Data reports we pull for our articles
- Monthly Foot Traffic
- Visitor Frequency
- Common Places Visited Before
- Common Places Visited After
- Hourly Traffic
- Daily Traffic
- Average Length of Stay
- Average Household Income of Patrons
- and more…
Article Overview
In this article, I’m going to share what I’m doing right now that’s helping my business-owner clients. Below are examples of how we are leveraging opportunities in this crisis by creating social media systems. By focusing on rapid communication with their existing customers and quickly adapting their business, they are able to drive revenue. This systematic approach is allowing them to hold or grow at a time when everyone else is downsizing, hiding, and watching their companies fade away.
Some have stopped the bleeding and are able to continue until this great country is back on its feet. Other businesses that were about to close their doors have been adapting, executing, and scaling faster and bigger than ever. Since COVID-19 and oil struggles, some businesses have seen as much as 20% growth.
Grab The Low hanging Fruit First
Consumers do not want to leave their homes to find out you are closed or went to the wrong location to pick up their order. Consumers now more than ever first visit your web properties, like Google Business, Yelp, Facebook pages, to check if your business has updated hours, services, or new menus. It’s ok to reference “during the pandemic” or “while our dining room is closed.” Verbiage like this signals that your business has indeed recently updated your offerings. Be sure that if you have more than one location, and only one is open that you’ close’ that Google, Bing, Yelp, business page for now so consumers don’t visit your closed location.
Things you should NOT do:
- Don’t create extra steps for people to find information. I saw a national restaurant chain requires you to log in to view the pricing of their updated menu.
- Don’t get creative and make new names for products or services. Practical talk matters now more than ever. For example, call it ‘to-go’ and not ‘COVID curb.’ Terms like ‘Family Style’ and ‘Family-Sized’ are good examples of standard terms people already easily understand. If the term ‘social distancing’ has taught us anything, it’s the value of using terminology that’s already well understood. ‘Shelter in place’ people know as the term existed before now (The new ‘social distancing’ term, on the other hand, doesn’t really mean anything).
Things you SHOULD do right now:
- Look for opportunities! The grocery and hardware stores are packed, and consumers don’t want to wait in lines and visit the most crowded places unless they have to. Your business offering to carry a product or perform a service you might not normally do, is where opportunities lie.
- Setup a free business Facebook account today. When you don’t have a Facebook business account, you can only boost a post, and you have limited ad creation abilities. With a Facebook business manager account, you can setup $1/day ad campaigns that will start sharing your ongoing offers to the multitude of your existing fans.
Use your social media platforms to their fullest. Don’t share text-based images; people don’t want to read; they want to be entertained or mildly educated. Instead, share photos to draw them in and put the text in the description of the post for them to read AFTER they are captivated by your photo/video. Now more than ever, reply to comments on your post and to questions in your Messenger platform. Consumers are asking you for more information so they can put together where they can go, if you still offer a product or service, and ultimately shaping how COVID-19 determines their purchases.
- Send sponsored messages to your current Facebook Messenger customers with a link to your new offers/hours/services. The Slice Factory here shows an example of sponsored messages.
- Add free Messenger chat to your website to connect with website visitors who need more information. This is great for the business and the consumer as you both already have the Facebook Messenger app on your devices and don’t have to stay on your website to continue the conversation.
- Use the Creator Studio Facebook app to ensure you don’t miss any comments on your post or messages.
Dedicate four weeks to promoting your offer vs. making a single post, which only 5% on avg. of your followers will ever see even once. Use email and other communication methods to solidify the message.
Advanced Retail/Restaurant Tip
The number one complaint I see right now on social media is, “I called, and they didn’t answer,” “the line was busy, so I called another place.”
Add A Cloud Phone System for as little as $40/mo.
- Many of your sales might come from a handful of days and or times, and you need a way to scale on demand. When your business has only one or two phone lines, you quickly set the ceiling for the amount of money you can make per hour. By using a cloud-based phone system like CallTrackingMetrics or CallRail, you can post on your website, Google Business, and other places your virtual number. Having a cloud-based phone number allows an unlimited number of inbound callers to be routed to your business (no more busy signals!). You can set up your extra phone call takers only when demand is high. Example: On a busy Friday night, you set up one or two dedicated people who will use cell phones to accept inbound calls placed to your business. This is in additon to your existing two landlines. These individuals will have the ability to build orders in your sales software/POS and will double your inbound call ability. With only two lines and avg. of 3min calls to place orders, you max out normally at 40 orders per hour. If each order is worth avg. of $35, that is $1400/hr you can make–max. If you added two additional people to take calls between 4:30-6:30pm Friday’s you could make up to $2800/hr and double your hourly sales in just two short hours when demand is high.
- A cloud phone system can also track your facebook ads directly to the phone calls they generated, talk about tracking ROI in a time when every dollar counts!
Closing Point:
In closing, your business can survive and even thrive when you focus on a social media system that will engage your customers.
Using these reports, we can see where a business gets the most foot traffic, and where they can improve. Interested in your own traffic report? Click the button below to get started.