Everyone is clamoring to get your restaurant business involved in social media, and you may be already there. You may have a facebook page and a twitter account or you may just think or know you need one. But before you jump into it, there are two things to keep in mind.
First, be more than just coupons. Coupons and discounts are the easiest thing to post and you will see some traction from them. But you don’t want to train your people to expect a coupon, or only show up for the coupons. Otherwise, you will effectively build your customer base into the lowest margin group and that is definitely what you don’t want.
Second, don’t assume that simply marketing at people is going to drive any real interest or that they aren’t going to see through it. People connect with people, not restaurant marketing messages. So if all you put out there is marketing, all you are going to get is people doing a drive by look for coupons and when they don’t instantly see one, they are going to move on. Would you sit around watching someone else’s commercials? Right- neither would you customers.
The answer is to be creative- involve your staff and post things that are interesting, personal, real and maybe even have nothing to do with any kind of marketing per se. Realize this takes time and it will take planning but you can build a large following of people who will be interested in your business and you story and not just looking for coupons only if you take the time to give them a reason to care.
Once your social media crowd sees that you aren’t just trying to cram more marketing down their throats they will engage and that is a great time to get them involved- and then you can tie in your restaurant. It will work but it is a progression and again, you need to put the effort in.
A faster, easier and less time consuming option? Build an email list- and do the same thing- make your emails interesting, personal and not just marketing, but you only have to send one out every other week or so, instead of social media which seems to demand nearly daily updates in order to stay relevant.
Quoted Article Source Link: Cohen
