Jul/110
Local-Social strategies can help pub groups to raise profits
With ever increasing pressure on pubs to increase footfall, social media is providing a cost effective way for groups to reach out into their local communities, raise their profile and build a fervent band of followers.
Why social media?
In some ways, social media is over-hyped and this can be distracting for companies trying to figure out whether and how to use it. It’s best not to view it as a buzzword or a passing phase. It is purely a description of the way media has evolved, from the past where people merely consumed content, to the current time when people consume, respond, interact, create and, crucially, share content. Unshackled by the internet and more recently, the growth of online social networks, this is the way consumers behave now. Companies that wish to remain in business for the long term will need to think hard about this.
Social media marketing for pub groups is all about raising the profile of their pubs in the places where many local customers and prospective customers spend a lot of their time, namely the online social networks. The idea is for each individual pub to be well known and highly regarded within the local community. Traditionally, a pub’s local reputation was built largely through word of mouth, one local to another. Now, social networks provide a way for that to happen much faster because a single recommendation has the potential to reach many people at once. Social media marketing is word of mouth on steroids.
Accept that consumers are in control
The reason why social media is so important is that people choose to spend their time on it. As such, we have a chance to engage them without being annoying. What is annoying about traditional marketing? In simple terms, traditional marketing is mostly concerned with interrupting what a person is doing – watching TV, reading a newspaper, surfing the web, reading emails – to force our agenda on them. “Stop what you are doing and look at my message!”
Like most people, I use Sky+ to edit out TV adverts and I rely on my junk folder to edit out the marketing emails. Yes, even those that I signed up to receive! Just because we sign up to receive a discount, does that mean that we are genuinely interested in hearing from the company? According to the Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey 2011, 90% of consumers trust recommendations from personal acquaintances compared to only 54% for emails that had been signed up for. The bottom line is that traditional interruption-style marketing is easy to ignore. On the other hand, we do want to hear from those that have interesting things to say. In such cases, we will choose to hear from them by ‘Liking’ via Facebook or ‘Following’ via Twitter.
Pubs and restaurants have a natural advantage
Like many people, I enjoy food, drink, cooking, eating out, music and sport. So, as a pub group, you have more in common with your customers and prospects than most businesses out there. As a pub group, you naturally have the assets to be interesting to your customers and prospects. Those assets are your products (food, drink, sport, music, events etc), your venues and your staff who know so much about food, cooking, wine, beers and other related topics that we, as consumers, care about.
It doesn’t pay to rent attention
The trick is to find your inner publisher and start to earn the attention of your audience. Create content (words, images, photos or videos) that combine the interests of your locals with the unique qualities of your pubs.
The best thing about the local approach is that, whilst making local people more interested in your pubs, you are building an asset: an audience that will add to the value of each venue. Every FD will agree that this approach of earning attention and building your own audience is far more cost-effective than renting attention from the local newspaper or radio station, which is both expensive and fleeting.
What does Social have to do with Local?
Why combine social media with a local approach? Why not have a corporate social media presence and attempt to engage all of your pubs’ customers centrally?
First and foremost, people are far more interested in their local pub than they are in the company that owns it. They are pleased to be remembered by the staff at their local and proud to be on first name terms with the landlord or lady. This means that they are many times more likely to Follow or Like their local than the group brand, not to mention that they are far more likely to engage, interact and recommend their local online, all the while growing the pub’s local visibility. The exception to this is where there is a valuable discount to be had. Consumers will connect to any business if the right incentive is offered. So, if your business is all about 2-for-1s, you can build a shallow kind of following centrally.
Assuming that you want an audience that is interested in you beyond discounts, the point is this: You can grow a far bigger audience, much faster and with more genuine consumer interest if you treat each local area as separate and leverage your local assets (venue, staff and existing customers).
Facebook is King for pub groups
As a pub group, your initial objective for each of your pubs is for every local person to know a) that you exist b) where you are located c) that you are highly regarded by their friends and d) the reasons why they must visit you. This awareness is necessary in order to grow footfall and I have learnt, as an owner/operator, that many local people will not be aware of your pub even though you have been established in their local area for years. This awareness can be communicated using a good website so the big question is, who will bring that website to the attention of every local person?
The answer is their friends, who are already your customers. Considering that an average Facebook user has 130 friends, your best 100 customers have a combined total of around 13,000 friends, many of them local. Now consider that each of those 13,000 have 130 friends on average. The conclusion to be derived from the maths is that you should make it easy for your customers to bring your pubs to the attention of their Facebook friends.
When it comes to penetrating the local community via your existing customers, Facebook is by far the most effective social media channel. With Twitter, you follow people you find interesting, most of whom you have never met and could live anywhere in the world. With Facebook, you connect to your friends and acquaintances.
Happily, Facebook, with almost 30 million active users in the UK alone, happens to be the largest and most effective social media channel. According to a 2011 study of 300 million consumers per month carried out by ShareThis, over 30% of website visits are the result of someone clicking on a link that has been shared with them. And of these visits, Facebook accounts for a massive 38%. Compare that to 17% for links shared via email and 11% for links shared via Twitter. Further, a shared link on Facebook is clicked over 4 times on average. In practice, this means that when one local interacts with your pub’s Social Website, the average result is four additional visitors to your site from Facebook. Best of all, those visitors have been sent to you by a friend!
May/110
Increase sales by linking your venue to Facebook
Plenty of local businesses have a Facebook page nowadays. However, the way of the future is to connect your own website to Facebook. Using the Like button, social plug-ins and custom developments, Facebook lets you connect your website in such a way that you can enjoy the same core benefits:
- Build a fan base
- Let your fans share content so that you are discovered by their friends
- Publish to the Newsfeed of your fans
- Discover insights about your fans
Why would you run a Facebook page and a separate website when you can do everything from your own site, without alienating people that don’t use Facebook? And if you use other social networks, say Twitter and LinkedIn, are you going to manage a separate web presence for each? How many different websites do you think you can properly manage for your local venue, whilst maintaining a consistent tone of voice across all channels?
And don’t you want to have control to easily configure the look and feel of your web presence without paying technical people to get involved?
What happens when a new social network pops up and becomes more important to your customers than Facebook? Surely, it is best to control your own destiny by having your own website, with your own domain name (rather than facebook.com/localpub). That way, you can adapt your web presence as things change without having to start over.
But, can external websites with links to Facebook be successful? According to Facebook’s figures, they can be very successful indeed:
- The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.
- Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook after implementing the Like button in April 2010 and has maintained those levels since.
- Outdoor sporting goods retailer Giantnerd.com saw a 100% increase revenue from Facebook within two weeks of adding the Like button.
- Children’s clothing retailer Tea Collection added the Like button to sale merchandise and saw daily revenues increase 10 times.
Now, these figures all concern online businesses but your venue is a physical business, so how does this relate to you? The fact is that you want every single person within your catchment area to be aware of your venue and why they should visit. Even if you have a great location, not everyone will walk past you and not everyone will understand why they should visit you. But if you can get everyone to visit your website, because they discover it via a Facebook friend who is already a fan of your venue, you then have a chance to win their custom.
That is why you must link your website to Facebook and claim your share of visitors from the social network.
If your business is a pub, bar or restaurant and you want to claim your share of visitors from Facebook, speak to your web developer. If you don’t have a website that you are happy with, Sendster can get you up and running with your own Facebook-connected website within just a couple of days. Find out more at www.sendster.co.uk
Mar/110
Getting past the honeymoon period
When you first open the doors to your shiny new pub or restaurant, there’s a good chance that you will enjoy strong footfall for at least a few weeks. For some establishments, that high level of trade will continue for some time to come. However, many others experience a drop-off after the honeymoon period and are left wondering what they did wrong.
It may help to think about this in terms of the type of customers you are attracting. There are certain types of people that will always be keen to try a new venue. These people are motivated by finding new experiences and enjoy being seen by their friends as ‘in the know’. They are less concerned about the risk of having a bad experience because they eat or drink out often, and they are keen to share their experiences with their wide circle of friends. They are more likely to be young people with some disposable income. Let’s call this group ‘early adopters’.
Early adopters are a minority, albeit an influential minority. Most people fall into a category that we can refer to as ‘mainstream’. This is the vast majority of the people in most catchment areas and therefore this is where the money is. They will typically eat or drink out less often and will want to go somehere that is tried and tested. They will be looking for a predictable experience, perhaps a branded venue that they know will meet their requirements, or a venue that has been recommended by a friend. Your shiny new venue is seen as a risk by a mainstream customer. Typically, these people will have busy jobs, a mortgage and maybe kids.
So if you experience a drop in trade following the honeymoon period, you can start by asking yourself two questions. Am I doing enough to make sure that the early adopters tell all their friends about us? Is my venue the type of place that appeals to mainstream customers?
Feb/110
Claim your share of referrals from Facebook
In 2010, Facebook reached 500 million users worldwide and overtook Google as the most visited website. That number is now closer to 600 million. That’s 600 million people – and over 28 million in the UK – chatting about what they’re doing, where they’re going and the places they love.
Every day, Facebook users are generating over 65 million ‘Likes’. That is, they are clicking over 65 million Like buttons on the web and immediately bringing the Liked web page to the attention of their Facebook friends. Liking is a Facebook user’s way of saying “I think this is cool” or “check this out”. In other words, it’s a referral and it’s coming from someone you know and trust – a friend.
With so many ‘Likes’ occurring every day, getting your customers to refer your business in Facebook is the best way to bring new visitors to your website. This is particularly true if your business is the type that people like to talk about, such as a restaurant or pub.
And here’s the thing – your business doesn’t even need to have a Facebook Page. All you need is a website. The simplest way for a Facebook user to recommend your shop or venue is to press the ‘Like’ button on your own website, thereby becoming a ‘fan’. People are doing it to register for news and updates, discounts and promotion and to show support for a business.
The bonus of adding the Like button to your website is that you don’t need to create, manage and monitor a separate Facebook page for your business. Yet, you get the key benefits of a Facebook page, including:
- Your business appears in the ‘Likes and Interests’ of your fans and in Facebook Search
- You get to publish updates to your fans on Facebook and get noticed by their friends too
- You get to see ‘Insights’ about your fans, such as age and gender, and the effectiveness of your updates
- Your business builds an online reputation
- More people visit your business
With 10% of all UK website visits now coming directly from Facebook, making your website visible on Facebook is just as important as appearing in Google search results.
What do you need to do to claim your share of referrals from Facebook? Two things. First, add a Like button to your website. Second, get your customers to click the Like button on your website so that you get noticed by their friends.
If you already have a Facebook page but are struggling to maintain it regularly or not seeing much in the way of benefits, my advice would be to close the page and concentrate on your website by adding a Like button there.
Adding a Like button to your website is pretty straightforward and, with a little research, can be accomplished by anyone with reasonable website development skills and with access to update your website. However, without proper research, it may not be clear how to make your referrals more visible in Facebook, how to post to your new fans in Facebook and how to access your Insights.
For those who want to go the DIY route, I would recommend watching the instructional videos provided by Facebook and then reading the documentation before making any changes to your site. The video series is called ‘Building social for business’ and has 6 parts so far. You can view the first part here.
For those of you who want this done at a low cost, quickly and effectively by experts, reach out to us at Sendster. We specialise in mobile and Facebook marketing for local businesses and can get this done for you in a couple of days for less than £100. You can find out more here and view our testimonials here.
Dec/100
Attention Vs Permission
As a local business owner, which do you seek, attention or permission?
Attention is fleeting. You can rent it from a local newspaper or radio station. Or you can draw attention to yourself by giving leaflets out in the street or posting them through people’s letterboxes. To get people’s attention, you will usually need to interrupt them. However, once you have their attention, there is a small chance that they will remember you. A tiny chance that they will spend money with you.
You can’t rent permission. Buying a list of email addresses or phone numbers is not the same as having permission to call those people because they will not be expecting to hear from you, much less looking forward to hearing from you. Permission, like trust, is earned over a period of time. It might start with permission to send email or SMS or it might start with permission to send updates to a Facebook account. Your job is to cultivate that permission to the point where your messages or updates are anticipated and welcomed.
The irony is that the cheaper route is also the most profitable.
As usual, those looking for shortcuts will go for the least profitable option.
Nov/100
Content is King
When a local business such as a restaurant builds a website, they are mostly concerned about two things: Design and search engine optimisation (SEO). Or in other words, looking good and being found. Now, the goalposts are moving and these two items should not always be at the top of your list.
How often do you think someone has chosen to eat at your restaurant because your website looks good, flashy or whizzy? Of course, your site should be well structured and easy to use, otherwise people will not spend much time there and probably will not return. Good design is a necessary item. Content is what marks you out from your competitors.
On the other hand, do you think people have returned to your restaurant because they loved your food and enjoyed your service? And do you think those people have recommended you to their friends? Who do you think people trust more, their friends or a search engine?
Every day, more people are discovering local businesses in their Facebook news feed because their friends have ‘Liked’ the business’ website or shared some other piece of information about the business. According to Experian, “1 in every 10 visits to a typical website from a UK Internet user comes from Facebook, making it the second single biggest source of traffic after Google” (September 2010). Of course, SEO is still very important but now it is also important to make your website discoverable via Facebook and other networks.
How can you achieve this? By creating good, engaging content and placing it on your website. I’m not talking about photos of your restaurant and words to describe your service and menus – although these items do have their place. I’m talking about content that your customers will find interesting enough to share with their friends online.
For example, a panel showing which of the viewer’s friends have ‘liked’ your website. An instructional video of your chef cooking your most popular dish or your bartender mixing a mean cocktail. An Events section with videos of your previous events, the ability to invite friends and a panel with photos of those who will be attending. A menu with enticing pictures and the ability to view the recipe, nutritional information or origin of key ingredients. A special offers section which lets the user dowload the current voucher in return for publishing the offer to her friends. Last but not least, the ability for all of these pieces of content to be published or shared with friends at the touch of a button. The more people who share your content, the more visible your business will become in the social networks. Incidentally, this will also increase your website’s visibility in the search engine rankings.
When you consider the importance of having content that people want to share, it becomes clear that good website design is not about looking cool, showy or different. It is about making it easy for you to showcase your content and for visitors to view and publish or share it with the minimum number of clicks. Also, it is about letting you update content efficiently and frequently, without paying a web designer each time.
Content is King when it comes to attracting new customers. You thought that you were just a restaurateur but increasingly, to be successful, you must become a publisher.
Oct/102
Why a Facebook Page is not enough
Most people know that Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide and almost 30 million in the UK. In fact most people know a lot of things about Facebook and with the release of the new Facebook movie into cinemas, it’s a subject that’s becoming difficult to avoid.
However, what most local business owners are still unsure about is how best to use Facebook to grow their business. The idea of hijacking your customers’ social network to talk business is somewhat distasteful, yet there are many stories of companies successfully using Facebook and acquiring thousands of fans.
The first thing to note is that some of the biggest online businesses are today receiving many more visitors from social networks than they are from search engines. I’m talking about companies such as USA Today, iTunes and CNN. These companies place their websites at the heart of their business and optimise them for social network visitors. If you do so too, you will discover a whole new way for local people to find out about your business.
How does one optimise their website for social network visitors? Contrary to popular opinion, placing a Facebook button on your site is not enough. The majority of visitors arriving at websites from social networks are doing so by clicking on a link they see in their ‘feed’. In Facebook terms, when one of your friends updates their profile, posts something or shares something, a new item will appear on your ‘News Feed’, which is your Facebook hompage. You can comment on that item, you can ‘Like’ it or, if the item is a web page outside of Facebook, you can click through to view that web page – and this is the source of most social network visitors.
Now, if a Facebook user clicks through to your pub’s website from their News Feed, it is fair to assume that they were not looking for a pub when they found you. If they found you on Google, they were probably actually searching for a pub. On the other hand, that Facebook item has been posted by a friend, which is as good as a referral. That is much more powerful and influential than a recommendation from Google.
So the question is: How can you get your customers to share updates about your pub with their Facebook friends? There are two parts to this answer.
Firstly, you must provide your customers with some content to share. In other words, you must make an image, a video, a piece of text or something else available on a webpage. Alternatively, it could be the web page itself. Further, your customers need to have a reason to share that piece of content with their friends. They might do this because they found it amusing or entertaining, or simply because you have provided an incentive for them to do it.
Secondly, you must provide your customers with a simple way to share it. So far, many local businesses have created a Facebook Page to help with this. The Facebook Page is dedicated to your business and customers can press the ‘Like’ button to become a fan of that page and receive updates. However, a quick survey of Facebook Pages in your area will confirm that most have few fans and little activity. Why? Mainly because the Facebook Page is quite bland and generic and does not offer you a good way to provide engaging content to your customers, unless you have lots of money to invest in customising your Facebook Page or creating diverse content.
Facebook recognised this problem some months ago and provided people with a way to ‘attach’ their own websites to Facebook instead of creating a separate Facebook Page. This means that a business can manage just one site (rather than both a website and a Facebook Page) and customers can share pieces of content from the website (like menu items or upcoming events) with their friends on Facebook.
Those companies that are generating huge numbers of visitors to their websites from Facebook know this and have optimised their websites to allow users to sign-in using their Facebook profile, ‘Like’ content and ‘Share’ content amongst other social features.
As a small, local business, with a small marketing budget, you can do this too – even if you don’t yet have a website. If you want to know how, keep your eye on this blog or contact me for details.
Aug/100
A customer database turns a good business into a great one
It is often said that many small businesses fail because they run out of cash. Put simply, when your bills exceed your income, any cash you have put aside will be eaten away until there is none left. If you have no cash to pay your employees and suppliers, it’s time to close the doors for good.
There can be a fine line between a business that is generating cash and one that is burning cash rapidly. For a restaurant, one or two percent gross margin on each dish and each drink can easily be enough to make the difference. As can a few more customers each day or one more pound spent, on average, by each customer.
Similarly, the differences between a business that is breaking even and one that is making a healthy profit can be subtle. Once a restaurant is making enough money to pay the overheads, every additional pound taken, minus the cost of ingredients and tax, goes straight into your pocket. Five more customers a day can easily put another £20,000 each year in your pocket.
£20,000 with just five more customers each day! That is probably less than one percent of the people who have visited your restaurant in the last month alone. And there is a simple way to find those extra customers without spending more cash on advertising – build a customer database. Capture the contact details of every customer and reach out to them regularly with a compelling reason to come back in.
Considering the financial benefits, why do so few business owners bother to build a database? Perhaps because it is a long term strategy, which will not start to pay off until a good database has been built. If you are one of those owners, remember that there is only so much you can do to reduce costs in your business. And keep in mind that customer communication is something that your competitors may be doing.
You are paying rent so that you can invite people into your shop or restaurant. Letting them leave without establishing a way to keep in touch is one way to eventually prevent you from being able to afford that rent.
Aug/101
Restaurants lead the way online
Restaurants, above most other types of local business, have the greatest opportunity to acquire new customers through online marketing. It is not only that they are catered for by a number of online companies offering to bring them new diners. It is also that people like to research online before deciding where to eat. Your job, of course, is to make sure that the people searching in your area decide to book your restaurant.
Having recently completed a review of the various services available to bring new diners to restaurants, I’m unable to think of a good reason why a restaurant should be without one of these.
Take Livebookings as an example. They work with over 500 websites, such as Yell.com and TimeOut, where diners go to search for restaurants. That is a total of 500 million potential diners worldwide. As the UK is a stronghold for Livebookings, a significant number of those 500 million will be potential customers of yours. If you use Livebookings, any of those people can book a table at your restaurant with a couple of clicks of their mouse. And you get an online booking facility for your own website too. The price for access to these new diners? A small fee for each new customer they bring to you.
Once you have those new diners in your restaurant, it is down to you to capture their contact details, particularly email and mobile phone number, so that you can entice them back in. Good food and service is not, by itself, enough. Particularly as there are almost always other good restaurants nearby. People are busy and have lots of choice. Collecting their details enables you to remind them, by email or SMS, about your restaurant and perhaps lure them back this week with a tempting offer.
Jul/100
Traditional marketing v new marketing
There is still a great deal of confusion, particularly amongst business owners who consume little digital media or don’t participate in social networks, about the difference between traditional marketing and new media or social media marketing. Hopefully, the following examples will help to ignite debate around the distinction.
A traditional marketer will focus on broadcasting a message to the local area using newspapers, posters or flyers. The message will reach people who may or may not know your business and will talk about why they should become customers. He is fighting to capture the attention of the masses, regardless of whether they are likely to be interested in your business. A new media marketer will concentrate on creating a piece of online content (a photo, video, blog, podcast or similar), which is aligned with your business and which your target customers will find entertaining or interesting. She will distribute it through the online networks of existing customers and draw attention to it in several places online, where people can find it. She is building a bridge (as Brian Solis would call it) between consumers and your business’ online presence.
A traditional marketer will want to improve your product or service and will start by asking your customers to complete a questionnaire. Maybe even an online questionnaire. He is producing a structured piece of feedback that will help you to make improvements. A new marketer will make sure that communication channels are constantly open with your customers such that they feel comfortable posting a comments on your Facebook wall or via Twitter to let you know about a bad (or sometimes good) experience. This marketer will take time to monitor the digital channels for conversations about your business. She is providing a simple and convenient way for customers to talk to you when they have something to say.
A traditional marketer will seek to acquire new customers. He will place adverts in the local press, invest time and money in making your website appear at the top of Google ranking lists when people search for certain keywords and perhaps pay Google to make you appear at the top as a sponsored link. He is forcing your business into the offices and homes of local people. On the other hand, a new marketer will focus on engaging existing customers and getting them to talk to their friends about your business online. She will give them a reason to talk to their friends about you. This could be an engaging piece of online content that they will want to share with their friends. She is making it easy for local people, at least those who are interested, to find you.
Agree? Disagree? Like it or not, social media is important to your business. As a local business owner, the most important thing is that you do your homework and form an opinion. At the very least, join Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare and see for yourself what all the talk is about.
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