This article was written by my dad in 2012 for the agency blog at R & S Marketing where he was Senior Vice President at the time…just after his 81st birthday.
So much for “old people” not getting social media! It’s more that some get so caught up in the tools of what can be done they forget that “old-fashioned” common sense and strategy still rule.
But not my dad, one of the greatest ad men ever, Bill Shoss, 1931-2016. Reprinted with permission from http://rsmktg.com/2012/02/social-marketing-and-restaurant-marketing-a-parable/
Social Marketing and Restaurant Marketing: A Parable
by Bill Shoss
Social marketing and restaurant marketing have a lot in common. When your search engine optimization is working, your blog is going strong and you’re moving up to page one or two on Google . . . but the phone still isn’t ringing…is your mix right?
Isn’t the objective to make positive contacts through social marketing, and,voila, hordes of new potential customers will flock to your web site. Yet, while you are gaining new “followers” every day, they don’t translate into more sales leads. So, what’s the problem?
Perhaps, the problem is a lot like restaurant advertising that pulls traffic to a place that serves bad food. In that unhappy situation, the more people the ads draw to restaurant, the sooner it likely will go out of business – unless it improves its menu offerings. Sure, great ads build positive awareness of the restaurant. They trigger action, attracting diners who come anticipating a great meal, as promised. But, when that meal fails to deliver, the negative effect can ultimately destroy the restaurant.
Or, to put it another way, when people meet you on Facebook or LinkedIn or somewhere in the blogosphere, and are inspired to visit your web site . . .when visitors get there . . . and there is no “there” . . . you wind up with a net negative for your efforts.
Some marketers create their web sites first and do nothing with SEO or social marketing efforts to draw visitors to the site. So, no one comes. Nothing happens. You get no ROI for your investment.
Others go immediately into low cost efforts of social marketing with a minimum presence on their web sites, delaying the costs of developing a site with content that delivers the promise that enticed their visitors. Plus, easy navigation that leads the visitor to take actions you desire. This approach, by itself, doesn’t work either.
If your objective is to get results that build your business . . . then the first thing you need is a plan that gives your efforts a chance to meet your objectives.
One size fits all is not the answer. Finding a source who has the know how to understand your particular company’s needs is a good starting point.
(Originally posted on Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/social-marketing-restaurant-parable-deanna-shoss?trk=hp-feed-article-title-like )
