Social Takes a Back Seat to Email and Mobile Marketing

Email and Mobile Marketing for bars and restaurants

Have you noticed that your social media engagement may have a slowed down a bit lately? It may not be you. Social media channels, most notably Facebook, have recently made changes that impact your bar or nightclub’s presence in your customers’ newsfeeds. Essentially, Facebook has limited the organic reach for businesses in favor of promoted posts.

For example, let’s say your nightclub’s Facebook page has tens of thousands of fans. It used to be that when you posted photos, comments, and tagged customers, the word would quickly spread about your place. With the recent changes, however, those types of organic posts are limited in their reach. Instead, promoted posts, where you pay to appear in the newsfeed, will be more prominent. Also, if free content that you post is deemed too promotional, it’s likely to be buried.

While you don’t want to abandon social media altogether, to make sure your establishment is still the go-to place, you may want to shift your marketing mix to include more mobile and email campaigns.

The upside of email and mobile marketing is that it gives you more control over who sees what and when. And there’s no denying the appeal and ease of using these low cost marketing tools. Not to mention that more than half of all emails are now read on a smartphone and more than 70 percent of social activity is happening on a mobile device. Of course, social will still play a vital role in getting the word out about your specials and events. However, when you combine email, mobile and social, you have a powerful way to engage customers.   

Here are some tips for bringing your mobile, email and social media marketing together.

·         Make sure your email and website are easy to read and respond to on a mobile device. Run a test before you hit the send button and make sure the response buttons on your offers are big enough to accommodate a thumb.

·         Update your online profile. When people are looking for a place to go, they often run a search on their smartphones to find places nearby. To show up at the top of those search results, make sure all of your online profiles are updated, including your address and directions. You can make it easy on yourself by using a tool like Single Platform that automatically updates your business on all relevant online directories and review sites.

·         Get permission to contact customers via text. Just because they’re a follower on social media or have opted in to get email from you, you still need to get a green light before you send them texts. When you ask customers if they want to receive texts from you, let them know you’ll only send periodic messages about insider deals on specials and events and that you won’t abuse the privilege.

·         Be creative, authentic and spontaneous in your campaigns. For example, as soon as the home team makes the playoffs, your customers could receive an invitation and special offer to watch the next game at your bar.

·         Always include a social media element to cover all of your bases. This can be as simple as adding a sharing bar to your email, directing customers to your Facebook page to learn more about events, or tweeting about an upcoming promotion.

It’s not easy for bar and club managers to keep up with all the changes in online marketing. Yet the foreseeable future shows that mobile and email will drive the most engagement, followed by social.   

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Find out more information about the email and mobile marketing craze from Ron Cates at the 2015 Nightclub & Bar Conference and Trade Show where he will be speaking on the topic!  For more information click here!