Social Business Audit

Just like any other piece to your marketing puzzle, you first have to understand the strategic nature of it. This includes the who, what, when, where, how and why of the piece(s) under consideration. Social Media Marketing is no different. But unlike most other marketing efforts, SM if executed poorly, can leave you worse off than it was before – much worse. Which is why you have to get the strategy right to begin with. This is where the Social Media Brand Audit comes in.

What The Social Business Audit Does

We look at your entire social media presence from website to email campaigns and give you an analysis of its effectiveness in driving traffic, sales and profits. We look at:

• How ready you and your business are to really engage in social media.
• What you are currently doing to engage your guests through SM.
• Who you are engaging and are they the right target market.
• How to better define your SMM strategy.
• What your current and future potential risks are.
• What your current goals are as well as the metrics you use to determine your level of success.
• Your businesses social media policies.
• How well you are executing your current efforts.
• How effective your current efforts reflect your positioning and credibility.
• Whether the platforms you have chosen are the right ones for your guests.
• How effective you are in supporting new and existing guest relationships.
• The types of conversations your guests are having vs. those they should be having.
• Your effectiveness in telling your story and having it retold by your guests to drive Word of Mouth (WOM).
• How engaging your business is with your guests. Are you just using old tactics with new media?
• How effective you are in driving sales and profits with your current efforts. (What’s the ROI?)
• Opportunities for you to recalibrate your efforts to increase their effectiveness in achieving your business goals.
• How big a piece of your overall marketing mix should Social Media Marketing be right now.
• A host of other questions and scenarios.

What you will have after the audit is complete, is a picture of where your business stands in the minds of your guests, in terms of the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. Basically, it helps you determine your SM ROI and lays out for you, a road map for recalibrating your efforts to more successfully engage your guests to the point of increasing your sales and profits.

What The SMBA Doesn’t Do.

While the audit is a best tool to better understand how effective your social media marketing efforts are. It does not do several things.

• It can’t help you if your business isn’t delivering on the promises you’re making through social media.
• It can’t solve your engagement or ROI issues in a day.
• It can’t give you the ‘magic bullet’ that will gloriously lead you down some ‘yellow brick road’.
• It can’t help you be more engaging if you or your businesses culture really aren’t.
• It can’t solve your guest experience issues.
• It can’t create raving fans or relationships.
• It can’t define the proper tactics for you to engage in if you do not have the right (or any) strategy in place.
• It can’t make you a SM Superstar overnight.

Social Media Marketing has tremendous potential for helping you create a more successful food service business. But it requires a complete and credible strategy in order to achieve the level of effectiveness and ROI that you need for long term results as well as helping you understand and avoid major mistakes that can cripple and even kill your business.

Now’s the time to start the process or stop and take a really honest look at how well your SM strategy is working for you. You have absolutely nothing to lose – except more wasted marketing dollars and future business.

The Details:

You have two (2) Options:

1. A single audit of your business (no site visits).
2. An audit of your business that includes up to three (3) of your direct competitors.

*For multi-unit operations, a 2-day site visit is required to interview key stakeholders.
*The timeline for completion is dependent on how long it takes to interview all stakeholders involved in the businesses SMM efforts (availability) and the return of all questionnaires.  Normally this can take between 2-4 weeks – longer for multi-unit operations.

Additional Reading:

• Why Your Business Should Not Engage In Social Media – Yet!
• The Summers Hospitality Group Social Media Marketing Program
• Twitteraunts! Restaurants and Social Media
• The Summers Hospitality Group Social Media Dictionary

theDawn: skip this field please