@Spirocks

marketing

Unapologetic Marketing

Don’t keep acting like you are the only one with a product trying to fill the consumers’ need. That’s just plain doubtful, in most cases the consumer has the choice of hundreds of competitors, and you need them to choose you. With that in mind, are you paying into a marketing scheme that simply states the statistics about your widget and doesn’t really differentiate you on any other meaningful level?

Stop Doing That.

confrontational marketing

It is time to change course, to stop pretending there are no competitors out there, there are. How about you compete with them by acknowledging their existence, you have nothing to lose because your product is better, right? If its not definitively better, stop worrying about marketing and start making it better… then come back and pick up here.

Still Reading?

Lets create a confrontation of sorts, an unabashed comparison, be unapologetic about being better and saying it out loud. Why? Because you are better and you deserve more of the market, because consumers are sick of hearing the same old marketing messages and they are tuning them out. Nothing stands out from the crowd like a bold honest confrontation, a person invested enough to do that with a better product will gain more customers. That’s that.

Some Ground Rules

  1. First and foremost, be truly better. Don’t fake it, the only two people that will believe you if you are not truly better is yourself, and your mom, and that’s not a big enough market to succeed.
  2. Don’t make it personal and petty, and don’t pick a fight with a small time operation. Nobody likes a bully, be the David to a Goliath.
  3. Have fun with it, for example: incorporate pop culture or current events into the messaging, don’t come off as a technical nerd about your comparison.
  4. Understand the difference between hostile confrontational and proud differentiation, do the latter.

The specifics are up to you, if you want to see what I would do you are in luck. We are currently running a few of these campaigns and I will follow up with a post of the best example in a few days. Until then provide a better product than a big competitor and don’t be afraid to tell people about it.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Embracing Change to Improve Your Restaurant’s Business

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You don’t read about marketing to gain insight on maintaining your status quo, you read to learn how to improve your restaurant’s business. All of us seek out ideas, strategies, and technologies that can affect change on the success of our business. That success could be the bottom line, the well being of our employees, or the satisfaction of our customers. In any light it is improved success that we are after.

To get there we seek change, and must lead our teams to accept, embrace, and crave it.

This change after all is not change for change’s sake, it is based on several analytical studies, among them:

  • Our Organization’s Data from successful sales and failed leads.
  • Interpretation of Market Opportunities and unfulfilled demand.
  • Employee and Customer feedback from the POS interactions.

So the change I speak of is another way of saying improvement or strategic positioning.

Am I supposed to do all this for my restaurant?

If you want to improve, yes you are.

  • You should be using the sales data on menu items to sort through the winners and losers, you should be tieing that data into the food cost of each menu item so you can emphasize the winners and work on the losers. Also how many private dining requests came in last month, how many did you book, what was the reason that those that did not book decided to go elsewhere?
  • You should be looking at your city like a consumer; to decide if there is a market opportunity. Like a town that had lines out the door for Sunday breakfast might cry out for an affordable brunch.
  • You should be constantly getting feedback from employees about what the customers are asking for, what they are loving, and what they were not so keen on.

Yes, these things will guide you to the points of change that you need to make, to keep your business getting better, growing, and becoming more successful.

Did someone say #Brunch today? Andolini's gets it going at 11am... #Andover

Employees often resist Change, your job is to lead them through it.

One of the hardest parts of doing something new is that it is unproven, and those who rely on a paycheck based on the current way of doing things often resist and/or subconsciously sabotage the new process. An entrepreneurial leader is one who will face the unknown, take a leap of faith in the decision that was made, and have earned the faith of the company’s employees so that they too believe and will work toward a successful change.

You must build an environment that allows you and your employees to connect with each other over the opportunity ahead of you, an environment that is sustained by trust.

Your employees are your most valuable resource, the genesis of your organization’s strength, and the greatest determinator of your success. You should engage them in the changes you make, let them take part in the determination of what ultimately is the final change, and also reap some of the benefits of the success you foster together.

In this way you are not their Boss, you are investing in them as a partner, and you engage with them on a level of mutual dignity. That should be the goal.

Next: Explain the Change to Your Audience.

Your audience, in truth, is a combination of the following groups:

  • Your current customers
  • The potential customers that exist in your market
  • Your employees

Some of your current customers may be adverse to change and the unknown that it brings. They may be attached to something that is changing or taken out of their comfort zone for another reason by the change. It is important to be clear and direct, avoiding ambiguities and outlining the positives of the change.

On the other hand your potential customers first need to hear about the change so that they know about this new offering that is aimed at them. When they hear about it, you should have the reasons outlined why they will love it, told from their perspective. Why is this what is missing from their lifestyle?

The employees are your ambassadors, they will be face to face with customers when they are asked what the Change is all about. If you do not give them the information they need, your change will be a muddled mess of interpretations not based on anything other than speculation. This is a major fail on your part.

Here is an example of how I addressed a major Change at my Restaurant to all these groups: http://andolinisrestaurant.com/brunch/

In Short, Change is a Challenge which when conquered results in Success.

What does your business need? I would love to talk about it.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

The Social Feed and Employees

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How does your social feed embrace your employees? Does it at all?

These are the questions you should ask yourself. Are you tagging employees in pictures of the product of their labors, are you recognizing the fact that many hands are involved in creating what your business accomplishes? Do you thank, mention, and acknowledge in your social feeds?

Here are some reasons you should: 

  1. People who love doing a good job, like to know it is appreciated. And keeping great employees is the first step at keeping customers coming back. Be the leader they want to work for, one that gives them love.
  2. Social Media is public, and employees of other businesses in your area are watching. They will be more likely to want to work for you if they see you building your team up.
  3. Your employees have friends and family that want to see there work life celebrated too, these are not only sources of positive reinforcement but also potential customers who are looking to embrace those that support their loved ones.
  4. These employees are the faces of the story of your business that the community will want to embrace, a cocktail without a bartender is not the same experience. Celebrate your story, and the characters that make it unique.

There are tens of thousands of reasons to involve your Social Feed and Employees. These are just a few. Above you can see Mike, Spencer, and I having some fun at Sauce. If you wore your Jorts in that Thursday you got a free hand cut french fry… see those Jorts are worth something!

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are now universal, they are recognized by all the major social networks and are a part of our cultural vernacular that has established itself as more than a fad. You see them everywhere and that is a good indication that they are working for those who are using them.

How to Use hashtags

What makes Hashtags Valuable?

A hashtag connects you to people you don’t follow and who don’t follow you, whether a topic or event that dominates the days news like: #superbowl or a more obscure topic like #pollenation, or even something cheesy like #whyIlovecheese will make an informal bond between posts that share the hashtag, and consequently the people/brands that created the posts. When the Hashatag is clicked on, new people/brands are discovered that share a common interest in most cases.

How Much do Hashtags increase engagement for a brand?

Research done by Piqora shows that there is a sweet spot for hashtag use. There is a limit, where too much hashtag use is perceived as spammy.

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This chart from Piqora illustrates their findings on Instagram hashtag use, it clearly shows increased engagement with increasing use of hashtags to a point. After which the effectiveness drops off because it becomes a spammy message. A rule of thumb I like to use is:

Work Hashtags into the normal text of your message, if it reads like a sentence the effectiveness will be magnified.

For Example: Introducing the #Patriots #buffalo #wing #party package, get together for the #game and bring the #heat with 100 wings.

That way it reads like a sentence instead of: #patriots #buffalo #wings #game #heat #party

  • Be Smart About How you Use Hashtags

Like everything else you do for your brand, consider the end user. What are they interested in seeing, what is trending right now, are there current events that I can relate to my brand?

Have any interesting Hashtag stories to share with me? 

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

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

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.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Influence based marketing

A realization:

A new breed of marketer shuns selling directly to a demographic, rather focuses on appealing to key individuals, influencers.

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This isn’t broadcast this is personal, open, prideful, and honest. It is about connections, and communications, and a community.

There is no way to spam your way through, no way to get attention with interruption advertising, no way to cheat.

Sure you can waste 100 to get 10 back, and you can swim up the Mississippi too.

Who is ready to start building an honest conversation, community, and network around their brand?

I am ready.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Social Media Monitoring for Marketing

Where are you when your potential customers are talking?

Social media provides a chance to hear things you would never hear before, find customers you would never find before, and make connections that lead to sales you would never make before. The key is to be there to capitalize on the thought, comment, mention that your customer makes, when they make it. You have to have the system in place to make it possible, your finger has to be on the shutter to capture the moment.

Are companies really doing that? Yes.

Here is an example from today that will illuminate the way companies are using social media monitoring to build brand awareness and make connections with proven customers. Earlier I stopped by Whole Foods to pick up some Burrata Mozzarella, a creamy fresh mozzarella that is one of a kind. While there I checked in with Foursquare and tweeted my checkin as shown here:

What Followed that Tweet was a Retweet by the brand that I bought. Notice I never mentioned a brand name, just the variety of the mozzarella. So how did the company know it was theirs? I uploaded a photo of the package with my checkin. That means the company was monitoring twitter for mentions of Burrata (they didn’t follow me prior to this) and were aware of my tweet and the fact that it was their product, they then re-tweeted my post. That all happened in 40 minutes. Not bad.

As you can see a subsequent conversation took place about their product and who knows how many people noticed and didn’t comment.

Social Monitoring used in marketing

 So how do you do this cost effectively?

You need to use tools that monitor the mentions for you. You can’t spend all day watching, and you can’t pay someone either, unless you are GM or Verizon etc. I use Spoke Social which I am involved in developing. Here is an example of the monitoring screen that Spoke has for setting up the keywords and other parameters:

Spoke Monitoring Set-Up Page

As you can see I set it up to monitor for mentions of Brunch or Sunday Brunch, within 25 miles of my restaurant Evenfall, as I am going to be starting brunch there in October. So now each time someone mentions that term within 25 miles of Evenfall I will be notified and able to message them an invitation. Will they all come? No. Will they have an interest in brunch? Likely. Will it cost me much time, money, or anguish to do it. Definitely not.

This is the type of Marketing Use that monitoring tools can have.  They are most often used as a customer service tool to make sure that any disgruntled customer taking to social media and venting about your brand can be contacted and the situation rectified.

If ideas and examples like this interest you, you can subscribe for free here: (It would make me happy too.)

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What do you think? Is monitoring interesting? It is not expensive, in fact it is one of 40 features that spoke has for $15 a month. I am here to answer questions for you, @spirocks on twitter or in comments below. 

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Business Communications with Google Plus

Google Plus for Company Communications

I thought I would share an example of the way that I am using Google Plus to strive for better communication with the employees of one of my restaurants. I created a circle in Google Plus and added all of the employee emails that I knew (I am hunting the rest as we speak), and set out to use that circle as a way to connect with everyone. When something new is added to the menu, when we run into and issue during service that needs to be addressed, when I decide to open or close for a holiday, and any other time that I want to contact the staff this will be the method. Of course I will still be managing verbally while I am present at the restaurant, but this is not a business where everyone is there from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday.

Some Employees work two shifts a week, and it has been up to me and a few managers to convey all the changes to each member of the staff when they came in. Until now.

Google Plus employee communications

This is the first message I sent to the staff to introduce them to the fact that I am going to be using this tool to communicate with them. It is my hope that I will be able to create learning moments from any snag we hit during service by bringing it to everyone’s attention as it happens with the hope that I can prevent the rest from stumbling over the same issue before it is resolved.

With access to this circle via my mobile and desktop I will be able to communicate with the entire staff when the need or solution arises, and that convenience is something that I believe will allow me to be better at what I do. With two restaurants and a growing marketing company my time is in demand and having the ability to communicate like this is a godsend.

Why Google Plus?

Well the greatest reason is that I can create the circle with just their email addresses and whether or not they are using Google Plus already I can contact them. It simply emails the contents of my messages to them if they are not G+ users already. You can’t do that with the friend request format of Facebook, and though I love Twitter it’s short messages and lack of a true group messaging function eliminates that as well. So Google Plus races to the forefront. The ease of setting up a circle is very key as well.

In the future I anticipate the ability to incorporate other Google properties such as: (Google Calendar – Scheduling and Google Documents – Training Materials) With Photos and Youtube there really is little limitation to where you can go with this.

Waiting for an Invite? Here You Go

If you would like to receive updates to this process and other thoughts on driving your business into the future all you have to do is:

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I am Spirocks on Twitter.