Summary

Subway is an American restaurant franchise that sells subs and salads. It is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world and has over 40,000 locations in more than 100 different countries. Subway in the US alone has more than 25,000 locations. It was sorted more than 50 years ago by Dr Peter Buck who had an idea to make a submarine sandwich shop. Since then, it has grown from strength to strength and is rated as the largest fast food franchise globally beating McDonalds.

The Brief

We were approached by an franchisee who was based in the Midlands who owned 7 subway locations who wanted to boost the footfall to his locations. He wanted an offline marketing campaign to increase the current ongoing online marketing campaign. He was very open to suggestions and he really want to grow his locations to the maximum. He advised us that he wanted to try each offline strategy at a time, and he wanted to see an increase in sales. The idea was to try smaller campaigns to see if they worked and if they delivered the desired results, the owner was willing to put more money into the campaign.

Our Approach

Having understood the brief, we decided to try a mixture of different offline marketing strategies to boost his business across all his locations. The first avenue which was explored was leaflet marketing. The idea was to design a leaflet that captured the attention of both new and existing customers and encouraged them back to Subway for their food purchases. Next we looked at radio stations where we could spread the work on a cost effective basis. We also approached newspapers where we could spread positive news about each subway store. We also assisted them with the reputation of each store via online reputation management.

The Result

In terms of results, the best way to quantify this was in terms of turnover. Across the franchisees 7 locations, we increased the total turnover by over 20% in a period of 9 months through our offline marketing. A lot of our ideas were taken on board by the franchisee who used them in the future months too. We also helped the franchisee manage both negative and positive reviews with our Online Reputation Management strategies as well. The franchisee was really happy with our efforts and the increase in turnover.