Len Kendall tweeted a few weeks ago that…
Social ads (Facebook in particular) are amplifiers, not replacements. If your content sucks, your ROI will suck.
— Len Kendall (@LenKendall) August 14, 2013
Stop and think about it.
Your social content across the board should be treated as a type of ad.
Witty content with a photo of product? You want it to cause an action.
Promotion that you want to have a WOM domino effect? You are indirectly advertising to them.
Manipulation through data is key to get people into the stores.
Amplify, not replace.
But how do you get there?
At Morton’s, and our parent company, Landry’s, we start with customer behavior.
Customer behavior can be broken into two segments: your current customer, and those you want to have as customers. In the middle, there are the customers that want to be the regular customer, as they are striving to be at a certain level.
Consumer behavior is the foundation and basis for converting online content to foot traffic in-store: all while tracking the process.
1. Identify Key Trends
Each week, set aside time to evaluate your data – whether it is on Facebook, Twitter, bounce-back to your website, or something else. Humans are habit-forming, and tend to form routines.
You will start to see patterns in behavior, from the time that a consumer posts, to the type of posts that resonate the best. It’s not enough to look for certain topics, but certain words, and even how you structure them, is going to impact how a consumer reacts to the content.
Remember, you want to focus on what the consumer will do after reading the content. What type of action do you want them to take? And how can you track it?
2. Uncover Drivers
The action that a consumer takes is called a “driver.” What will drive the consumer to your store? Is it the type of content? Is it the type of promotion? What segment and layer of consumer are you hitting?
The key to getting butts in seats is understanding what a consumer will do to get to your location, and what they will do once inside. This is why it’s imperative to understand the various layers of your consumer.
An example of this:
Through data analyzation, at Morton’s we know that a secondary demographic is the “special occasion diners” – those that strive to regularly eat at a high-end place, but can only afford to do so on special occasions. You put in the unique URL so you can track clicks, and put in the redeem code to track how many come in store.
Molly is one of those special occasion customers. She has an anniversary coming up with her husband of 10 years.
As a milestone anniversary, they want to make it special, but want to save a little on the final bill. She notices that her husband’s favorite steakhouse is offering a free dessert with purchase of an entrée.
By understanding consumer behavior, you know that most who go in to dine are hungry, and will eat the bigger entrees before getting the free dessert, making their average check price much higher than if the free item was at the start of the meal.
The metrics that serve as the foundation is how many of the free dessert are redeemed. Even if it seems like a small number, don’t stop there. Look past the free part and see how much was spent during the night. The cost you cover is far less than the money made.
How Does The Content Interplay with Foot Traffic?
The C-Suite should always ask what the ROI is from posting on social media. This is the fun part – measuring the consumer action based off of their behavior.
Presentation of success should be similar to the below:
- What It Was: What was the offer or clickable action? How many clicks did you receive from the social content alone?
- What They Did: What did the consumer do once in store? How many redeems were received, and how does that vary from the # of clicks?
- Looking Past the Click: What did the consumer do in addition to the offer? Did they spend outside of the offer?
Consumer behavior, analytics and amplifying content to get foot traffic is all about telling a story and relating to people through their habitual behavior.
Tell me, what’s your story?