Improving venue awareness is the process of making more consumers aware of the existence, location, offering and culture of your venue.
Improving venue footfall is the process of increasing the frequency of customer attendance to your venue. This is done by improving awareness to new and existing customers and by offering an incentive to visit your venue.
Social media increases venue awareness and footfall by:
- Increasing awareness of the existence, location, offering and culture of your venue, and
- Providing an incentive and ‘call to action’ to visit your venue.
Improved footfall also occurs when consumers overcome any objections they may have about visiting your venue.
Fundamentally, this means answering any questions or resolving any issues your followers have which may prevent them from visiting (or re-visiting) your venue.
This could be “I can’t go to Venue X, as it doesn’t have a vegetarian dish”, and in anticipated reply, you would state in your Facebook or Twitter feed: “Check out the vegetarian dish our Head Chef has added to our seasonal menu”.
Pre-formulate any problems you think your followers may have when they evaluate the possibility of visiting your venue, and broadcast your solution to their conscious or unconscious problem on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter (or any other channel you may use).
Using social media to improve awareness = increasing visibility on the social web
Using social media to improve footfall = increasing visibility on the social web + adding a call to action/reason to visit
How do I improve awareness of the existence, location, offering and culture of my venue?
Existence & Location:
Improve the awareness of your venue’s existence and location by clearly communicating your venue name, logo and address in paid and organic social media marketing collateral.
Your venue location doesn’t have to be a long-winded ‘formal’ address – a ‘roundabout’ description of your venue location is more than adequate (Eg. Venue Name, Riverside, Brisbane.).
Offering & Culture:
Your offering is the food, drink and entertainment product you provide. Your culture is the way in which you provide your products to your customers and includes style of service, venue style etc.
Your offering and culture is what makes your venue different from others (and acts as an incentive for customers to visit) – so you must communicate your offering and culture.
Improve awareness of your venue’s offering by incorporating images, videos and text descriptions of the food, drink and entertainment you offer into your paid and organic social media marketing strategies.
Improve awareness of your venue’s culture by clearly articulating the unique way in which you offer your food, drink and entertainment. Incorporate the following unique elements into paid and organic social media marketing strategies:
- The way you serve your food and beverages (glass design, cutlery design, table design, food/drink images)
- The way your venue is presented
- The type of crowd you attract
- The entertainment you offer
- The style of staff you employ
- The things your customers say about your venue
How do I communicate an incentive and ‘call to action’ to visit my venue?
There are two types of incentives to visit a venue: direct and indirect. A direct incentive is a statement indicating a direct and obvious event or benefit such as “Visit before 10pm for free entry”.
An indirect incentive is based upon your offering and culture. For example, the fact you sell cocktails until 2am is an indirect incentive. Cocktail drinkers will be incentivised to visit your venue if they know you sell cocktails.
Direct and indirect incentives are delivered through a clear call to action (‘CTA’) or clearly defined reason to visit.
Examples of a call to action include:
- “Visit before 10pm for free entry”
- “Bring a friend and receive a free share plate”
- “Post a photo of you and your mates inside our venue on Instagram for a free XYZ item”
- “For free entry, check in on Facebook when you arrive”
- “We’re taste-testing our last bottle of 1958 Petrus on Friday at 6.30pm, get in quick before it goes!”
- “Join us and sip cocktails and French wine under the stars until 2am”
General tactics for increasing awareness & footfall:
- Conduct ‘high-engagement’ organic social media marketing strategies such as content curation, value-provision and the discussion of common passions in your community. This will increase awareness of your venue to your existing followers and will expose your venue to your followers’ personal networks. Other organic strategies include:
- Share written descriptions of the food, drink and entertainment you offer
- Share images and videos of your latest products or services
- Provide links to website pages demonstrating your products and services
- Post clear written statements declaring how your venue is different than all the others in your area
- Post images of social proof – customers enjoying themselves at your venue
- Ensure you make your ‘social conversion path’ (explained in Step 3) and unique offering and cultural elements as visible as possible in posts.
- Promote your Community Value Proposition (Step 4) (and links or URLs to your profile pages) in as many places as possible, including:
- On your website
- In email marketing
- In email signatures
- On business cards
- On product packaging
- On designated hardcopy marketing collateral
- In other traditional marketing campaigns
- Demonstrate your venue’s offering and culture in as many ways as possible (Images, videos, links, comments etc.)
Platform tactics for increasing awareness & footfall:
- Use Facebook Pay Per Click advertising to increase brand visibility and communicate your incentive/call to action. Always use a call to action. Provide links to either (a) your profile page (to grow your community and nurture your followers), (b) your events page or (c) directly to your functions page on your website (this is a traditional ‘direct response’ scenario).
- Use Facebook Pay Per Click to promote an event, deal, promotion or special product.
- Advertise to ‘Friends of Followers’ using Facebook’s advanced advertising targeting capabilities. This will allow you to reach new eyeballs (instead of spending money advertising to existing followers/customers).
- Add the following to the ‘About’ section on your profile page:
- A detailed bio containing your location, offering and insights into your culture
- A link to your functions and/or events page
- Visit other Facebook pages with a similar customer base/target market to your own. Provide value to these pages in the form of comments and constructive conversation without promoting your products.
- Comment and share the posts of industry stakeholders. For example, share a Champagne house’s post if you are a Champagne bar. Share a beer brand’s post if you’re a pub.
- Share links to items your customers will find useful. If you’re a beer bar, share a link to a page a beer drinker will appreciate.
- Ask your customers to tag themselves in your photos. Offer an incentive or prize to those who tag themselves and their friends the most. This will improve your organic visibility amongst the networks of your existing followers.
- Create intelligent status updates using one of the 12 inspiring status update categories in the Daily Social Media Management Manual. There are also 60 status update examples for you to choose from.
- Post images and videos of the core elements of your offering and culture. Use Instagram’s powerful filters to make your media stand out. Examples are:
- Beer bottle labels
- Cocktails
- Signature dishes
- Staff preparing drinks or meals
- Group shots of customers
- Crowd shots
- Bartender profiles
- Use humour and light-hearted banter in comments.
- Share inspirational quotes relevant to your target market. Use an app like PicLab to produce your own quote images. Search for quote images on Pinterest.
- Provide your call to action in some posts only. Don’t oversell. Aim to provide value in 90% of your messages, and push your call to action in the remaining 10%.
- Monitor for mentions of your venue. Follow users who do so. Try and engage these followers in conversation.
- Use #hashtags relevant to your offering or culture.
- Add the following information to the ‘About’ section on your profile:
- A detailed bio containing your location, offering and insights into your culture (note: this will have to be short, clever and punchy)
- A link to your functions or events page
- Post as frequently as you can on Twitter. Provide as much value as you can.
- Share links to items your customers will find useful. If you’re a beer bar, share a link to a page a beer drinker will appreciate.
- Monitor the Twittersphere for mentions of your venue. Follow users who do so. Try and engage these followers in conversation.
- Retweet the Tweets of industry stakeholders. For example, ReTweet (‘RT’) a Champagne house’s Tweet if you are a Champagne bar. ReTweet a beer brand’s Tweet if you’re a pub.
- Use #hashtags relevant to your offering or culture.
Learn more:
Increased venue awareness and footfall is obtained by executing paid social media advertising campaigns (Step 9 of this Action Plan), and conducting organic community engagement strategies (Step 8 of this Action Plan).e
See the Daily Social Media Management Manual for organic social media marketing tactics for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Pinterest.