Friday 29 October 2010

Get with the program peeps!


If you’re not already engaging with your customers via the internet and their smart phones then it really is time you joined commerce in the 21st century.

Google’s report on the worth of e-commerce to the UK economy makes interesting reading, 7.2% of British GDP (expected to grow to 10% by 2015); 73% of households with an internet connection and 62% of all adults buying goods and services online.

There is not doubt that the internet has transformed the way we communicate with each other, get our entertainment, shop and take in information; what many pubs have yet to do is seize the marketing power of the internet to advertise their goods and services.

I am constantly amazed at how few pubs have websites or use social interaction sites such as Facebook, when their respective licensees must see, on a daily basis, their customers using this technology. After all who hasn’t been in a pub or bar and seen the glow of smart phone screens and the frantic double thumb tapping of the “connected”?

Even when you do find websites for pubs they are often clunky, poorly designed, uninteresting and often full of out of date information.

The days of just opening the doors and waiting for customers to appear are long gone, now more than ever, with people cutting back on their “out of house” entertainment pubs must not only provide value, service and uniqueness but they must interact with their customers both on the premises and off.

Probably preaching to the converted on a blog, but you never know the message might get back to some of the luddites out there in the trade.

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