OPINION
Making digital marketing simple for pubs
Digital: Where the tweeting heck do you start? "Let’s put a QR code on it!" Or even better: "Have we thought about building an app? You must tweet once a day or you won’t get your bonus. Digital is free so let’s use it!"
By now you will have heard many of the above in a boardroom near you. People dabble in digital but they are wowed by it rather than having it under their control and so forget the basics. I would caveat all of this with a word or two of caution: "Please proceed with care".
My love of digital started back in 2002 when I worked with a web agency and then moved on to work with dot com darling lastminute.com. I have brought digital to every brand I have worked with since.
Effort Vs return
Social and all of the other shiny new things, such as QR codes, augmented reality, blogs, apps and microsites, are to be treated with the mantra ‘effort Vs return’. This can be a hard number or a softer benefit like brand awareness, perception, engagement or consideration target, but it must be measured.
Please don’t stick a QR code anywhere. There has never been a more useless invention - people do not use them. I put a QR code on every Pret A Manger sandwich box and it got 0.00005171% views – not even worth the ink it was printed with.
Go mobile
Make sure you have a mobile first website as a starting point as more than 50% of views are now on mobile or tablet – put desktop last. Where things do get interesting is on social signals and blogging. To build up your social signals you need to prompt people to check in to your locations, tweet and share images and stories about your brand, product and/or venues.
Blogging regularly - weekly if possible - and including key terms and likely search words is vital as this creates content for your site and will be looked upon favourably by Google.
I always talk about ABCD - Always Be Capturing Data. You should be trying to capture data (just the email address initially) and give people reasons to follow you on whatever social channels you feature on. Cross promote also. Ask people to sign up to your database from social and vice versa.
Keep it interesting
Use all of your digital channels to tell stories, not just shift product. If you are looking for a real relationship, you don’t just pop the question on the first date. It takes time to pluck up the courage to ask them to marry you or at least move in so don’t use your channels for pure advertisements.
One size does not fit all. Please take the time to look at how you can best represent your brand on each channel and how to communicate appropriately on any social channel from Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat.
Nothing is free
Lastly, digital is not free. The best brands that you see and admire using digital well have teams upon teams and agency help to create this killer content. You will need to invest here to get it right. Content is key and there are very few brands in our sector doing this very well.
Mark McCulloch is CEO & founder at WE ARE Spectacular
