The Value of social media for dessert parlour growth - blog header

When it comes to dessert parlour growth, you can do no better than promoting your business on social media. That’s right – the apps you use every day to endlessly scroll through content are the perfect marketing tools to ensure that your brand gains traction, exposure and (most importantly) new customers.

Why use social media?

Social media is a fantastic weapon to have in your marketing arsenal and can be a key revenue driver for your business whether it is new or established, providing it is used properly. With targeted content campaigns, consistent posting and adequate incentives, social media platforms can be an effective way to encourage brand awareness and advocacy in a way that drives revenue.

Digital platforms allow brands to connect with their audience via mass communication and with relatively little effort and cost. At the start of the millennium, self-promotion for new businesses would have involved hand-posting menus and leaflets, paying for advertisements in local newspapers, and was also much more reliant on word-of-mouth. Now, brand owners can interact with new and existing customers directly and quickly by responding to their comments and feedback, adding a truly personal touch to the brand-client relationship.

Facebook

It’s almost impossible to talk about business-boosting social media for dessert parlour growth without mentioning Facebook, which is home to almost 3 billion active users and 80 million businesses. Whether you’re looking to share stellar feedback, images of your best desserts or showcase tutorials, Facebook has the capability to host all of these content forms with ease. Better yet, users are able to easily share your content on their feeds, directly download it, tag people in your posts, or send your posts via private direct messaging, which makes inter-customer communication simple and creates opportunities to encourage user-generated content to promote your business to a wider audience. This makes Facebook a fantastic way to request reviews for your dessert parlour, ask your customers to provide recommendations or encourage them to use the ‘check in’ feature that notifies their friends and followers about where they are. In fact, the platform is so easy to use that it is deemed one of the most demographically diverse, with your content being able to reach teens and baby boomers alike. However, most Facebook users are ‘millennials’, who range from 25-34, with more males than females using the platform. As such, overly aesthetic content may not suit this audience (this would be far more appropriate for Instagram).

If you’re looking to generate new enquiries through Facebook, organic lead generation can be challenging and a little slower, especially for new businesses,  so to ensure that your dessert parlour growth strategy is targeted to the right demographic, we advise using targeted Facebook advertising to grow your audience through boosted posts, promotions or newsletter sign-ups.

TikTok

Whereas millennials and boomers may be more acclimatised to Facebook, the younger generation undoubtedly flock to TikTok to consume their favourite content. The short-form video-sharing platform has become a staple in consumers’ everyday lives, with the app’s 1 billion users spending an average of 95 minutes per day scrolling the depths of their For You Page.

To channel significant dessert parlour growth, businesses need to produce content that is eye-catching and entertaining from the very first frame – after all, your content could be scrolled past with one simple swipe, so you need to grab your audience’s attention quickly. Consider starting out with an interesting story about your business and experience, or a step-by-step tutorial on how to make the most mesmerising dessert: so long as it’s entertaining, and is targeted to your audiences, you’re sure to see interest.

Instagram

If you’re trying to boost your dessert parlour growth by showing off the delightful aesthetics of your products, Instagram is the platform for you! Its focus on visuals lends itself particularly well to sharing photos and videos that show striking, aspirational menu items that encourage your customers to try out your desserts. Instagram is also a fantastic place to consolidate your brand identity – when viewing all of your posts on your feed grid, your customers will be able to see your brand’s distinctive and identifiable design, logo and colour scheme. It is also immensely easy to share images that your customers have taken to either your stories or feed, which simultaneously promotes your product and makes your customers feel valued and heard.

When it comes to Instagram aesthetics, it may be worthwhile to place visual cues around your establishment. Here are a few ideas that could accelerate your dessert parlour growth:

  • Consider setting up a quaint photo booth area where customers can take snaps before and after their dessert, and encourage them to tag you on social media
  • Look into placing incentivised advertisements on social media and across your dessert parlour that encourage customers to post their dessert on Instagram for the chance to win a free one

Twitter

If Instagram is the visually aesthetic social media, Twitter is its vernacular-based, opinion-wielding counterpart. Twitter is the ultimate form of written self-expression and is associated with (often very honest!) reviews and feedback, so, if you’re looking to gain trust in your brand identity, Twitter is the platform to cultivate this. Additionally, it’s important to remember that Tweets with video attachments attract 10-times more engagement, which is an easy conversion if you are already using TikTok or Instagram. Ultimately, this can be a great way to drive traffic to your website and into your dessert parlour by interacting directly with customers in a way that is clear, concise and quick, making consumption of your content easy for prospective consumers and thereby accelerating your dessert parlour growth.

Let’s get your business seen!

We don’t just offer remarkable gelato here at Joe Delucci’s, but the tools and assistance to get your dessert parlour off the ground. For more information on how our remarkable gelato, paired with our industry-leading experience, can help you obtain exceptional dessert parlour growth, get in touch with our team here.