Social media marketing to grow your hospitality business

ocial Media Marketing To Grow Your Hospitality Business

Utilising 72% of all Australians on social media will help you grow your business undoubtedly. But social media marketing can seem like such an abstract idea, and it can be hard to determine the success of a campaign.

Before we talk about what you can do to better your social media marketing, we must decide where we should focus our efforts.

Instagram? Or Facebook? Or Both?

There is no universal answer to which platform is better to focus your efforts on, but here are the merits of both platforms to help guide you in deciding what to do.

The main reason people use Facebook is personal interactions and sharing content with people they know. It is used by people of all ages, with 68% of all adults using Facebook. If your company provides solutions for adults, Facebook would be ideal to use. 

That being said, 40% of people on Facebook don’t “like” brands, so a certain and careful approach must be taken to have successful marketing campaigns.

Instagram is used to explore and discover new content, particularly discovering recent trends and following new artists. There is less interaction between users on the platform, as the primary focus is to share pictures and to like pictures. According to a study in 2014, Instagram has a 4.21% engagement rate as opposed to Facebook’s 0.07% engagement rate, meaning that people, ironically, interact more with content on Instagram. 

95% of its user base is under the age of 35, so it can be great for marketing to that demographic, but if your business provides for an older demographic, it may not be helpful to use.

An example of a business that should use Facebook as its primary social media marketing channel would be an Electrician. Those in need of an electrician are likely property owners and are more likely of an older demographic.

A new clothing company would find Instagram the most effective as it would target a younger audience. Instagram is also picture-based, which is ideal for a clothing company to display their clothing.

Cafe’s and Restaurants would find using both to be the most effective. Facebook would be excellent to target the older demographic, and Instagram would target a younger demographic, reaching all people.

Now you have a better idea of what platform(s) you want to use; I’m going to introduce you to a few key social media marketing metrics, focusing on how you can utilise them to grow your business.

What we want to increase

Engagement - the number of people that interacted with your post/page (clicked, liked, commented, shared).

Reach - the number of unique people who see your content.

Impressions - the number of times anyone sees your content.

By increasing one of these metrics, the other two tend to grow too. An example of this knock-on effect can be seen with the notorious eggboy. How did you find out about it? The most likely answer is that you saw a friend “liked” the video, or you got tagged in a comment. You probably watched the video and then maybe even showed a few more people.

The comment/”like” (engagement) led to you seeing the post (reach) and watching the video (impression). You then may have “liked”/comment, and the cycle repeats.

Engagement and Reach

The definitions are expressed in a broad sense, but as a local business, local engagement and reach is critical. This is because local people are more likely to use the business than people far away and abroad. This is not to say that we should disregard the engagement and reach from those afar, as they may visit the area that your business is in, but the focus should be on local.

How do I increase my local engagement?

• Keeping a consistent voice across all interactions - this humanises the company as a consistent voice makes it seem like it is a single voice, so people are more likely to interact
• Engaging with followers content - liking posts from people that are relevant to your business makes the interaction more genuine, so people are more likely to view your page
• Producing content that is relevant and consistent with your business
• Creating content that your followers engage with the most 

This is Paddock Bakery’s Instagram. They have a very consistent photo composition - the pictures are closeups, with bright lighting, and usually, incorporate aspects of nature. This local café has 65,200 follower, and an average of 2.5% engagement.

What about increasing reach?

Reach is a result of engagement, so doing the above will lead to increased reach. 

To further increase it, you could post events or special content(a discount/deal) to community pages. Examples of community pages could include the local swimming club’s page,  the church’s page, or the local school’s page.

Top tip: Avoid spammy posts and posting too much to community pages as people will start to ignore your posts, leading to lower engagement.

Impressions

Impressions are under a different subtitle because there are two ways to increase them. First is organic, which is through increased reach and engagement which, is mentioned above. The second is with boosted posts. This is when you pay Instagram/Facebook to display a post on people’s social media.

Boosted ads can reach people who would not have otherwise seen your post, leading to more engagement and reach, having a compound effect. The only downside to this is that they cost extra money that goes to these big companies

Rather than paying Facebook/Instagram for adverts for your business, that money can be spent on your local community, i.e. having a gift voucher giveaway to everyone who likes your page. This builds a sense of positivity behind your business, rather than being viewed as just another business.

With this alternative being mentioned, it still can be beneficial to have boosted ads - don’t be afraid to utilise boost when organic posts get higher than normal engagement.

Extra things you could do

Ensure that your name, address, phone number, and website link are up to date across social media and the web.

Top tip: keep a spreadsheet with all the known places with your company’s contact information, so if it needs updating, you know where to update it.

When uploading images, rename the image to include your business name. This means that Googling your business name will showcase your platforms and display the images that you have uploaded. 

Create user personas of the specific demographic you want to target with your next campaign to understand your audience better. This will help you tailor your campaign. Below is an outline to help you create a user persona.

Name:

Age:

Job:

Parent:

Hobbies:

Habits:

What you should take away from this

Social media marketing is a potent way to grow your local business. It is important to choose what platform(s) you will focus your efforts on and increase local engagement/reach. Please don’t dismiss the extra things you could do, as it will help you have an edge on the competition.

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Final Thoughts (updated May 2021)

Always be cautious putting all of your efforts into a social media platform. At any point, your business account may get suspended. To mitigate against this, be sure to capture your audience through different methods such as an email list. That way, you always have a method to contact your valuable customers.

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