BuzzyBooth

The 5 Best Hotel Marketing Strategies to Start Using Today

With 2020 throwing curveballs at the hotel industry left and right, following a foolproof hotel marketing strategy is crucial to building success.

In this article, you’ll learn about 5 of the best hotel marketing strategies that you can incorporate into your own business. Hotel marketing techniques are a great way to connect with customers and build loyalty, so be sure to follow along and use what you can!

Let’s get started:

1. Get Active on Social Media

First and foremost, you have to bolster your hotel marketing strategy by getting active on social media.

This means that your hotel business or chain should have active accounts on all major social media platforms and be posting engaging content daily. You can post about your hotel amenities, what locations you have, shoutouts to customers, or what new additions you’ll be adding to your business.

Get creative, and most of all, be consistent.

2. Pay Attention to Customer Reviews Online

Your hotel marketing strategy would be nothing without the comments and support of your customers, so make sure to pay attention to their reviews online.

Whether it’s on your hotel website or on your Facebook page, respond to them, and make sure they feel heard. As soon as a comment comes in, you should make it a priority to address what they say and even take the time to spotlight their involvement. Re-share their post, use their review as a testimonial on your website. If they have a complaint, apologize for it and make a plan to remedy it.

This is a simple hotel marketing technique that builds brand advocates for the future, so don’t ignore them.

3. Use Online Travel Agencies to Promote for You

You can’t do all of the work yourself, so one of the best hotel marketing strategies you can follow is to use online travel agencies to promote your hotel for you.

There are tons of travel agencies, like Priceline, AAA, Orbits, Expedia, etc., that you can share listings of your rooms on, and more importantly, customers are searching for hotel deals on these sites to save money. Post your most affordable rooms and increase your chances of earning more bookings by making your services more available to a wider customer base.

4. Use SEO to Increase Your Site Ranking

You know when you head over to Google and search for “The Best Hotels Near Me?” Well, the first websites that pop up are claiming that top-ranking because they use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to increase their site standings.

That being said, you can do that same thing with your site! Overall, you need to research what keywords are being searched for the most within your industry and then implement those keywords within the copy on your website. You can do this with landing page copy, blog posts, page links, and even with descriptions of your rooms and locations.

Learning SEO can be tricky at first, but once you master the process, you’ll have no trouble getting more traffic to your hotel’s website.

5. Use a Photo Booth for Hotels to Improve Your Hotel Marketing Strategy

Customers love getting a little something extra in return for their patronage, so an attractive hotel marketing strategy that you can easily deploy is to use a photo booth for hotels.

With a hotel photo booth like BuzzyBooth, customers at your hotel can snap a quick selfie and instantly share it online by entering their basic contact info into the system. Once they do, you have complete access to their credentials, and you can use the info to fuel your future hotel marketing strategies or leverage them to improve your current hotel marketing techniques.

BuzzyBooth is a great tool for enhancing your engagement on social media, for creating brand advocates, and most of all, giving instant value back to customers who support your success.

Click here to learn more about BuzzyBooth and start improving your hotel marketing strategy today!

3 Email Marketing Campaign Examples that Really Work

Some people say that email marketing campaigns are dead, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, research shows that the average ROI for email marketing campaigns is $42 for every $1 dollar spent. Plus, over 80% of small businesses rely on email as their main channel for customer acquisitions and retention. Based on those numbers alone, using email marketing campaigns can be highly effective. However, you have to use the best email marketing campaigns to make a positive impact.

Rather than sending e-blasts and waiting for responses, here are 4 email marketing campaign examples that really work:

1. The Skimm: Celebrating with Your Subscribers

One of the best email marketing campaign examples out there comes from The Skimm and their process of celebrating with their subscribers,

For example, once an email subscriber hits certain milestones, like being engaged with their newsletter for a year or two years, they’re sent a special email that congratulates them for being a reader and even offers them a chance to be rewarded for their participation. So it’s basically like a loyalty program and thank you note all wrapped into one.

With a unique link that The Skimm creates, the receiver can share that link to invite 10 other friends to subscribe. If they do, the initial recipient gets some awesome swag in return. It’s a pretty simple email marketing campaign that garners big results.

2. Charity: Water: Tracking Donations for Contributors to Follow

A lot of the time, when email marketing campaigns ask for donations, customers nave get any proof that their contribution is making a difference—that’s not the case with charity: water.

They represent one of the best email marketing campaign examples because they actually track a customer’s donation in real-time in the country where it’s making an impact. In remote countries around the world, large populations don’t have access to clean drinking water, but through charity: water’s email marketing campaigns, you can see from start-to-finish where your donation goes and how it helps strengthen communities with better resources.

Each email campaign hits a customer’s inbox at each new step of the development and implementation process in a specific community. In return, customers get proof that they’re helping the right people, and it also builds loyalty for the organization, improving their mission and overall brand.

3. BuzzyBooth: Gaining Subscribers for Automated Email Marketing Campaigns

Finally, one of the best email marketing campaign examples comes from BuzzyBooth and its ability to gain new subscribers with ease.

Instead of waiting for customers to subscribe to your email marketing campaigns on your website or by sending them cold emails, BuzzyBooth is a photo booth for businesses that entices customers to snap a selfie, input their basic contact information, and then receive the media files in exchange. Once they enter their info, you instantly gain access to their inboxes and can target them with specific campaigns they’ll love.

Email marketing campaigns don’t have to be an onslaught of mass messages without substance—use BuzzyBooth to give value back to customers right away and then turn them into brand advocates with compelling emails.

Most of all, BuzzyBooth caters to a variety of businesses, like restaurants, dental practices, retail stores, and hotels. No matter what industry you find yourself in, you can leverage BuzzyBooth to improve your customer outreach and build success. Email marketing campaigns are a small part of that process, but an important one—don’t waste your time following examples that turn customers away.

To learn more about BuzzyBooth or to request a free demo, please click the link below! Buzzybooth: https://buzzybooth.com/

3 Reasons Why Hotel Referral Programs Fail

Hotel referral programs are meant to reward customers for maintaining their loyalty to your business.

When done the right way, it can lead to a large network of dedicated customers that result in steady bookings. However, if your hotel referral program lacks any kind of real value, then it can wind up doing the complete opposite — turning customers away.

To help give you an idea of what a bad hotel referral program looks like, here are 3 reasons why hotel referral programs fail:

1. There’s No Initial Incentive for the Customer

The first reason why hotel referral programs fall flat is that there’s no initial incentive for the customer to receive.

For instance, telling a customer to sign up for your hotel referral program just because you have one available isn’t enough. You need to offer them some kind of bonus upfront that entices them to apply. This may include…

A discount on their booking
A free breakfast in the morning
Free access to various hotel ammenities
A discount on a future booking
Additional points on their membership
A discount for a friend that they refer the hotel to

Give the customer something they can walk away with that inspires them to get involved with your hotel and come back again to cash in the reward.

2. Points are Too Hard to Earn and Cash In

Which leads to the next reason why hotel referral programs fail — the points earned are too hard to accumulate and cash in.

Imagine being at an arcade where you can only earn so many tickets per game, and the big prize you want costs thousands of tickets to win. Suddenly, the idea of participating loses its luster. That said, you have to keep your hotel rewards realistic. So for 5 referrals who successfully use a customer’s code or books through their unique link, the original customer gets a free night’s stay. If you’re using a point a system, then allow the first redeemable prize to be for a low amount of points, then after that, make the next prize at a higher amount, but make it something worthwhile.

Remember, you have to keep people invested in your hotel rewards program to ensure their interest over time. If you make things too hard off the bat, no one will want to play.

3. It’s Not Easy to Share with Others

Lastly, hotel referral programs fail because they’re not easy to share with others.

This speaks directly to a hotel’s presence with social media. Once a customer signs up for a hotel referral program, they need to be able to share it with their friends and family. Obviously, they can’t bring their network to the hotel itself, but that’s why using social media and making hotel referral programs shareable online is such a huge benefit.

For instance, once a customer signs up for your hotel referral program, they should be able to instantly share it on social media — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. That way, they can tag their friends, while also promoting your hotel in the process.

A robust hotel marketing strategy helps bolster your hotel referral programs, so partnering with a business that can take your hotel experience to the next level is something you should consider to boost your success.

Hire BuzzyBooth to Improve Your Hotel Referral Program

BuzzyBooth offers you a fun, easy way to improve your hotel referral programs with a hotel photo booth.

Rather than just asking customers to sign up, you can invite them to take a fun selfie in your lobby, enter their contact information, provide them with their image, and then ask if they want to enroll in your hotel referral program at the end. Embedding your hotel referral program sign up process within a photo booth for hotels is a great way to heighten engagement, while also creating a hotel marketing strategy that creates brand advocates for your business.

BuzzyBooth can help your hotel referral program succeed, so click the button below to request your free demo today!

Effective Marketing for Dentists: 4 Ways to Work Around COVID-19

Businesses all over the country are reopening in the face of COVID-19, but despite the threat, there are still ways that dentists can work around it.

Effective marketing for dentists means coming up with new solutions to connect with patients and make them feel at ease. With these 4 workarounds, you should have no problem keeping your patients happy and rebuilding your practice’s success.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Transition to Online Appointment Scheduling

To ensure effective marketing for dentists, one of the first things any practice can do is to transition to online appointment scheduling.

Digital transformation is the single most important thing that any business can do to remain competitive throughout COVID-19, and dental practices are no exception. Rather than relying on patients to make phone calls or come in person to schedule appointments, dentists should look for online scheduling platforms that make the process simple.

Some platforms to explore include…

Setmore
ZocDoc
Picktime
LocalMed
Nexhealth

2. Inform Your Patients with Email and SMS Marketing Campaigns

Another great tool to promote effective marketing for dentists is to keep patients informed with email and SMS marketing campaigns.

Everyone carries around their smartphone, so to make sure that you can always communicate with your patients at a moment’s notice, you can target them with email and SMS messages that give them important information about your business hours or important changes to your facility due to COVID-19.

For example, if you can only offer appointments on certain days, you can easily update everyone with a single message. Plus, if you want to provide extra value to your most loyal patients, you can send them special discounts on cleanings or free checkups to maintain their loyalty.

Email and SMS marketing for dentists is an important tool that all practices should use to keep open lines of communication with their patients. Not to mention, you can leverage all of your contacts for future dental marketing campaigns on social media, as well as using their data to better understand your demographics and what they respond to.

3. Service Your Patients at a Safe Distance

Another interesting tactic being used to promote effective marketing for dentists is to serve patients at a safe distance.

In fact, many dental practices around the country are having patients wait in the car until they’re notified that their appointment time is ready to begin. Doing so eliminates the need for patients to wait in the waiting room while promoting a sense of individual care that protects the overall health of everyone involved. Once again, by using online scheduling tools and SMS marketing for dentists, patients can easily be notified and stay safe in the process.

4. Boost Your Social Media for Dentists with BuzzyBooth

Finally, once patients do get back into your waiting room for their appointment, you can boost your dental social media strategy with the help of BuzzyBooth—photo booth for dentists that gives patients something fun to do.

How to Find Brand Advocates for Your Business: 3 Tips to Follow

With COVID-19 making such a huge impact on the world, earning back trust from customers can be an uphill battle.

As a business, there’s only so much you can do to promote your brand on your own, but with the help of brand advocates to spread the awareness, you can easily leverage new audiences that come with lots of great benefits. Think of it as a form of influencer marketing—you want people online to engage with your business and advocate for its success among their own consumer habits and experiences. But creating brand advocates all starts with having the right opportunities in place for them to get involved.

If you’re wondering how to find brand advocates or how to create brand advocates, then here are 3 tips you can follow to build success:

1. Offer Your Customers Value

To start creating brand advocates, your first step is to offer your customer value.

The best way to do this is to develop some kind of loyalty program or opportunity for customers to get involved with your business, while at the same time, creating ways for them to benefit as a consumer.

Some brand advocate program examples include:

Hosting a giveaway on social media
Offering customer loyalty points with purchases
Featuring customers on social media with a shoutout
Hosting contests on social media for customers to participate in
Offering a referral program for customers to take advantage of

These are just a few brand advocate program examples that you can try for yourself, but as long as you give something to your customers in return, you should have no problem retaining them for the future.

2. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Feedback

In addition to offering them value, you can easily create brand advocates by asking them for feedback on your business.

Whether it’s about your products or services, you can invite customers to leave comments on your social posts or video—welcoming their feedback and using it to fuel your development/marketing strategy for the future. Anyone confused about how to find brand advocates doesn’t have to look too far than their own network. Think of it as starting a conversation with a friend—you can ask for their opinion about a product, ask them how they use it, what would they change about it, anything!

Creating brand advocates depends on your willingness to reach out and interact. Nobody learns how to create brand advocates overnight, and instead, it takes interaction and dedication to make an impact with your audience.

3. Invest in New Technology

Lastly, a great way to implement some new brand advocate program examples is to invest in new technology that simplifies how to create brand advocates in the first place.

For example, with a photo booth for businesses from BuzzyBooth, you can easily invite customers to take a selfie at your location, while providing them with some instant value that they can share with their friends and families. Once they snap a selfie at the photo kiosk, they can input their information and send the media file to themselves without any hassle. More importantly, as a business, you also get access to their basic customer info, which you can then use to bolster other marketing strategies, like email marketing or SMS marketing to enhance your reach.

BuzzyBooth is a modern way to develop brand advocates while still positioning customers as the main focal point. Don’t wrack your brain worrying about how to find brand advocates when there’s technology out there to make the job easier.

4 Email Marketing Tips for Restaurants

Since so many people are stuck at home from COVID-19, email marketing for restaurants is a great way to connect with customers.

Around the country, some states are beginning to reopen their economies and resume business as usual, but that doesn’t mean customers are going to be chomping at the bit to go out. There will be a long-time stigma throughout society that restaurants should try to alleviate due to the pandemic, and through email marketing services for restaurants, you can begin to engage with your customers and earn their trust for the future.

And if you’re completely new to email marketing, don’t worry! These 4 email marketing tips for restaurants will help you rebuild your success:

1. Welcome Your New and Old Customers

Whether you use new contacts that have just signed up for your emails or you want to target older email contacts, make sure to welcome them with a positive message.

Your welcome email should serve as an initial point of contact that sets the tone of your brand and lets customers know that you care about their health and safety. COVID-19 has changed the restaurant landscape for the foreseeable future, so you should use your welcome email to let customers know that you’re taking the right precautions with your staff and using other options, like takeout and delivery, to grow your business.

2. Write Catchy Subject Lines

To make the most out of email marketing for restaurants, don’t forget to write catchy subject lines for your emails and newsletters.

The idea is to quickly capture your reader’s imagination, so that means using keywords that align with your internal message, but that also speaks to the value that the customer can get in return. For example, if your email is about an upcoming promotion that you want to offer—maybe a free pizza with an initial order—you can title the subject of your email as: “Free Pizza Today Only.”

Right away, a customer will get roped in with the offer, and that leads to them opening the main message and hopefully placing an order.

Pro Tip* Somewhere between 30-50 characters is a good limit for your subject lines.

3. Don’t Forget to Include Pictures with Your Emails

Just as important as a catchy subject title, don’t forget to include pictures with your emails.

Email marketing services for your restaurant are only effective when you have good visuals to entice customers. Photos of your food, your drinks, your decor, your atmosphere, customers enjoying your service—these are all assets that can help steer customers in your direction.

So, whenever you’re about to send an email blast, always make sure to include a photo that fits your email’s purpose.

4. Use Text Message Marketing for Restaurants

Email marketing for restaurants is a great way to build your customer base, but text message marketing for restaurants is just as impactful on your success.

In the same way as using email to do customer outreach, you can shift your contacts to achieve customer engagement via text messages. In this case, you target customer phone numbers instead of email addresses. Through inviting people to sign up for SMS marketing online or in your location, once they agree, you have full access to their attention.

In fact, studies show that open-rates for SMS messages are over 90%, whereas open rates for email float below 30%. The hardest part is just getting customers to sing up, but once they do, you can take your email marketing services for restaurants to the next level!

BuzzyBooth Can Boost Your Success

To improve your email marketing for restaurants or to enhance your outreach with text messaging marketing for restaurants, BuzzyBooth can easily improve your success.

With a photo booth for restaurants that collects customer data for you, you won’t have to worry about the extra legwork it takes to get customers to subscribe. Instead, you can hit them with that instant value of a photo booth that spotlights their visit and keeps your business on their radar.

Visit BuzzyBooth today to get started.

How COVID-19 Should Change Your Hotel Marketing Strategy

Whether you’re trying to revamp your hotel marketing strategy or you’re wondering how to market a new hotel, COVID-19 requires you to take stock of certain guidelines.

The hotel industry has been changed forever. With social distancing measures becoming commonplace and society valuing the importance of new health standards, the only way for hotels to survive is to adapt. In terms of physical location, there’s not much hotel owners can do, but the real impact comes with hotel marketing and the way you build trust with customers.

If you’re struggling to navigate COVID-19 and how to build success, here’s how the pandemic should change your hotel marketing strategy:

Focus On Your Reputation

One of the biggest challenges that all businesses are facing right now is how they handle their brand reputation.

Since COVID-19 struck, businesses a part of all industries have been struggling with how they respond to the disaster. Rather than trying to rally for sales and “business as usual,” the better response involves asking yourself, “How can I be a part of the solution?”

For instance, look at the various CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who are donating their salaries to help keep their employees afloat. The same goes for companies adjusting to working from home and providing better service to their customers. The idea is not about how businesses are going to remain successful during COVID-19, but how can they help fight the outbreak and serve both their employees and customers.

People on social media pay attention to this sort of behavior, so making sure to spotlight what your hotel is doing to contribute to the cause is what every hotel marketing strategy should consist of.

To achieve this, you can try…

Posting on social media about how your hotel is adjusting to the outbreak
Release an official statement about your changes and mission to serving the community
Donate any proceeds you can from bookings to charities and organizations that are fighting COVID-19
Offer a discount for healthcare workers traveling to fight COVID-19
Work with your city to donate rooms at your hotel to serve as a quarantine area for infected citizens or communities

There’s a lot you can do to make a difference. So, for right now, don’t worry about how to market your hotel, focus on what you can do to position your hotel as an ally that customers can support and get inspired by.

Build Trust with Your Customers

Once you establish your position, your next step is to build trust with your customers to let know them that you’re taking new health measures seriously.

Even you don’t have any bookings or are currently closed down due to state-mandated stay-at-home orders, you can still let customers know what precautions you’re implementing. For example, you can showcase on social media that you’re following through with…

Social distancing measures by only booking rooms that are spaced apart
Ensuring your hotel staff wear masks and gloves at all times
Provide daily cleaning services and fresh towels for any hotel guests
Provide contactless check-in online and have room keys ready for customers when they arrive
Remove any kind continental breakfast for the public, but convert to room service options

Anything you can do to instill safety in your customers’ minds is the right decision when it comes to your hotel marketing strategy. Especially if you’re not sure how to market a new hotel, COVID-19 gives you a roadmap to follow to ensure success.

Invest in New Technology

Finally, to boost your hotel marketing strategy during COVID-19, you should always invest in new technology.

Although extra money may be tight, whatever finances you can reserve for new technology to make your customers’ lives easier is worth it. Like with checking into their rooms, perhaps you can invest in new mobile technologies to eliminate room keys and encourage wireless room access. The same goes for setting up a mobile app for your hotel so customers can gain Wi-Fi access, request assistance from hotel staff, or order room service.

Successful hotel marketing relies on new technology, so whatever you can do to keep customers smiling is key. You may even want to explore a hotel photo booth for customers to take fun pictures during their stay. With a device like BuzzyBooth, hotel guests can take fun pictures that they can instantly share on social media to enhance your brand.

BuzzyBooth brings excitement to your hotel marketing strategy and comes with lots of other benefits to engaging with your audience. If you want to thrive during COVID-19, explore these ideas above, and try your best to make a positive impact.

What Do Effective Marketing Strategies for Restaurants Look Like During COVID-19?

With parts of America beginning to reopen despite the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants are searching for ways to drum up business and recoup their losses.

To achieve this, along with undergoing a major shift in digital transformation, the next best avenue for success lies in effective marketing strategies to regain customer loyalty. After all, many customers are skeptical about the safety of dining out with COVID-19 as a potential threat. However, if restaurant owners can implement the right approach, rebuilding the business and winning customers back is entirely possible.

To help give you an idea of what needs to happen, here’s what effective marketing strategies for restaurants look like during COVID-19:

Get Active on Social Media

All effective marketing strategies for restaurants should include social media, but now more than ever, get active on a variety of platforms to connect with customers and share your story.

For example, using Instagram, you should be posting photos of what changes or updates your restaurant has gone through during the pandemic. Share videos of who you are, who your staff is, and humanize your restaurant’s brand to build a genuine connection with your audience.

Once you’ve shared updates on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, you can then use social media to offer discounts on delivery options, encourage take-out orders, and support your community and customers by featuring them on your page and letting everyone know you care.

Especially since so many are stuck indoors, social media is your one tool to instantly connect with them and share your story—use it to bring awareness to your efforts and offer your services.

Make Changes to Your Restaurant’s Health Standards

Another important step to developing effective marketing strategies for your restaurant during COVID-29 is to make changes to your overall health standards.

The new normal for society (for the time being) is to wear masks and face coverings in public places. Hand sanitizing stations should be posted at multiple locations in public areas for people to use. Social distancing requirements ask for people to stand 6-feet apart to curb the spread of disease. Altogether, these are measures that you also need to implement in your restaurant for customers to know and follow.

So by using social media and working with your staff, make sure that you come up with a COVID-19 strategy at your restaurant that makes people feel safe. Your new health measures should include…

Instructing your restaurant staff to wear masks and gloves at all times
Using disposable menus for in-house guests
Wiping down surfaces and seating in between guests
Still maintaining curbside and to-go orders for customers
Offering delivery options for customers
Upgrading your POS to use touchless payment and transactions
Upgrading to ordering food through mobile apps or your website to eliminate the use of menus altogether

Adapting to the new normal is what leads to effective marketing strategies for restaurants in the midst of COVID-19. And once you have a firm plan at the helm of your relaunch, you can sweeten the deal with special offers to reel customers in.

Offering Special Deals and Winning Customers Back

Finally, you can use all of these efforts combined to offer special deals to customers in order to win them back.

For instance, on social media, you can post a deal for a family bundle of food at a discounted rate. You can offer free delivery on orders over a certain amount. If a family has kids, anyone under the age of 12 gets an entree for free. If someone orders through your mobile app with a certain discount code, they get 50% off their meal. You can try anything you want to build a marketing strategy that works best, just as long as you provide value to your customers that they won’t find anywhere else.

Pro tip: us your current customer email list and phone numbers to create email and SMS marketing campaigns to entice customers to order food—BuzzyBooth can help!

Photo Booth Ideas for Restaurants: Choose BuzzyBooth

At some point, customers will be able to dine at their favorite restaurants again, and when they do, you need a fun idea to get them engaged with your business.

That’s why a photo booth idea for restaurants is a great solution! With BuzzyBooth, customers can have fun with their friends and family while making memories that last. Not to mention, you as a business owner and marketer gain access to tons of useful tools to build your success.

COVID-19 may be keeping people at a distance, but once the smoke clears and things get back to normal, a photo booth could be just the thing you need to revamp your marketing strategy.

How BuzzyBooth Works

BuzzyBooth is a photo booth for restaurants that customers interact with.

On the customer side, they get free media files that they can share on social media, and with every use, the business also has access to that media, along with valuable customer data to help grow future marketing campaigns.

The photo booth idea for restaurants can be set up in the lobby, next to the bar, out on the dining floor, or outside when customer lines get too long. One of the biggest challenges that restaurants have is keeping people occupied while they wait for a table, but with BuzzyBooth, customers can easily have fun with their friends and family, take silly photos, and then walk away with a memento to honor the night.

What You Get in Return

Although photo booth ideas for restaurants provide entertainment for customers, what businesses get in return is just as beneficial.

For example, every photo or video file captured on BuzzyBooth is stored in a database that business owners have access to. That means restaurant managers or social media teams can use the media files to post online, capitalizing on user-generated content to boost online engagement. Along with that, once a customer uses the photo booth, they are prompted to enter their basic contact information in order to receive the files. Instantly, this provides a way for restaurants to compile email addresses and phone numbers that they can use for email and SMS marketing campaigns.

Having to ask customers to share this info can be a real challenge, but a photo booth idea for restaurants bypasses this process with a simple, unintrusive way to collect information that would otherwise be missed.

Sign Up for BuzzyBooth Today

Now more than ever, staying connected with customers means staying on their radar no matter what difficulties arise.

Although COVID-19 has presented many challenges for business owners everywhere, there will be a time when customers can go out again and enjoy a great meal with family and friends. Once that happens, you’ll be able to offer them a way to reconnect with a sense of normalcy and fun, and most all, you’ll be prepared with marketing tools that will make you a stronger business for the future.

BuzzyBooth is a photo booth idea for restaurants that get results—click here to request a free demo and sign up today!

What are Brand Advocates and How Brand Advocates Help Your Business?

Rather than influencers, brand advocates are those who represent your brand on a wider spectrum in a genuine fashion.

And if you’re wondering how to find brand advocates, they won’t just show up at random. Creating brand advocates means giving customers an opportunity to interact with your brand and receive something in exchange that keeps them invested over time.

That being said, the COVID-19 pandemic makes creating brand advocates a bit more challenging, but despite the hurdles, there are a few things you can do to build success.

How to Create Brand Advocates

As mentioned before, if you’re wondering how to create brand advocates, it starts with getting customer involved with your company.

For example, with BuzzyBooth, brands can use a photo booth to attract customers in-store and encourage them to snap a photo of themselves. Instantly, the customer enters their basic information to send the photo to themselves, and in exchange, the business owner can use that data to fuel future marketing campaigns. Think of a photo booth as brand advocate program examples that can help you gain an authentic following.

Once the customer has their selfie photo, they’ll feel inclined to share it on social media and tag the business in the process. As a result, the brand has generated an active, genuine brand advocate that will extend the impact on others in their immediate community.

Plus,a photo booth for retail or other industries isn’t the only strategy used when creating brand advocates. Below are some other approaches that can help build a strong following from dedicated customer:

Using newsletters and email blasts to keep customers updated with sales and special offers
Using SMS marketing to send customers quick updates, delivery statuses, and customer surveys
Inviting customers to submit reviews that you can share online as testimonials

From a marketing perspective, creating brand advocates is best achieved with these tools. However, for a larger impact, it’s best to turn to social media.

How to Find Brand Advocates Using Social Media

Along with brand advocate program examples like a photo booth and various marketing strategies, using social media is the next best step.

Primarily, brands need to create initiatives and opportunities for customers to engage with them and showcase their personalities. Think about various social media marketing campaigns—giveaways, shoutouts, live streams, Q&As, videos—by creating a variety of content that spans multiple forms, creating brand advocates becomes a lot easier. Not to mention, your brand obtains a wider audience reach and exposure as a whole.

Here are some ideas to explore about how to use social media effectively when it comes to creating brand advocates:

Host a giveaway where you invite people on social media to post a picture of themselves interacting with your brand. Then choose a winner to receive a free gift or major discount
On Twitter, invite customers to ask you questions about products or features
On Instagram, use Instagram Stories to showcase other people’s posts of them engaging with your brand
Post videos to YouTube where you speak to your customers and demo or showcase products

The most important thing is to simply create opportunities for others to get involved. Once they know that your brand is open to featuring customers and takes the time to spotlight them, you’ll be able to create brand advocates that transform into loyal customers.

Creating Brand Advocates with BuzzyBooth

In addition to a photo booth for brands, BuzzyBooth comes with helpful software to easily generate brand advocates.

Especially for those who are wondering how to create brand advocates or how to find brand advocates—BuzzyBooth easily tracks online reviews, collects customer data, and makes it simple to communicate with followers through email marketing and SMS marketing techniques.

Staying connected with customers is key, and with COVID-19 keeping everyone at home, the connection is more valuable than ever.