@Spirocks

restaurant marketing

Restaurant Marketing – Use Allergies as Talking Points

How well does your restaurant cater to those with allergies? If you do a good job of it, that can be marketing gold. Take gluten free menus for instance, do you have one? If not it is simple to make one with the items on your menu that are gluten free, so I suggest you do that. Once you have that put together, you can write a blog post (see what I did here), link to it from you main site, an dpost it regularly on twitter and facebook to get the word out.

Gluten Free
Use Allergies in your Restaurant Marketing

Unfortunately people with these types of allergies are used to feeling like a pain to the staff of restaurants that are unprepared for them. that makes it even easier to impress them by not only being prepared but also going out of your way to let them know what you have to offer them. That is restaurant marketing, letting them now what you have to offer.

Allergies provide a chance for you to offer more to your guests, to stand out from the crowd, and to provide you restaurant marketing with talking points. Use them and watch how energized your social media followers become, and how you can be a go to place for those who have the allergies you are prepared to handle with ease.

More on Restaurant Marketing Here

Restaurant Marketing with a Blog: Example

As a restaurant marketer by profession, I preach about the importance of a blog to the success of the online marketing effectiveness. I help construct a plan, and direct content creation for my clients.

I also practice what I preach, here is how easy it is to build out content and the resulting search engine discovery that will lead new customers to your tables.

Restaurant marketing is about getting people who have never been to your place to come give it a try, and what better way than hearing what you the owner/manager has to say in your own words? Complete with photos of you food and drink and atmosphere. That is where a blog comes in. You don’t need to dial up your web designer every time you want to make a change, you just have to create a new post.

In the last two days I have created these which will be lasting beacons on the search landscape for customers to come across:

Restaurant Marketing

Restaurant Marketing

As you can see the topics can vary and they can lead people to your site for various reasons, why not take advantage of what you have going on and build the content of your site out.

With today’s smartphones, posts like the brunch one above can actually be made on the fly as inspiration strikes. So start now.

More restaurant marketing ideas. 

Sit in Your Customer’s Seat

When your restaurant is open where are you most often? Most restaurant owners are usually in the office or the kitchen, once in a while walking around the restaurant. How many times do you sit in the dining room or bar like a customer during the night?

Do it and you might get a perspective that might make a major difference in the way you run, market, and understand your restaurant in 2012. The perspective of your customer. When I do it I make sure the server rings my food through just like a customer with no special modifiers identifying the order as mine, I sit in different places to get an appreciation of what we could do better for each table, and I watch other servers how they handle their tables.

All of those things lead me to understand and run the restaurant better, and that is nothing to shake a stick at, but how does it help me in my restaurant marketing duties? Well it is all about the trust factor, and the power of example with my guests. If I am there eating and drinking in the diningroom, it shows I am proud of the product to my customers. Often times they ask their server what I am eating and order it themselves.

Contrast that to a place where the owner is barely visible, and think of how much a different feeling that is. Restaurant marketing isn’t just about twitter updates, email marketing, and blog posts, restaurant marketing also includes how you carry yourself and what your customers see from you along the way.

Click Here for more Restaurant Marketing Ideas

Restaurants: Get Your Conversion On

Private Dining

With every passing month it becomes increasingly important for your restaurant website to capture the leads and convert it’s visitors into visitors of your restaurant. You simply have to grab them when they are visiting you online.

Convert website visitors into restaurant visitors: (two must do ways)

1) Online reservations right on your site. This is imperative, a must, and surely you already do this if you are reading a blog about emerging media marketing for your restaurant. The online service I use is the product from UrbanSpoon, which has an iPad ready app for reservation and customer information management to go along with its web based platform. There are plenty of others to choose from but google can do the listing for you.

2) Conversion forms for special events. So many restaurants list private dining, rehearsal dinner, or special event menus on their websites but do not have a way to collect information from those who find it right there. They list a phone number an risk the customer never calling, or calling and leaving a message, or otherwise not getting the lead. A conversion form can get you, the person who books these events, the person’s name/number/email as well as the date/head count/and other extenuating circumstances so when you contact them (right away) you are ready to let them know what you can offer them.

It is an incredible advantage over the restaurants that have notes floating around on the hostess stand or the managers desk. All this information is immediately emailed to you, and can be listed in an online spreadsheet automatically that the owner, manager, and event planner can all see.

Never miss the opportunity to book a party from your website again. Get a conversion form installed and sending you leads today.

 

Allagash!

At Guestfeed we have installed countless of these for customers, if you want one on your site and don’t have the time to do it yourself we can help. Just Ask! 

 

Seeking Bottlenecks and Hurdles

I seek the problems in your path, the obstacles to overcome, and encourage you to race at them.

BoulderYou run a business, there are fifty things that you could do today, fifty ways to make progress and move your business forward.

The problem is there are going to be fifty tomorrow too, and on to infinity after that if you simply operate like a kid at a whack a mole game. To truly move ahead I suggest you seek the things that truly need your greatness, your ability.

Every business has a bottle neck, a singular issue that trumps all others and until it is solved it will hold back the potential of the organization. Your organization.

You are the owner, the one responsible for the loss and the biggest beneficiary of the gains that your business can create.

Define your Success and Attack the Hurdles before you.

If you shrug them off and do not face them, nobody else will. Thats the story. The leaking faucet, and the flickering lightbulb are issues that need attention, but the fact that you are losing custoemrs at the last second because your transaction mechanism is clunky, or the process is attractive to techies but not foodies needs your attention first.

Do you know how your product will be received by those that will buy it or another in massive numbers? How will your service facilitate the transactions it was designed to deliver?

All day today I met with clients and networked with companies, I asked them what their hurdles were.

That is when the true conversations happened. If you bring me in I am going to look for your organizations problems, operationally and marketing wise. I am going to poke at those sore spots and I am going to work to make them better, until they become a strength.

My favorite type of meeting is one like I had with the crew of getprivy.com today, bright honest people working to see their dream become a reality. It is a great idea that they are tweaking to try and go mainstream and big-time. I agreed with so much of what they said and believed and also was able to attack some of their hurdles with ideas and suggestions that I truly think were received with open minds. Check them out if you are in a retail space that wants to do some cutting edge online marketing.

My second favorite kind of meeting is where I ask about weaknesses, hurdles, and bottlenecks and the answers I get are ‘run arounds’ all they want to focus on their vision, not what is holding it back. I live in reality sorry people, I don’t live in dreamland. I like that type of meeting because I can make them short, and I can go back to helping the clients who are ready to find solutions to their operations and marketing issues.

Who is ready? I am. Think we can work together? Let me Know here. Just want to chat? find me  @spirocks on twitter.

Keep up with my writing here:

The Problem with Facebook’s Zip Code Ads

Use Zip Code

A little background:

Recently Facebook implemented a new way to target ads on their network. With the enabling of zip code specific ads, Facebook promised to allow a more specific way to distribute your ads. I wrote with enthusiasm about the prospects such a new ability would give those advertising to Facebook’s mammoth user base HERE.

So What’s The Problem with Facebook Zip Code Targeting?

A feature with so much promise has a very poor implementation, I recently tried to run ads for my restaurant, Evenfall,  and wanted to select the cluster of zip codes around its location. Pretty straight forward right? Well I was unable to run the ads as this is what I got:

Screen shot 2011-09-06 at 9.07.41 PM
Basically facebook was telling me that I could not run an ad, because in the 5 zip codes I was targeting they had fewer than 20 people over 21 years old to show it to. That, of course, is complete bullshit. Whether they have a glitch or it is intentional it is wrong. I employ more than 20 people who are on facebook for gods sake.

So how did I run the ad? Well I explored the old 1o miles of a town method, but that includes areas I know customers are not coming from, and they suggested I bid $3,45 for a click which is absurd, so I decided not to run the add on Facebook.

In case you wondered here are two of the towns census numbers in 2000:

Screen shot 2011-09-06 at 9.07.06 PM

and

Screen shot 2011-09-06 at 9.06.51 PM

 

So of the 30,000+ less than 20 people are on Facebook? I don’t know, but with the Mafia wars invites, the ‘poking’, the virtual farms, the annoying club promoter invites, the horrible changes to photos, and more Facebook is really starting to feel clunky.

Have you had luck using the zip code features? If so let me know, I want to know the trick.

 

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Thanks -Spiro

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. 

Restaurants: Market to the Season

What time of year is it now?

20110822-124128.jpg

From the picture of my garden you can tell it is very much still summer, but in this business your marketing should not be focused on just tomorrow but the next season. That means fall, and holiday party planning season.

I know you are probably like me, trying to squeeze in as many summer days as you can, and good for you. But during these waning days of summer let your marketing mind do some work on being ahead of the curve for the winter season.

Here are some things to consider:

1) Is your website ready to showcase what you can do for larger groups? Does it have conversion forms and easily accessible pricing for the various options you describe?

2) It is time to touch base with the families and companies that have hosted holiday gatherings with you in the past? Begin thinking about what you are going to say when you do, and get a draft going.

3) What can you do to encourage people to plan their party on less in demand days of the week? Special more affordable packages for those days?

4) Is your staff ready to answer the questions and give answers that convince guests to book with you?

These are some thinking points to get going even if you are still focused on the summer weather.

Got more ideas? Share them here!