insight and personality. Visibility on all all snaps is well over 90% and guaranteed within 24 hours which is amazing compared to other social networks such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram. And its doesn't cost us a penny.

And very importantly it doesn't cost us a dime to reach 100% of our audience.

Returns on our Facebook posts over the past 6 months have been terrible.  The reach on our last 10 posts on our Facebook page has been less than 500 which is extremely poor, some posts only reach 100 people. With nearly 5000 fans we spend a lot of time building up this is extremely disappointing. You may say that the content is poor but i've been posting for numerous years with better interaction on both the macari's Facebook page.  Do note that these posts are not boosted with adverts Euro spend but in-reality reach has become less and less over the past year with Facebook. With this in mind we see the importance in moving forward with the latest apps that are used by teenagers or Generation Z as they are called by industry experts.

Last week we had an incident where we(I!) dropped our snapchat phone into 300 degree F oil while making an image/video of our Southern Fried Chicken. Instead of leaving it at that i thought i would follow on with the story. I signed into another phone and gave updated on the status of the phone, video of the incident from our CCTV as well as the burnt phone still working afterwards. We got a great reaction from our snapchat friends, people asking in store how the phone was and if they could see it. The next day the story appeared on joe.ie

Its also appeared on the Daily Edge website as well as The Irish Mirror.  The video now has over 10,000 views and exposure is close to our Valentines Day stunt where we turned our takeaway into a restaurant for the night. 

Other fun things we have done so far with Snapchat is have a secret menu for our friends, this menu until today was only visible on snapchat. We have a #5before5 deal everyday which i lent from John Downey who runs a great snapchat account for his Cork based Asian street food restaurants Ramen ( SnapChat username ramenlovesyou).

Macaris Secret SnapChat menu

Behind the scenes snapchat videos that we have done are "The life of a Potato" & "The Macaris Oreo Milkshake" which can be seen below.

More videos can be seen on our youtube channel .

Simple things like stickers are also a great marketing tool and combine them with your snapchat logo and you've got a winner. (Snapchat now allows you to download a hi-res image with a QR code(called snapcode) that allows people to easily add you by taking a photo of the snapcode with your snapchat camera, log into your snapchat account here to download your Snapcode)

Macaris SnapChat Stickers

Overall we are delighted with Snapchat and look forward to adding stories daily as well as interacting more with our fanbase. Its very exciting.

If you've any questions drop me a mail at hello@macaris.ie or follow us on snapchat by adding Macaris1 or pointing your snapchat camera to our snapcode below.

Thanks to Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel for not selling out to Facebook!!

Fabio (@fabmol)