Viewpoint: 13 hospitality marketing tips to present your business well during coronavirus

With hospitality businesses experiencing a surge in coronavirus cancellations, marketing expert Mark McCulloch shares his 13 tips for presenting your business positively during the crisis.

1. Push what you are doing to step up cleaning in-venue, including kitchen, cutlery, tables, crockery, team, food hygiene and toilets.
2. Promote what you are doing to step up training and shift briefing for teams.
3. Post positives about guests who are visiting and what they are saying. Get vox pops and talking heads from them and post these lots.
4. Emphasise any changes you are making with regard to social distancing, such as halving the number of tables or removing queuing in-venue.
5. Push delivery and collection for people want low or no contact.
6. Promote private rooms or areas that are bookable for lower numbers.
7. If you are a local venue work even harder to attract those that will be nearby as it looks like people are staying more locally at present.
8. Suggest guests might wish to buy gift vouchers for future use when looking to cancel, or even as a show of support for trhe business.
9. Be proactive about contacting those who have booked and try to either confirm, land a future date or convert to a gift voucher.
10. Create a Just Giving page for your true brand fans who will want to see you stay in business or send your team a tip to say thanks.
11. Think about how you can serve your local community best in the next 12 weeks. Can your venue adapt into something else for the short term or have a dual focus, such as click & collect, offer essentials you can get through your wholesale suppliers, if really empty can you become a testing centre / medical facility?
12. Can you help support local NHS, emergency services, carers or teachers if possible?
13. Can you send out hampers or packs to those in need?

Action these across all your media channels – owned, paid and earned – via social media, in-venue, digitally (website, email database and SMS) and good old fashioned phone.

Overall, try to be positive, be kind and be yourself – it is why customers love you anyway. Stay away from seeming opportunistic and be sure to judge the level of jokes, as this is serious for many.