Almost everything written about UGC, including most of what is on this site, quietly assumes one thing: that the product can be posted to whoever watches the video.
A café cannot be posted. Neither can a restaurant, a brasserie, a hotel or a shop with one door. If you run one of those, a large part of the standard advice is not slightly wrong for you, it is inverted, and following it costs money in a way that is hard to see.
Reach is a cost, not a benefit
For a product brand, a view from far away is a small future possibility. For a venue, it is a bill.
The catchment area is the whole strategy
Somebody in another province watching your video is not a weak lead. They are a person who will never come, and every one of them consumed budget that could have reached somebody who might have walked in tonight.
That single sentence changes the objective. You are not trying to be seen by many people. You are trying to be seen repeatedly by the few thousand people who could plausibly be at your door within half an hour, which is a completely different media problem and a much easier one.
It also changes what a good result looks like. A video with modest views and a comment asking whether you take bookings on Sunday has outperformed a video with ten times the views and no such comment, and no dashboard will tell you that.
What that changes about creator choice
The follower count becomes nearly irrelevant and the creator's own geography becomes the main criterion.
A creator with a small audience who lives fifteen minutes away, is recognisably from here, and whose followers are mostly local, is worth more to you than a national name. Their audience overlaps with your catchment, and overlap is the only thing you are buying.
That is unusual, and it is genuinely good news for a small venue. The people who are affordable are also the correct choice, which is rarely true anywhere else in marketing.
| What a product brand optimises for | What a venue should optimise for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Total reach | Reach inside the catchment | The rest cannot arrive |
| A large creator once | Small local creators, repeatedly | Familiarity beats novelty here |
| A polished hero video | Many ordinary posts over time | You need to be remembered on a Thursday |
| Clicks to a site | Saves, and comments about booking | Intent looks different for a table |
| National seasonality | Local events, weather, the calendar | Your week is decided nearby |
The fourth row is the measurement change most venues never make. For a product, a click is intent. For a restaurant, the intent signals are saving the video, asking about opening hours, and sending it to one other person, and none of those appear in a click report.
What a venue video must actually answer
Not whether the place is beautiful. Photographs settled that years ago and everybody has beautiful photographs.
The three fears
There are three things that stop somebody choosing you tonight, and a standard video answers none of them.
The first is whether they will feel out of place. Too quiet, too loud, too formal, too young, wrong clothes: that fear is settled in about two seconds by seeing other customers who look like the viewer, and it is the single strongest reason to film with real people in the room rather than an empty dining room at four in the afternoon.
The second is whether there will be a table. Not a small worry, and one that turns into not going at all. A creator saying they walked in on a Wednesday without booking removes it, and no amount of interior footage does.
The third is whether it fits tonight. People do not choose restaurants, they choose occasions: a quick lunch, somewhere to talk, somewhere the children survive, somewhere after the cinema. A video that names the occasion converts, and one that shows food without an occasion is a poster.
The one thing nobody films
Film the arrival.
Not the plates, which everybody films. The walk from the tram stop, the door, what it looks like from outside at night, and the moment of walking in and being spoken to. That sequence answers all three fears at once and removes the small unease of going somewhere unknown for the first time, which is the actual barrier.
For a Belgian venue there is a second reason to film it, which is language. A viewer wants to know which language they will be greeted in before they arrive, and hearing it in the video is a far more comfortable way to find out than discovering it at the door. Filming the greeting settles it without anybody having to make it a topic.
Keep reading
- Your Belgian Campaign Is Already International
- The Sale You Lost Is Not in Your Analytics
- Belgium Runs on Two Calendars
- Nobody Has Decided Not to Pay You
- The complete UGC guide for Belgium
Frequently asked questions
Should we film in both languages?
Film in the one your staff actually greet people in, and if that is genuinely both, show both in the same video. What you should not do is make a version implying a service you do not offer.
Are national creators ever worth it for a venue?
For an opening or an anniversary, occasionally, and treat it as press rather than as marketing. For ordinary weeks it is the most expensive way to reach people who cannot come.
How often should we post?
More often and smaller. Being remembered on the evening somebody is deciding is the entire game, and that is a frequency problem rather than a production problem.
What about tourists?
They are the exception that proves the rule, because for them the catchment is temporary rather than geographic. If tourists matter to you, target them where they plan, which is before they travel and in their own language.