How to Increase Bar Customers Using Social Media Marketing

Bar marketing is the act of promoting your bar to the target audience; effective bar marketing attracts new customers and retains old ones.

To do this, you'll need to do things like consistently posting content on social media, monitoring results and adjusting as needed, thinking about content that is visually appealing, and much more. So how to do all this? This blog post will explain.

Here we will address the main means to make a good marketing plan for bars, they are:

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Social media

Everyone is on social media, and your bar needs to be too.

While Facebook is still the biggest social media marketing channel, Instagram's popularity is on the rise while Twitter is on the decline. In 2018, 68% of bar professionals used Facebook as part of their marketing strategy and 24% used Instagram. In 2019, those numbers skyrocketed. 91% of bar professionals use Facebook as part of their marketing strategy and 78% use Instagram.

When focusing on social media marketing, it's important to know your target audience and where they spend the most time. Also, you should familiarize yourself with all the different marketing options you have on the various platforms.

Instagram and Facebook, for example, have live streaming features and stories that can be viewed for 24 hours after publication, in addition to posts accessible at any time. Testing different types of posts can help you engage with a wider audience and contribute to the further promotion of your bar.

‍How to market for bars using Social Media

‍Marketing for pubs on social media is divided into two categories: organic – or free–posting and paid posting, also called publicity, advertisements or campaigns. Publishing organically may seem simple – just type a message, post a photo and/or post a video to your bar page and that's it! – But still requires careful planning and execution.

For paid advertising on social media, you have a few options. On Facebook, for example, you can turn anything you post on your bar's Facebook page into paid advertising.

How to advertise your bar's social networks? After publishing a post on your Facebook page, you will see a small blue “boost” button in the lower right corner; clicking this button will take you to a page where you can decide how much money you want to use to promote this content, who you'd like it to see, and how many days you want your budget to be spread out.

As Instagram and Facebook are part of the same network, you can also run Instagram ads when boosting your Facebook post by selecting this option.

Set a budget and objective for each ad and see which one works best for your bar! You may find that boosted and paid posts don't produce enough engagement to justify the expense. In that case, you should focus your efforts on organic posts.

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E-mail marketing

Implementing an email bar marketing strategy is very important, but subtlety and tact are really important here. There's a fine line between sending an email that truly benefits the customer and bombarding your inbox with unwanted emails.

‍How do I get my customer's email?

There are several different ways to collect customer information to send email updates. You can put an application page on your website or leave application forms on tables after a customer arrives. If you use Enjoy's Self-Service, you can track your customers' dining habits, which can lead to more personalized emails.

Say, for example, you have a customer who drinks frequently at your bar on Fridays around 9:30 pm and usually orders a Moscow Mule and a pizza. You can use this data to personalize an email suggesting he enjoy that pizza at a discount, with a subject line like “Hungry? We can help” around 7:45 pm.

This not only encourages email open rates but also increases customer experience and satisfaction when receiving messages from your bar.

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Google and Search Engine Ads

Who uses Google? Everyone. Populating your bar's Google My Business  page and paying for search engine ads on Google, Yahoo, and even Bing helps your bar come up first when people search for keywords like "bars near me."

‍How to market your bar using Google and search engine ads?

There are three ways to increase the chances that a Google engine will find your bar first.

1 – Maximize the relevance of your Google My Business page by filling in the appropriate information and keeping your page up to date.

2 – Set aside a small budget to test the effectiveness of Google Adwords

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Videos to enrich marketing for bars and restaurants

Videos impact everyone – just in different ways. A good way to test videos is to put a video on your YouTube account or Facebook page for free to see what the response is from your existing customer base. Eye-catching photos of beverage preparation can make for really good video content.

If the video recording and editing process is not your forte, hire a freelancer or watch some basic videos on YouTube.

‍Use hashtags #

In social networks, hashtags are sort of filters for the interaction that the customer has with the posts. The tags marked on the image direct Internet users to content that matches their interests.

Select hashtags that have to do with your market niche and the topic of your post, search for other profiles and see which ones are related to your restaurant. This will make the site's filter accurately identify your business category and indicate it to users interested in this type of content.

Before filling your post with hashtags – ideally, you put up to 7 – know that more important than them, the content will make all the difference.

‍Post original images

The attractiveness of advertising on social media draws the attention not only of potential customers but of many companies. With the ease of setting up a page on Facebook or Instagram, which can even be generated at no cost, more and more companies are starting their foray into the digital world.

With fierce competition, the challenge for the manager who wants to advertise his restaurant on the networks is to stand out and produce attractive content for Internet users.

Those who browse the Internet are constantly bombarded by visual campaigns, so for your establishment to gain space, you need to produce good images.

Bet on original photos, in good resolution, that enhance the restaurant's dishes.

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Avoid at all costs

Lastly, paying for followers, likes or even buying a ready-made profile is a big scam.

In addition to running the risk of being punished by the social network itself, users are increasingly smart and realize when a brand is trying to deceive them, which is not good at all.

‍The easy path is not always the best option, so start gradually, it's a journey that requires planning, hard work, consistency and patience.

Try not to focus on having a lot of likes or followers, first of all, try to offer good content and be credible with your audience, in this way, the likes and followers will be the result of well-thought-out strategies.

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To conclude

Bar marketing is essential to attract new customers and retain existing ones. To do this, it is important to consistently post content on social media, monitor results and adjust as needed, and think about content that is visually appealing. When marketing for bars on social media, it is important to know your target audience and familiarize yourself with all the different marketing options available on the various platforms. Email marketing is also an important strategy to implement, but it requires subtlety and tact to avoid bombarding your customers' inboxes with unwanted emails. Google and search engine ads can also help your bar come up first when people search for keywords like "bars near me." Videos and hashtags can also be used to enrich your marketing strategy. Ultimately, it is important to focus on creating original, high-quality content that stands out from the competition.