If you want to move the needle then first you need to move your consumer – Moving your audience means knowing how to leverage every nuance of the social media world to make your message connect to more patrons, resonate deeper and stay at the forefront of your consumer’s minds. You want people talking of course, but now we also want them Tweeting, posting, updating, texting & blogging.
Mobile – instant audience access – Embrace a ‘mobile’ first strategy. As smartphone usage continues to seep into every demographic while attendance & ‘check-in’ Apps and platform developers continue to fine-tune their mobile only software. Tech savvy young clubbers particularly will spend more time and money on their mobile devices. By January 2013 there were over 1.1 billion smart phone subscribers world wide and with the mobile market doubling year on year your marketing strategy should start with how to connect and engage with your audiences through the growing mobile channels.
Your website analytics should provide strong proof of this trend and continuing the current trajectory towards mobile, by Q4 2014 over 50% of web traffic will be coming from mobile devices. This paradigm shift means therefore that all the marketing you put into effect needs to be executed with mobile front and centre and uppermost in your mind.
Which means:
- If you’re selling tickets to your event, that ticketing platform better be mobile friendly.
- If you’re designing a flyer, it needs to be designed to be viewed from a phone.
- If you’re developing a website, it needs to be responsive to or take you to a specialised mobile version of your site.
“We are seeing more and more companies build for mobile first now, so marketers need to follow suit when targeting their event promotions and venue branding thinking mobile first.”
Social Media – interaction is traction – With social media campaigns and advertising opportunities growing in importance across the key networks, Twitter & Facebook marketers need to start thinking beyond ‘vanity metrics’ in the number of ‘likes’ and instead start to think about their total engagement and relationship with their fan base. You have this power at your disposal. The volume of ‘followers’ doesn’t necessarily translate into a surfeit of engagement. In fact more often than not beyond the first frisson of attention only a fraction of these will remain engaged with your brand. On the contrary, in fact depending on the type of offering or venue, a large number may actually damage your brands cache or exclusivity. Instead, try to actually engage with you followers; retweeting, replying, following, and communicating with clubbers, vendors, joint ventures, employees, fans and patrons alike. Your niche in the industry is your stomping ground – perfect your message here and the rest will follow. “Essentially as in life you will get out of it what you put into it. Simply following people will not solve this problem, although if you post something that generates 555 comments people will really start to engage with you. Interaction is traction.”
Facebook is your ‘friend’ – Facebook advertising should demand more of your marketing budget. Facebook ads in particular are powerful and affordable little beasts, that will help you get more groovers-in-the-house, and can boost your events RSVP’s. We’re talking about a platform that for just a few £’s $’s or €’s a day can get your night seen by just the right people hundreds of thousands of times a month, so used properly and once you have fully grasped how best to utilise this tool the numbers are limited only by your creativity, imagination and ingenuity. The challenge here is just to use them with maximum aplomb.
Pinterest – 80%+ female audience – Try using Pinterest, this has been the fastest growing social media platform in the World with over 70 million users, and a force that most business professionals can no longer overlook. A social network devoted to providing a rich visual experience, it is the smart marketers secret weapon. As all marketeers worth their salt know, it is mainly used by girls ipso facto following the iron laws of evolution by natural selection the more girls you have in your nightclub the more guys will follow, hence this is a no brainer. As well as being designed primarily as a visual medium it is an excellent conduit to build a loyal and engaged following.
Social media really is the biggest opportunity you have to get your event packed out, but many nightlife entrepreneurs have struggled to see the clear advantages in using it with serious efficacy and in gaining solid business values from all of the channels they have literally at their fingertips. This starts by keeping track of all metrics related to your social media accounts. This includes tracking followers, the content they like and also what they share. Keep a practice of thanking your biggest supporters. They’ll be your biggest brand advocates. Also, lay down a strategy, which defines everything about your social media campaign. A perfectly defined strategy is inevitable for any social media project.
In the final analysis it is all about harnessing your audience – these are the people who have the power to move the dial on what you do, double and treble your impact and sell more tickets than you ever could. Social media is the new word-of-mouth.