If you have a new hospitality business, your main marketing tool is the internet; however, internet users and consumers are a lot more sophisticated than they used to be and it is no longer enough to simply place an advert. Your business needs to have a personality and a presence, so here are our top tips on how to market your hospitality business.
1. Give the right information at the right time
Potential customers who search for or chance across your website will glance at the home page for approximately three seconds before moving on. In this time, you need to make sure they get the information they need. This includes your location, opening hours and an impression of the business’s ambiance. Once these boxes have been ticked, a customer will keep looking.
2. Know your audience
This can be the hardest part. Should you aim to please the customers you have or the customers you want? Managing a restaurant Twitter page is about so much more than just posting specials. You need to be primarily posting as a friend, and an entertaining one at that. Once you have followers looking forward to your posts, you can slip in the odd promotion here and there.
3. Offer your followers more
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are your startup’s best friends. How else can you reach potentially thousands of new customers? Followers receive updates automatically; therefore, by offering them small benefits such as one free drink from the post mix machine, you will get more clicks. Don’t forget to keep to your word; for example, if you are offering free drinks, make sure you have a reliable supplier such as https://empireuk.com/post-mix-products/post-mix-carbonated-soft-drinks/.
4. Moving images attract the eye
Simply put, people want to see videos. Studies show that video will soon account for 69% of all internet activity, which means you need to be making and posting videos of your business to get your customers’ attention.
5. Be real and respond quickly
Even before you think about your online identity, you need to make sure you are monitoring your social pages consistently. Answering questions promptly, acknowledging good feedback and calming negative comments is the key to this.
As the old saying goes, ‘people buy people’. Harness this in your online identity and you will be onto a winner.