Love Your Pub’s Founder and CEO, Dave Bevan MBII, shares his top tips to help improve your digital marketing and social media success
Having a strong digital and online presence is essential these days. Delivering regular and quality information through your website or via your social media feeds is what gets your business noticed.
“First and foremost, it’s important to have a plan. Look ahead six months and put together a calendar of events,” advises Dave. “This should include all the great things that will be going on at your pub: seasonality and creative ideas should be considered, and get the whole team involved. There’s no shortage of exciting opportunities coming up, from the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and Father’s Day in June to great sporting events, like the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in November.”
MAXIMISE YOUR DIGITAL PRESENCE
- Have quality content: from great photos, graphics and videos to well-written copy
- Include the right hashtags to ensure your posts get picked up by consumers’ newsfeeds
- Work on your website: always have up-to-date information, including opening times, your latest menus and events. Most new customers will visit your website prior to making a booking
Dave says: “Maximising your digital presence is all about having quality content that algorithms will pick up and put in front of both your existing and new customers. For instance, use hashtags that are trending, rather than using your own made-up phrases.
When it comes to your website, success is all about Search Engine Optimisation, which is partly about developing a key word strategy that will be picked up, predominantly, by Google searches.”
“Your own hashtags or long made-up words, are not going to get picked up by people’s networks.”
You can extend your potential reach even further by including a blog feed on your website, which will talk about what’s happening at the pub and must include key words that will generate positive results, in terms of website Search Engine Optimisation. It’s all about making sure that your pub comes up high when people are searching for, say, family friendly pubs or pubs that show the sport, and so on.
ESTABLISH GOOD HABITS
Be proactive and creative, from posting competitions to news about your success during Pie Week Look at what you can do differently in order to generate more interest. Try to find new ways to engage with your customers, including sponsored posts Look at events that will drive footfall during the quieter times of the week and share best practice with others (learn from good competition)
CREATING A BRAND
If you want to create a brand for your pub and offer, it’s worth investing in quality content. For instance, employ a graphic designer to create templates and logos for a professional look.
NEWSLETTERS
Having a newsletter, which visitors to your website can subscribe to, is another great way to drive customer interaction and also gather data. It’s easy to create newsletters using a marketing platform like MailChimp or Active Campaign. “Using something like MailChimp to create campaigns or for a newsletter adds real value to your pub. Data is a digital asset and increases the value of your business. It also drives potential revenue, especially if you galvanise it around a calendar of events. It can be a big job, but when done property it is a real income generator.”
GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO FOLLOW YOU
Every pub should be encouraging their customers to follow them on social media and to visit your website. Use inhouse POS to get people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Get your team to ask customers, when paying the bill or ordering drinks at the bar, if they follow you on social media.
“It’s about locking in customers to your pub once they leave, so they keep finding you and seeing all the stuff you’re doing.”
For a bit of fun, says Dave: “Run incentives to see which member of staff can get the greatest number of people to follow you.”
Feedback from 1,000 hospitality customers confirmed that the hospitality decision-making process is increasingly digitally driven, at virtually every customer touchpoint. The prevalence of smartphone usage and savviness also has a significant impact on whether a customer leaves a review. One third of customers are more likely to leave a review if they can do it on their smartphone, when it suits them. This is as high as 44% for those in the 25-34 year-old age bracket. Source: KAM Media Pubs and restaurants not online are ‘invisible’ Source Morning Advertiser Social media usage in the UK has stayed relatively consistent over the last 12 months. There are now 45 million social media users, or 66% of the UK population using the platforms. Source: Avocado Social When 88% of people are influenced by reviews and online comments, having an intentional digital strategy is important to your restaurant or bar. Source: Sprout Social
Three things to do now
- Enhance your social media, website content and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Strategy
- Develop an inhouse digital marketing strategy – starting with a calendar of events
- Be creative – step outside of your comfort zone, or if you can’t do this, find people out there who can help
