Improve Your Marketing

The visibility and positioning of a brand has become an increasingly necessary component of its success. Good marketing is considered equally important to a venue’s actual product or service. Owners will part with serious cash these days for a suite of professional services to make their business look as polished as possible. If you’re one of those businesses shovelling money into the furnace to keep your flame alight, one critical thing you’ll need to stay on top of is who your audience is. Targeting the right demographic, reaching them on the appropriate platforms, and shaping your messaging accordingly is how you’ll get a good ROI from your marketing spend. In this article we’ll look at how you can do exactly that.

 Before you make sure your marketing is reaching the right people, there’s an important caveat to address. This type of marketing is about getting the people to your door. It’s not going to make your business any more cost effective, more optimised, more impressive in real life or more skilled in its delivery during service. More people through the door won’t improve your position much if you’re still haemorrhaging money because your operation isn’t efficient or you’re providing an underwhelming product/service which gets a lacklustre (or even a negative) response. Make sure you have a ground-up not a top-down approach to this, otherwise you’re focused on the wrong things. Pouring money into a sexy Instagram feed won’t necessarily fill your empty seats.

Identifying your demographic

LET’S LOOK AT WHERE ALL THIS AMAZING DATA IS

• CRM Software
  If you use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, it can help you to gather and analyse data on customer demographics, preferences, and behaviours. Leveraging this data can shape your marketing messaging and will significantly increase customer acquisition.

• Social Media Insights
  Social media platforms offer a goldmine of information about your audience. Here you can analyse the demographics of your followers, engagement metrics, and which of your posted content was most popular. Tools like Facebook Insights and Instagram Analytics provide valuable insights into your audience's age, location, and interests, helping you tailor your offer and marketing messages accordingly.

• Online Surveys and Feedback
  Engage with your existing customers through online surveys and feedback forms. Platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms allow you to gather specific information about dining preferences, impressions of your brand and expectations. This firsthand data can be instrumental in refining your offering and marketing strategies.

• Location-Based Technologies
  Leveraging geotargeting technologies can help you understand more about your local market. Geo-fencing and beacon technologies provide insights into foot traffic around your venue, or let you ringfence marketing efforts to a specific area to focus their impact.

• Google Analytics
  Your website is a crucial tool for understanding your online audience. Utilise Google Analytics to track website traffic, user behaviour, popular pages, dwell time and more. This data can help optimise your online presence and identify the digital channels that are driving the most traffic to your site. Embedding a pixel into your website pages can also allow you to re-market to those people that have visited the site.

• Food Delivery Platforms
  If your restaurant offers food delivery services, platforms like Uber Eats and DoorDash can share data about your customers with you. Insights into customer demographics, popular dishes, and ordering patterns can help refine your menu and marketing strategies for your audience.

Once you have all this data, make sure you’re using it to shape your marketing. Equally important, is that you’re using the right platforms to reach your audience. Elderly people probably aren’t going to be on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok or Threads. Equally a younger audience won’t be responsive to long-form copy in EDM’s or a letterbox drop as part of LAM.  The ecosystem of these social platforms is constantly evolving, and underscores the need for well-crafted and adaptable messaging that’s specific to whichever platform you use. If you’ve engaged social media or marketing professionals to drive this for you (be it an agency or in-house), make sure they’re showing you how they’ve defined your target audience, where they’re getting this data, and how they’re using it to shape their strategy and messaging.

Which Social Platforms To Use

Social media is made up of various platforms, each of which attract different types of users looking for different experiences. Finding your audience and keeping your content in front of them is much easier when you understand the use case for each platform. Here’s a list of platforms to help inform the type of content you may want to consider for each:

• Facebook
  The first iteration of what is now the META juggernaut, Facebook is often discounted as being for older people or those less on trend because it’s been around for so long (2006). But that’s exactly why you shouldn’t discount it. With 3 billion active users, it’s likely that part of your audience are still actively using it. It’s also where a lot of the META data will be farmed, that you’ll use to identify your demographic.

• Instagram
  Still the go-to for the hospitality industry, Instagram has over 500 million active daily uses. A visual content-centric platform, it’s a great place to engage and share user-generated content (UGC) from followers, engage and collaborate with influencers, and share daily promotions. More than 2.5 billion people use Instagram and engage with Instagram Stories (24-hour snippets of content), Instagram Reels (short-form video) and in-feed posts.

• Threads
  An extension of Instagram, Threads is new to the realm. With a similar concept and layout to X (Twitter), users share text-based content with both images and videos in feeds.

• X (Twitter)
  X (Twitter) made recent news because of the takeover and subsequent changes by its new owner, Elon Musk. The platform is an interactive way to share real-time news updates, promotions and thoughts. Speaking to customers as the voice of the brand, you can personify the brand ToneOf Voice (TOV) while engaging customers in conversations and responding to topical issues or feedback .

• TikTok
  Similar to Instagram Reels, TikTok uses short-form video and content that showcases the vibe of your venue or location. With more than 1 billion users, most of its traction is with a younger audience. The platform has cleverly tapped into our short attention span and desire to gorge on bite-sized video content. Uploaded videos are usually about 10 seconds long, and can be an enticing flash or glimpse of a brand.

• LinkedIn
  Traditionally a platform for networking and career prospecting, LinkedIn is enjoying a resurgence as a go-to platform for personal connections or showcasing your brand. For the hospitality industry, it provides a great opportunity for partnering with the local community and driving local visitors to your location. The platform has evolved into a conversational style of content more geared towards customers, and with less emphasis on real-time news or business updates.

• Influencer Marketing
  Although influencers have given themselves a reputation for not deserving their massively-high price tag, influencer marketing is still proving to be an effective and contemporary way to piggyback high-profile individuals. Leveraging the influencer's ‘credibility’ and reach, this approach can foster trust in your brand with people that follow that influencer as the arbiter of cool.

Which Traditional Platforms To Use

• EDM’s
  An efficient and cost-effective tool, Electronic Direct Mail (EDM) can be a great way to build and maintain relationships with customers, driving engagement and fostering brand loyalty. With the ability to track responses and measure campaign effectiveness, EDM’s are a strategic method for businesses to communicate, promote products and upcoming events, and stay connected with their audience in a personalised and authentic way.

• SMS
  With its instantaneous visibility and high open rates, Short Messaging Service (SMS) marketing is a powerful tool for businesses seeking direct engagement with their target audience. Depending on how it’s used it can become very spammy, so utilising it sparingly will help avoid you being blocked by recipients. Booking confirmations and push notifications for personalised messages or alerts are probably its best use case.

• PR
  Public Relations (PR) marketing utilises various channels, like press releases, events, and social media to shape perceptions and convey key messages about your brand. By using a more personal touch to managing perceptions and maintaining a favourable reputation, PR can be effective for increasing brand credibility and trust with your audience.

• Editorial
  Editorial content involves crafting compelling, story-driven content to engage and connect with readers. Through blogs and articles in digital or print media, venues can share behind-the-scenes stories, chef spotlights, and culinary inspirations. This creates a narrative that resonates with the audience by personalising the brand. Editorial content is very useful to build a community, fostering loyalty and attracting customers who appreciate the brand's unique story and values. Like influencer marketing, it can also add further credibility to the content depending on who its author is.

• LAM
  Local Area Marketing (LAM) focuses on targeted strategies within a specific geographic vicinity to attract nearby customers. Utilising tactics like community events, partnerships with local businesses, locally distributed printed media and targeted advertising, restaurants can establish a presence within their immediate neighbourhood. This approach can foster a sense of community, build customer loyalty, and maximise visibility among locals - ultimately driving foot traffic and enhancing the restaurant's reputation within its immediate surroundings.

• Collaborations
  Collaborative marketing can be a great strategy to strengthen your brand by fusing it with other (already established and well-regarded) brands. It can allow you to tap into the customer base of the collaborators through joint events, cross-promotions, or shared marketing efforts. By leveraging the strengths and sometimes even the databases of both businesses, venues can maximise their marketing impact and create campaigns that resonate with a broader audience.

The important takeaway here, is that you have multiple options in terms of where and how you decide to promote your brand. Crafting the right tone of voice for your brand and shaping content specific to each of the platforms you use, can make, or break your effectiveness. Using multiple channels to drive brand awareness is always recommended practise, and understanding the demographic for each is key. Marketing is a very effective but also very expensive exercise. So, before you throw all your budget at professional shoots and a sexy META account, first consider who you need to be aiming at and if that’s your best approach.

See you in the next one!

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