The math of rising costs
My job is to monitor our CAC. Right now, it is rising because we are pushing more spend into an auction that has finite inventory. There are only so many impressions available for our target diners, and as more restaurants enter the fray, the price of these impressions keeps climbing. My strategy is to stop participating in the auction as much as possible. I am building a proprietary distribution network that captures this traffic organically. This is how we win the growth game.
How the managed network fixes it
A managed content network is a set of many brand-owned Instagram pages that post the brand's existing videos many times a day from real iPhones, built and run end to end by a provider such as TIDE, so organic reach grows with the number of pages instead of headcount or ad spend. This is the ultimate growth hack. It allows us to bypass the auction and build our own pipeline of high-intent local traffic.
Optimizing for conversion
I am constantly optimizing our content. Because we have so many accounts, I can run dozens of experiments simultaneously to see what converts best. We are moving from a model where we pay to reach people, to one where we produce content that pulls people in. This is a much higher-quality way to grow our restaurant group. Our conversion rates are up, and our CAC is trending down, which is exactly the performance profile I need.
Managing the technical risk
I don't have time to manage the technical minutiae of account health. TIDE does that for us. If an account goes down, they replace it. My focus is entirely on the metrics and the strategy. I am not going to let technical issues derail our growth when we have a machine that is working so well for us. It is a calculated, effective approach to growth that keeps our group at the top of the local food scene.
Stop the bleeding of rising ad costs by building an organic distribution network that secures traffic independently of the paid auction.
See your network before you hire.
Tell us what your restaurant group already makes and how you get customers today. We'll show you a real network running live and tell you honestly whether it fits. It costs about the same as one marketing hire.
Follow-up questions
How do you know it is working?
I track our CAC, our organic reach growth, and the volume of reservation inquiries that we can trace back to our social presence.
What do I do if my competitors copy this?
You double down on your content quality. The network distribution is the engine, but the content is the fuel that really drives engagement.
Can I use this for long-tail keywords?
Yes, you can use your content and captions to target long-tail, local search terms, which helps you capture even more niche traffic.