Restaurant & Bar Marketing: The no bulls#it guide to improving guest counts by Shellenberger Erik

Author:Shellenberger, Erik [Shellenberger, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Erik Shellenberger
Published: 2018-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Make Social Media Work for You

It never fails. Every time I sit down with a prospective client and discuss marketing, they use the word “social media” interchangeably with the word “marketing.” This is so ingrained in people’s minds that even AFTER I sign on to take care of “reputation management and search engines,” I’ll get the call from their contact guy saying, “I hear you’re our new social media guy. Great to meet you.” I then have to explain I do not get into social media work at all. This is inevitably met with a long silence on their end. I’d love to ignore the subject of social media in this book, but most people think this way. So, instead of ignoring it, let’s dive in.

I work in the ocean; I do not work in the fishbowl.

The game of social media is very hard to win and very easy to lose. It is opinion-based, not analytically based. It is not measurable. Its failure or success is rarely understood and almost always unproven. My opinions on social media as a marketer, by the way, are very unpopular. I am in the minority of people who think this way; yet, this is common sense to me.

When I say it’s not measurable, I mean not successfully measurable. Sure, you could put a call to action on Facebook with something like, “Mention this post to your server to receive 20% off your tab.” This would be measurable IF there were a button programmed in your POS system and then only IF the servers enter it correctly. This is the step that seems to fail 100% of the times I’ve tried this approach. It only works if all cylinders are firing correctly, which rarely happens in reality.

This book was written in 2018, and at this point in time, the only relevant social media platforms are Facebook and Instagram. So when I refer to “social media,” I’m referring to these two platforms. Here is a real quick breakdown of which demographic uses which platform. Kids use Snapchat; if you have a bar, don’t waste your time on this app. If you have a senior citizen demographic only, throw this book away now. The big picture is that Instagram skews younger, and Facebook skews older. Of the people I’ve polled, only about 0.7% use Twitter to find a restaurant. So, for our purposes, Twitter is dead to me as well.

I constantly hear about the “new Social Media hack that brought me 200% more profits in one week!” and other related bullshit. Just like Google, there is no shortcut in social media—with one exception. Paying for traffic. If you pay to sponsor posts or pay for other methods of expanding your reach, you can move people from the ocean into your fishbowl. Since we’re on the subject, I don’t recommend Google AdWords. It’s got its purpose, but restaurants and bars are not included.

Here is my theory; again, it’s pretty unpopular. Save your money. Don’t pay a “social media guy” to post random crap all week long.

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