Ritter’s Frozen Custard is revving up its social media strategy, starting with a social media contest that one of its executives says will get both current and new customers interacting with the brand.

The “Show Us Your Ritter’s” Facebook campaign, which launched September 13, asks fans of the brand to send in photos of them eating a Ritter’s product. Photos are then posted on Facebook, and winners will be selected and awarded trophies ranging from iPads to gift cards.

Gary Occhiogrosso, chief development officer of Ritter’s parent company TRUFOODS LLC, says the campaign has already found massive success.

“As we check our analytics on the back end, what has happened is our active users are up by 36 percent,” Occhiogrosso says. “People are going to the page to look at photos. In addition to that, the views of these posts are up 48 percent over the month before.”

The key to Ritter’s contest success lies in the fact that visitors to Facebook vote on their favorite photos, which means contestants are sharing the page with friends and family to encourage them to vote.  

“So it becomes viral, in a sense, thereby exposing more people to Ritter’s Frozen Custard,” Occhiogrosso says.

The “Show Us Your Ritter’s” campaign highlights a new-look Facebook page for Ritter’s that features a store locator and even information on how to franchise with the brand.

Occhiogrosso says the rising popularity of the brand’s Facebook page led to its “user-friendly” update.

“We have many more visitors on our Facebook page than our main website,” he says. “I don’t know if that’s true for a lot of companies, but it’s certainly true for us, given the interactive approach we take on Facebook.”

Ritter’s will still keep its website, Occhiogrosso says, while also maintaining the interactivity and dialogue on Facebook. Reaching guests, he says, requires a multi-faceted—and ever-evolving—marketing approach.  

“How we continue to reach new guests is to reach them in a manner that they are used to being reached,” Occhiogrosso says. “We haven’t changed the product, we don’t have a new-fangled Ritter’s product … we just communicate that message in a new way.”

By Sam Oches