The Brief
Originally Viper was asked to prepare a digital marketing plan to support a bid for the Riverford franchise in West Somerset, including Exmoor and areas of Devon. The bid was successful.
We were then commissioned to build the social media following for this franchise with the purposes of retaining existing customers, reactivating previous customers and gaining new ones in the area.
The Solution
First step was to identify the target audiences, then the content they would respond to and which social media tools would be required for this.
A key aspect of marketing to existing Riverford customers via a franchise is that the customers receive marketing material from the central organisation. Riverford West Somerset would need to complement this but not duplicate it.
By defining the target audiences at the outset as a late 20’s mum concerned about the health of her children and a more mature lady looking for quality (we obviously gave them human names as always but that’s confidential 
, combined with our social media Rule of Thirds we identified that the content should focus around;
- Somerset arts
- heritage sites
- countryside destinations
- Somerset place names and history
- Somerset culture
By taking a non-food approach we could maintain the interest of the target audiences who associated very strongly with the geographical area they lived in. We reflected this back to them in lots of ways including pictures of the traditional cast iron way marketing signs you can find on road junctions in rural areas of Somerset. This also helped to show potential customers the areas covered by deliveries. All this complemented the food related output from central Riverford.
The richest content always come form staff so we tasked the delivery drivers with taking pictures of curious sights they saw around the area that we could then use to reinforce the message of place.
After we had built the plan we ran their social media platforms on a monthly basis including their enewsletter.
The Result
Our knowledge and experience meant that from a standing start we could create the following accounts and populate them with creative content ongoing; Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Engagement across all of them was very high. We ensured all the accounts were integrated to get the most from the content and build on the brand of Riverford.
We supported the social media output through monthly enewsletters sent out to an increasing database.
The combination of our strategic planning, tactical delivery and 1:1 mentoring has meant we can handover very popular social media accounts to the staff with the confidence and skills to maintain our good work.