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Restaurant Mobile Ordering Technology

Spiro Pappadopoulos

As national chains and billion dollar valuation delivery operations drive revenue to their locations / partners where do today’s independent and small group restaurants turn to maintain their share of the market?

mobile order.PNG

There are thousands of stand alone app creators, and now restaurants are dealing with clusters of tablets and reconciling sales totals and reimbursements from several systems daily. It’s a mess.

Streamlined POS systems that integrate in person, online, and mobile orders are somehow still eluding us.

What is the best solution you have found?

 

 

Filed Under: Food and Drink, Just Think, Mobile Tagged With: mobile ordering for Restaurants

Dominate Instagram Marketing: How to Increase Your Brand’s Local Audience

Spiro Pappadopoulos

Instagram has held the distinction as the fastest growing social media network for over a year now. For brands like yours, it puts the ability to get close to your targeted local audience in the palm of your hand.

This requires a healthy dose of inspiration be it artsy, humorous, insightful etc… it also requires you to have a solid understanding of the ins and outs of Instagram. That is what this post is about.

1) Follow the most influential local Instagrammers, interact with them.

Start by finding those that have tagged your business in a post, either by mentioning its name, or by geotagging photos at your place of business. These are happy customers who you must follow and interact with. Like their photos and let them know you are fans of them too, that good feeling is the beginning of an amazing instagram relationship.

Look for others in your community who are active on Instagram and follow them, like their content, get to know what they find interesting, finding customers that will sing your praises is a great thing. Remember you are great at what you do, once they give your business a try you will make them wish you had found them on Instagram earlier.

2) Hashtags are key to getting found, here is how to use them.

While I have a post devoted to this topic on its own, I will give you the cliff notes version here. Focus on finding the relevant hashtags for your post, making up a funny word may be entertaining for your followers but it isnt going to get searched for often if at all. Consider a fitness related post that included the hashtag #beeeasstmodelegdaaaaze versus #squats #legday #workout… clearly the latter post would transcend and be found more often. Studies have shown that including three or more hashtags in your post drastically increases how many people find it. In fact up to 7 are acceptable to Instagram users.

As far as local marketing goes, use hashtags that relate to the town/state/university that makes up your target audience. For instance I use the #andover hashtag frequently for my restaurants in downtown andover. It both relates to those who live in town, and to the prominent boarding school Phillips Academy Andover that is in town.

3) Pull back the Curtain, and do it frequently.

Intersperse images of what you are selling with behind the scenes pics of your team, your office, previews of future offerings… let your audience feel privy to your process and in turn they will feel a part of it. For instance showing pictures of our recently launched sunday brunch dishes is a good way to let people know how amazing they are, but showing them pictures of a bar full of people having a blast eating them is another angle. Those ‘product in motion’ or ‘experience’ images are often even more impactful. Try something different and let your audience look forward to finding your next image… be you, be human, share you business story. It may be your everyday, but to a lot of people it is very interesting and your providing a window into the happenings can make them feel much more comfortable taking the plunge and becoming a customer.

Filed Under: Food and Drink, Just Think, Make Local Sell Local, Mobile, Realty Marketing Tagged With: instagram marketing

A Responsive Website’s Time Has Come

Spiro Pappadopoulos

What is a responsive website?

It is important to understand the terminology when dealing with technology, in this case a responsive website responds to the screen size and makes the content easy to consume. Think about the sites that make you zoom in desperately to read them on your phone. Those ARE NOT responsive sites.

As Wikipedia puts it:

Responsive Web design (RWD) is a Web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors). — Read More On Wiki

Responsive-Web-Design

 

In Real Estate Marketing this is particularly important for two reasons: 

  1. Your clients and prospective clients are likely to find you on their mobile device first, and having a website that works on a mobile device becomes more important everyday for that reason. 
  2. You are not going to maintain two websites, one for computers and one for mobile phones

You don’t have to take my word for it, in the real estate world the momentum is undeniable, just read the headlines:

  • RealtyTech to roll out responsive design property search widgets 
  • BuildersUpdate.com relaunches with ‘device agnostic’ responsive design 
  • Homes.com offers responsive design website platform for agents
  • Cartavi now available as responsive Web app

Ok you get it, this is where we are headed, so why haven’t you made the switch? Its complicated, its work, its not what you do for a living. I get it, there is always something else to do. This is important, this is more important today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.

When you are ready to talk about creating a responsive website presence online, I am here to discuss what you need to make it happen.

So that was fast, but in reality you should either plan on converting soon yourself, or you should find someone to help you do it.

Filed Under: Make Local Sell Local, Mobile, Realty Marketing Tagged With: responsive realtor website, responsive web design

Restaurant Marketing Cheat Sheet

Spiro Pappadopoulos

Here are some quick hit tweaks to your online presence that will get you found:

  1. Info people want should be front and center: Menu – Hours – Address – Phone Number. All on mobile ready pages. Get it done.
  2. Check your info on the big referrers, Google Local, Yelp, etc I recently found one of my places had a wrong phone number on Yelp.
  3. Think like a customer when you write blog posts, what are they looking for when they search? “Rehearsal Dinner Locations in Malden”
  4. Photos have been shown to drive trafic and are particularly powerful with Food. Always Use them.
  5. Talk about why you love what you do, not how cheap you are willing to sell it.
  6. Make sure your brand has a message and stick to it, don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be your brand.
  7. Respond to customer requests and issues, make them right, let them and others see you are responsive.
  8. Monitor your reviews for fake competitor driven ones, Yelp is particularly bad for this.
  9. Share whats new on a regular basis, don’t put a hard sell on it, just share it.
  10. Remember that you are not just selling food, you are selling a social experience and/or a service just as much.

You can get a lot of bang for your online marketing buck (and time) if you use these tweaks to adjust what you already do. It doesn’t all have to be technical and complicated, its still human interaction.

@spirocks on Twitter 

Filed Under: Food and Drink, Mobile, Uncategorized Tagged With: restaurant marketing

The Only Way to Put Your Business in the Center of Attention

Spiro Pappadopoulos

The time to deny it, IS OVER, mobile internet rules the day.

If you question this, do the following:

  •  Look at any child with your iPhone or iPad.
  • Look at your spouse across the table from you.
  • See what people are doing on the train.
  • Check out what gets the attention of people in line at Starbucks.
  • what was the driver of that car that swerved at you on the highway today doing?

Ignore it at your own peril, the future is in the pockets of all of your customers. Is your marketing online? Do you give it the credit it deserves? Is your website usable on mobile devices?

If you are using flash, do not have a mobile ready site, or spend your time and dollars on offline marketing only, the answer is no, and you are losing out regardless of whether you feel it or not.

Mobile is an Opportunity not a Threat.

Can you deliver more than your competitors via online content, mobile access, and social integration? Are you ready to allow your customer to know you, the real you? If you are you will be the new king of your market before long, as the customers you seek will be found here.

Where is Here?

Here is everywhere now. Here is where ever they are when they think they need what you sell. Here is on the toilet. Here is on top of the Empire State Building. Here is in an airplane. Here is in a Doctor’s Office waiting room.

People buy diapers on Amazon from a bar at 1Am, and you don’t think they are going to search for an eyeglass shop while they wait for their coffee in the morning?

Ask yourself if you have done enough to put your business where people are looking for you. THEN DO MORE.

Find Me @spirocks on Twitter, I hope you enjoyed this pep talk.

Filed Under: Just Think, Make Local Sell Local, Mobile, Tools Tagged With: marketing, small business marketing, social media for business, social media marketing

Mobile devices are shaping business today.

Spiro Pappadopoulos

Recent research by location-based ad network JiWire has given us some great insights into the way mobile devices are shaping business today. This is not a prediction, this is what is happening around you and your business right now.

I found the following points most interesting:

  1. People from 18-34yrs old own on average 2.4 mobile connected devices each.
  2. 53% use  location based mobile apps to find store locations.
  3. 46% use location based mobile apps to find points of interest.
  4. 40% use mobile apps to connect with others.
  5. From 73-83% of people are comfortable buying with their mobile device depending on their age.
Here is an infographic made by JiWire to illustrate these and other findings:
Mobile Devices and Commerce

Filed Under: Mobile Tagged With: mobile device business, mobile marketing

Google Plus Customer Management

Spiro Pappadopoulos

So I am embarking on a new project with my clients, to utilize the tools google has given us in Google plus to organize and market to their customers, prospective customers, and the world in general. First we are using gmail to maintain customer database, and then we are organizing these customers into circles by things they have in common. For instance a realtor is grouping buyers into price range circles, and town circles. In this way she will be able to share only that which is relevant to each group and never be intrusive.

Here is a video explaining a bit more about circles:

Even if the customer is not using Google Plus she will receive an email notifying her of what the realtor is sharing, the versatility of Google Plus will allow my client to share the stunning photos, videos, and written work we do with her in a variety of ways. Gmail will allow her to record all pertinent contact details both at her computer and via her smartphone. Here is the variety of information that Gmail will manage for each customer:

Gmail Contact Information Capabilities
Gmail Contact Information Capabilities

As you can see for a small business or professional the contact data is clearly sufficient with multiple notes sections that can be added for further customization. Couple that with the amazing google plus sharing technology, including video chat, and you have a dynamic FREE CMR and Marketing solution for the mobile entrepreneur and professional.

I will explain further in this video:

Let me know what you think in the comments, or hit me up on twitter: @spirocks

Filed Under: Google+, Mobile, Tools Tagged With: customer relations, google plus, Google+, marketing, Realtor Marketing, small business marketing, video

Run your own Group Buying Promotion. I am.

Spiro Pappadopoulos

Who needs Groupon?

Keep all the revenue and stir up some serious business along the way. In this post I am going to explain how with an example I just put together for Evenfall Restaurant, it’s a home grown group buying marketing campaign. It’s Mojito Time.

Mojito
Evenfall's Famous Mojito

The Hook: The more people that buy the cheaper it gets.

Evenfall is well known for having the best Mojitos in the area, with elbow grease, fresh muddled mint and lime, and some silver rum they serve them in pint glasses and they serve them often in the summer months. So for this promotion we decided to lower the price every week that at least 100 mojitos were sold. We started by reducing the price from $8 to $5 for the first ten day run. The every week until mid August the price will be reduced by 50 cents until it reaches $1 a Mojito.

I created a page on the restaurants blog dedicated to the promotion, you can see that here: (Make My Mojito Cheaper) and shared it via Twitter, Facebook, and a soon to be released email blast.

As the promotion progresses the deal gets more and more enticing, it is timed to coincide with the slowest season of the year for the restaurant and designed to drive businesses during the dog days of summer with ridiculously cheap mojitos. Read on to see the consideration I took, and why it makes sense for the restaurant…

[Read more…] about Run your own Group Buying Promotion. I am.

Filed Under: Facebook, Make Local Sell Local, Mobile, Twitter Tagged With: Facebook marketing, marketing, restaurant marketing, restaurant promotion, restaurants and groupon, social media for business, social media marketing, specials, Twitter

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