Shane Murphy (00:02)

Welcome back everybody. We're here with Mark Sorensen. He's the owner of Social High Rise, a restaurant marketing agency that really helps restaurants to shine through awesome social media, reviews, and listings management. And before this adventure, he even ran a restaurant loyalty company. So his experience with restaurants and operators spans every aspect of the operations. He has an amazing and fantastic team that has helped hundreds of

restaurants and businesses really connect with their customers online. So Mark, I am super excited to have you on today. Thanks for coming and sharing your stories and experiences with us.

Mark Sorenson (00:41)

Yo, it is a pleasure. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm glad that we get to do this. This is going to be fun.

Shane Murphy (00:46)

Absolutely. Maybe before we dive into all the juicy tactical things, can you share a little bit more about your background and about, you know, social high rise as well?

Mark Sorenson (00:58)

Yeah, so my background is, ⁓ the first company I started was called Carmachy. It was a loyalty program for restaurants. Honestly, we were gonna replace all the paper punch card loyalty cards out in the world, because that was the problem to solve. And it was a great experience. ran that company into the ground. We failed for many reasons. Probably...

I wouldn't have changed a thing. I probably liked the best learning lesson of mostly what not to do, but very, very instructive that time. And since then, ⁓ when I built that company, I spent a lot of time in the restaurant space observing and working with those other early clients that we had to figure out how we could help them. And marketing and social media was like a clear struggle for them.

This was like, ⁓ this was probably like almost 15 years ago. And so at that time, social media was very new, especially for restaurants and they didn't really know what to do about it. So social high rise was created to take that work off of their plate. And as we saw the struggles that restaurant, especially independent restaurant owners have, know, time is a big constraint. And then also they didn't necessarily get into the food business to become digital marketers. Like that's not where.

where they want to spend their time. And so for restaurants who are strapped for time, for restaurants who do find it challenging to try to stay on top of trends and understand ⁓ social media dynamics and changing algorithms, the space changes a lot, ⁓ they hire us to take that off their plate. We just do it for them as a partnership. we work specifically, we give them an account manager, one of us, someone on our team.

supported by our whole team of experts. And we're like the right hand, best friend for anything related to their online presence. We create all their content for them. We manage their community, make sure that they have excellent customer service in the way they respond to reviews. We make sure that they get found on Google by having a presence on not just Google, but every listing and directory site that matters.

⁓ including updating their hours of operation, their menus. We run paid meta campaigns for them to get exposure to people who maybe aren't following their pages that they want to get in front of. So all of that work is hard for many restaurants. And so we just, it's not that we simplify it for them, we just straight up do it for them.

Shane Murphy (03:39)

I love that. You mentioned some of the components of listings and making sure that the hours are correct. Can you speak for a little bit on the importance of listing management and why is that impactful and important for a restaurant?

Mark Sorenson (03:57)

Yeah, more and more and more this is becoming a topic of discussion among, you we go to a lot of trade shows and I speak at a lot of these trade shows and teach with other marketing expert, restaurant marketing experts. And this has like become a big topic ⁓ is local SEO. if you, so Google is, Google processes like nine out of 10 searches in the world. So when somebody is hungry and they're looking for food, ⁓

They don't go ask the guy on the street or the concierge. They just pull out their, their supercomputer, which is their phone. And they just look at the map and say, let me see all the restaurants. They look at a couple of details, maybe look them up on social media and they pick one of the, one of the restaurants that just shows up on the map. Like we're, we're suckers for convenience. We're lazy. We don't go scouring and we don't have time for that. We're just, we're hungry. need to figure it out. That's like how most.

of the customer journey starts is online. And Google processes, Google is the one who delivers the results for what restaurants get found. But the way that Google decides which restaurants show up when you're searching is there's a lot of things that they take into consideration. One of the big things is does this business have a robust presence on the internet? Another way to think about it is whatever information your restaurant has,

In Google, Google has to then kind of verify that what you put for them is actually real and can be like kind of fact checked. And they do that by scanning dozens and dozens and dozens of other directory sites like Bing and Yahoo and Apple and Uber maps and Apple maps and city search. And there's just a ton of, and then a lot of niche sites that nobody really thinks of.

The more that Google sees consistent, accurate information across the board, the more they trust the business. And Google obsesses over showing the most accurate results when someone's searching for something. So if you can prove to Google that your information is trustworthy, then Google just simply will show you to more people. Not to mention that if you include your menu on all the different listing sites on the internet, Google now has all of this extra context to know what kind of searches that

this restaurant should show up in. So for example, if you're a pizza restaurant and someone says pizza near me, you want to show up for that search. Most searches are unbranded. 2 3rds of them are unbranded, meaning the person looking for a restaurant doesn't really know what kind. They're just saying restaurant or food near me. It's not specific.

That's two thirds and those people convert within the hour. Like it's crazy how much this matters. This is like how you can get so many more customers by just being an option on the first page. So managing your listings is like one of the most foundational things a restaurant can do to A.

be found on Google. And then the other real reason is, holy crap, that's how you actually give good customer service on the first impression. mean, consumers hate it when restaurants' hours are outdated. They show up, they're actually closed, but the internet says they're open. You can turn people off immediately, sometimes forever, by not paying attention or allowing wrong info to be published about you on different directory sites.

It's a huge pain in the butt to do this manually. So we do it. We just take it off their plate. We have a tool called social menu that automagically updates all about 60 to 70 different apps, maps, search engines with name, address, phone number, amenities, menus, hours of operation, and then just gives a restaurant full control, granular control over their whole entire online presence.

Shane Murphy (08:04)

That's great. This is like a foundational... You use the phrase that this is a foundational thing. If you want to be found and if you want Google to see you as consistent and accurate and trustworthy, you need to have the consistency across the board. I think this is one layer to the next question, but maybe you can expound on this a little bit. The question is how to set up...

Mark Sorenson (08:10)

Yeah.

Shane Murphy (08:33)

the restaurant for marketing success with social media. And obviously the listing management and the local SEO is part of being found online, but there's also a social media aspect that's different. And that's another area where I think you have a lot of advice and expertise to share with the subscribers here. ⁓ How would you answer that question of set for setting up your restaurant for success with ⁓ social media marketing?

Mark Sorenson (09:03)

Yeah, that's a really, really important question. I think step one is the actual logistical setting up profiles. I think most restaurants ⁓ have an Instagram account already. And if you don't, go get one or have a Facebook page created for them. Obviously, create that page. Fill out all the information on that page. Make sure that it represents your brand properly.

So just having those profiles is like, I guess the setup. ⁓ But the real magical part is like, how do you ongoing manage those profiles? For a long, long, since we started social high rise, we have always viewed social media through the lens of customer service and relationships and like the human connections that you can have with your guests. And as time goes on and as meta

Facebook, Instagram updates their algorithms or further defines what's good content versus not good content. More and more and more, it is circling the wagons around that exact same concept that we've always had that's core for us, which is that it is about storytelling and people and relationships and human connection. So what you say on your pages, it matters. And the people who follow your pages, it's really important to know that

Those are not just randos on the internet. They are your guests. They are your very best guests. They are people who have eaten your food or absolutely plan on eating your food. Because why? Because if they definitely eat your food and they don't plan on it, they're not going to follow your page. That's just how it works. Nobody follows restaurant pages that they don't care about. So it's important to know that like when you post something, you're talking to your, your homies, you're talking to your, your, your regulars. That's who you're talking to.

And you don't need to really hard sell your regulars. They already love you. So what they're there for is, is to follow your story. They like you and follow your pages because they like you as the restaurant owner. They like your brand. They like of course the food, but they like the feelings they get when they're there and they like the, the, what you stand for and maybe the causes that you support. There's like a whole living, breathing, colorful story that, that, that is, that is your restaurant and they're here for it. And so what.

What they want is to follow along with the story. So you have to tell your story. So success for social media. to clarify, I'm talking specifically about organic social media, not paid ads. The strategy is to talk about your restaurant in all the ways, good, bad, and ugly, to be as authentic, real, raw as possible, so that it really is a reflection of reality.

And if you do that, what you'll end up is you'll end up with people engaging with your content. And that's the metric of real success on social media is engagement and reach. In fact, that comes directly from like Instagram's ⁓ SMB division is that success metrics for organic is reach and engagement. So if you're getting those things and you're being top of mind with your best guess.

That's how you inspire them to come more often and spend more money and tip your people better and order dessert this time and leave you great reviews. Like you get them to just do more of what you want by just simply like being there in on their newsfeed regularly when they're not inside of your restaurant. So that's like, that's part of that. Is is that a start?

Shane Murphy (12:49)

Yeah,

yeah, I think that's great. And I think this is also a really good call out that there are different types of social media marketing. There's organic social media and there's paid ads that you do on social media. And those do have different strategies and different outcomes that you're trying to get. One of the things that you mentioned that really pops out is to be really authentic with the good, the bad and the ugly of things that happen in a restaurant. And sometimes I think

Mark Sorenson (13:08)

Totally.

Shane Murphy (13:19)

operators shy away from sharing anything that goes wrong in their restaurant. ⁓ I think that can actually have the opposite impact that a lot of operators think. ⁓ This was probably two years ago. I ⁓ saw a post from a restaurant operator here in Utah and they mentioned that one of their waiters

had a customer that was really rude to them and it was like really weighing them down and that they were trying to solve some issues that the customer had and the customer at the end of the day just like treated them treated them poorly and they didn't like highlight this as like hey you know somebody had a bad experience they highlighted this as hey sometimes your your waiter is

you know, coming off of ⁓ a bad, a negative experience to the customer. And that happens. And here's what we do about it at the restaurant to try and help keep them motivated and all these things. And they talked about it in this like it was like a reel on Facebook and Instagram. And then I think the next day there was another one that was like, wow, I had no idea that

Mark Sorenson (14:36)

Mm-hmm.

Shane Murphy (14:47)

we would get this type of response. We had, you know, about five people come in and give like super big tips to the servers. And they said, hey, we know, we know people had a hard day yesterday. We want to just contribute. And the restaurant like followed up on that and it created this buzz and this excitement. And it came from sharing something negative that had happened that was just real and raw and full of emotion. And people respected that.

And I think sometimes it's easy to not follow your advice to be real and raw, but talk about it. People are attracted to that rawness, I think.

Mark Sorenson (15:31)

You're a hundred percent right. I could tell you countless stories. I know that like during the pandemic in particular, that was a rough time for every single restaurant. That was really rough. And, ⁓ some restaurants closed, they had to close their doors. And for, for the clients that we had, it was, it was a, it was like a, a night and day difference between our clients who were willing to be vulnerable during that time and say things like, Hey,

We're struggling. We're struggling right now and we're not really sure what to do, but here's what we're doing and here's, we have to change and we, here's how you can do business with us, even though it's not the way you normally do. And we love you no matter what, but this is hard and we'll probably get through it. versus the ones who kind of didn't want to say any of that stuff and just wanted to like, you know, they were too afraid to be vulnerable. The restaurants that were even just a little bit vulnerable.

It's like people came out of the woodwork to come and go out of their way, them, bend over backwards to give them their money. Take my money. It will be okay. Cause I got you. And not to mention just like the changes that happened, you know, restaurants that stayed connected on social media with their guests were able to move quickly and change and pivot. We had a client who's a fine dining and they're like fine dining. We don't do take out. Like we don't ever do that. We don't do, we don't do.

delivery, like we're fine dining, we're a fancy steak house. And so what we helped them to turn into was a butcher shop because they were on the hook for six months worth of beef that they already paid for. And then they, what they did is they had their chefs shoot videos teaching how to cook the perfect steak at home. And then they had orders for uncooked steaks. And that became the spark that got, got them through that, through some of those early rough months.

And people showed up, people showed up. So yes, the authenticity part is important. And I could go on and on about stories, but yeah, any restaurant that's brave enough to be authentic and real. I mean, if you think about it, there's a reason why reality TV is prolific in our day. It's because people want to connect with reality, like real human emotions for good and bad. And that's why it's taken off. you can,

Give your guests the story that they want in a way that they will like if you include some of the tough times as well as the polished, everything's great, come for a good time and a good meal. If you mix it up and be real, it's better for you every time.

Shane Murphy (18:21)

I love that. In the few minutes that we have left here together, what's one piece of advice for restaurant owners to succeed or improve their marketing?

Mark Sorenson (18:35)

Yeah, that's big question because marketing is a lot. Just to stick it with the topics that we're talking about, there are social media marketing. mean, think the big thing that I tell restaurants that I see get confused, we kind of touched on it, is that organic social media, it is a retention play. That's what it's for. It's retention. And paid social is acquisition. So don't get those confused. Don't think that

whether you or someone else is going to post organically that that's going to get you in front of new audiences and new people and new customers. It can, it will a little bit, but it's mostly going to be in front of, be seen by the people who already follow you. And then to get in front of the new people, you just have to pay Meta or Google or whatever your advertising, you have to pay for that privilege to get in front of people who don't know who you are. So understanding that is important.

And then the authenticity thing. mean, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable and just know that like your story is more than just your food. is, it's human centric. Like make sure that you include pictures of people in your content. It could be you, it could be your staff, it could be customers. Because that's what people want to engage with. You'll find that your engagement on your stuff will go up because there's people in it.

And then the third little hack, I guess I'll share is like, don't be afraid to use user generated content. Like use the, the photos, videos that your guests take while they're at your restaurant and they tag you in on Instagram or on their story, or they, you know, in their Yelp or Google review, they include like a picture, feel free to take the good work that they've done and make that your post, give them a shout out, like give them credit for it. Maybe pair.

prepare the five-star review that they left for you. That can be your post for the day. It's just like letting your customers take part in telling your story with you. Those are the principles that we live by. It's been successful for our clients for the last 13 years that we've been doing this. So go do it. That's what I would say.

Shane Murphy (20:52)

Super great advice. Thanks for sharing. I love those examples that you just shared. Those are really good, easy to reproduce tactical things. What are the best ways for people to follow you and social high rise after this?

Mark Sorenson (21:09)

Yeah, you can always go to our website and see what's going on there. You can subscribe to our newsletter. We periodically send out good stuff. Follow us on social media. I mean, that's what we do. And you'll see what we're all about. And of course, if anybody feels like social media is just not in their wheelhouse and they just need to get it off their plate,

You go on our site, book a call, and we'll figure out if it's a good fit to help partner with you in one way or another so that you can just focus on running your business, doing the things that you do best.

Shane Murphy (21:48)

And what's your website and your maybe Instagram handle?

Mark Sorenson (21:51)

Yeah, socialhighrise.com is the website and we have all social high rise no spaces for our handles on X and Instagram, Facebook, everywhere.

Shane Murphy (22:06)

Awesome. Well, Mark, thank you for coming and sharing these highlights and experiences. There's a lot that we can take away. So thank you for sharing.

Mark Sorenson (22:14)

Awesome, it's my pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me on. I look forward to the next time we do round two and just like do the reunion tour.

Shane Murphy (22:20)

Absolutely. We'll get into some more juicy ones next time for sure as well.

Mark Sorenson (22:24)

Yeah,

yeah, we'll get real.

Shane Murphy (22:27)

Awesome. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Sorenson (22:29)

All right, thanks Shane, appreciate you.