To be in business you need to making a profit – there is no other reason to be ‘in business’. Everything you do must be focused on this one goal.
When you are ready to start moving on your social media marketing be sure to visit www.therichardsmith.com/agency
Sure, you may want to be helping people or entertaining people – at a profit. That’s a business.
If you are running a pub or a small restaurant or nightclub as a business then of course you will have your own concerns about all of this and the future of your business given Covid. You should also be focused on money – on making a profit – and Social Media Marketing is one method of you doing that, at low cost and with you in full control.
Making money – from the various social media platforms is not the easiest thing to do – but it can be done.
Even with the government “eating out to help out” scheme, there are still a number of obstacles that will need to be overcome if your business is to survive beyond 2020.
My own experience working with some businesses in the leisure sector has allowed me to identify a few areas that will be of benefit to you and your sales, provided you are a pub or restaurant and provided you want to increase profits.
Of course I don’t mean that what you are doing at the moment is wrong. I’m just saying that you should be taking advantage of the valuable tools that you can now use.
I have been saying all of this for a considerable time now, this is one of the greatest times to be alive particularly if you’re a business then you have more opportunities now, to market your businesses more effectively and cheaper than ever before.
In today’s short Pub Podcast I’m going to break it down into a couple of areas.
- Covid-19
- Follow up
- Engagement
- Demographics
- Tech
Covid-19
This is not going away.
it is only fair to say that this particular issue is a brand new one for most of us and certainly is going to be with us for the foreseeable future.
The question I have for you is how are you going to respond to it. Because quite simply Business is going to be forced to do things very differently.
The local pub that I was in last night had empty tables, it’s selling discounted food, it has virtually no marketing in place and therefore doesn’t have any control over visitors, there aren’t enough people that are pre-booking.
That can’t continue. You simply can’t continue to run a business ‘half full’.
You simply can’t allow your business to be in the die and allow customers to decided when they come to your pub or restaurant – and you have no control over that.
Follow up
Get this right and your business will always have customers.
That pub that I was at has no process in place for follow up indeed if it has it’s not using then.
It is doing no advertising on social media, has pretty poor presence, is not providing any offers and it’s certainly not making any attempts to follow me around the internet.
Now, you may not agree with some of these things. The reality is modern business really can’t work without them.
Engagement
Along with having a pretty poor social media presence this particular pub isn’t making any offers of deals available to me using their social platforms, noting of course the social platforms are in the main free to use-i have no understanding of why they wouldn’t be used to their maximum effect. Nearly every one of your customers and mine has access to a social media account. Why would you not be advertising there?
There is evidence that I’m being tracked through their app but it isn’t being used. What’s the point of tracking if you’re not going to use it?
The local business listing that should be driving plenty of enquiries has as quite a few bad reviews and negative comments that have not been responded to – this is not acceptable.
Demographics
Once you’ve found a full up well – keep dropping your bucket.
If you’re running a business that has a catchment area. Then your focus has to be on working with and dealing with those people – to find customers that are inside your catchment area.
One of the great things about using the social tools and some of the online methods is that you can target these people directly and do it in a nice way. Which means that you can make sure they come back to your business, which means recurring income.
Big spenders. You should know who these people are These are the ones that come back to your business time and time again. These are the people you should be engaging with, these are the people where you should know their first names, know what they like and get them coming back for more and make sure they bring people with them.
It is possible for you to target these returners with offers and deals without being all slimy and sleazeball’ ish about it. These people know and love you are quite happy to receive your marketing.
Provided of course it makes sense.
Tech
It’s all about the modern tools.
The technology that all pubs, clubs and restaurants need to use in order to make this work for you widely available.
There’s nothing secret about this, most of your customers are using these platforms and be happy to share their data and information. All they wouldn’t be on the platforms.
Just by having a Facebook or an Instagram account means that your customers have accepted the fact they will be targeted by businesses so they can have no excuse for not seeing your advert.
The beauty is of course from your point of view as a business owner as a pub or a restaurant owner then this is absolutely – really straightforward.
You can get your marketing message out using all of these mediums and it is stupidly cheap to the point where you can have a full-blown marketing process in place and spend a few pounds per day.
The issue I have, as a social media marketing expert is this most of you are not doing any of this.
You’re sitting back and still relying on “hope marketing”.
You’re not engaging with your existing customer base, you are not trying to make the data you have work for you.
The people have already engaged with you, that have spent money with you – want to come back want to spend more with you.
And if you can find other people that are similar to them using these virtually free tools – why wouldn’t you? It’d be mad not to right.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you had we had these tools available 30 years ago a modern business would be very different.
From your point of view running a local pub or running a local restaurant or running a local club anywhere that relies on people coming to you. It is vitally important that you get your head around some of this modern media marketing and make it work for you because quite simply it is the future.
These things are not going away, but more importantly, your customers want to hear from you they want to have your offers they want to have your deals they want to have the services you’re providing .
The key from your point of view as a business owner is making sure that they come back to you when you want.
For example, if Mondays are your quietest nights then simply making sure that you give a discount or a special offer or a deal to pre-book on a Monday night means that your Mondays could end up being the busiest night of the week.
It helps in so many ways if you have a pre-booked table or tables then you know how many staff you going to need it makes management of the business far easier, you can start to improve profits and you can start to gauge how well your business is going to do by making your customers respond when you want rather than relying on them.
I can absolutely assure you that if you are waiting for your customers to remember you, waiting for your customers to remember to come back then you will be waiting for a very long time. Like yourself I’ve given up up-do with the number of local firms that I used that don’t bother contacting me that don’t bother offering me a better deal or another deal or letting you know of another product we’re doing. They just don’t bother.
And….
Knowing how easy it is at the moment I find that very sad.
In order for you to have the best pub food, the best atmosphere of any of the pubs or restaurants that are around you you only need to be better than the rest of your local competition. You don’t need to be the best in the country.
The good news is most of the competition you have is pretty dire. You don’t have to be that great in order to make this work for you will stop
But you do need to use some of the modern tools to market your business effectively and you do need to follow up. The good news is if you go over to www.therichardsmith.com you can find out some more information about me and how I can help you put in place some of these tours. Honestly, if you take on board some of the things that I’m talking about then your business will soon start to fly irrespective of what happens to the economy and irrespective of what happens with the covid-19 situation.
When you are ready to start moving on your social media marketing be sure to visit www.therichardsmith.com/agency
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