Restaurant Marketing Made Easy With Social Media

Social Media is enabling marketing to be easier, cheaper, and much more direct and targeted for all businesses but specifically for Restaurants and businesses that are essentially built around developing a customer base that likes them and are receptive to coming back to them to buy again....the task for marketing is to get them to come back, to come back more often, and to spend more money.

Many restaurants (particularly when takings may be down during a recession) have learnt to market themselves and advertise as its essential to 'spreading the word' and getting customers, however, many restaurants advertise in local media - lifestyle magazines, newspapers, etc - as well as leaflet drops, and so on, however, that rarely connects with your target market and therefore is largely wasteful.

Advertising in local media such as this is primarily targeting new customers and trying to get new customers to come and visit your restaurant - thats not the best spend of your marketing budget and will return a very poor return on investment - its simply not targeted at what should be your target market for your advertising to speak to. A restaurant needs to build a customer base and followers, a customer community of customers who have been to your restaurant already, they like the food, like the atmosphere, etc, and will come again ...consequently a restaurant needs to concentrate on marketing to these customers, getting them to come again and spend more.....consequently this brings in new customers as happy, loyal, restaurant customers are your best 'word of mouth' marketing tool, and 'word of mouth' is the best form of marketing. Full stop.

Therefore, restaurant marketing is easy! Its all about Database Marketing - grow a customer database and target your marketing specifically to them, try to drag more out of them, and then let them spread the word to new customers - because they will.

A customer who likes a restaurant is a great ambassador. They are very receptive to your marketing, they like you, they want to know what else they can get out of their relationship with you...consequently they will provide you with their details to be kept informed of whats going on with you, your company, your brand...they will sign up to your newsletter, they will read your marketing material, they will join your Facebook group...they will want to to add your 'restaurant' to their 'friends' on Facebook...they want to hear more from you.

Database marketing is embracing this understanding and making every penny of your marketing and advertising budget work, no waste. Now with the emergence of Social Media and Social Networking and the establishment of Social Media Marketing it is now much easier and accessible for restaurant of any size to communicate tangibly and affordably with a customer database.

How Can A Restaurant Use Facebook?

Facebook is the market leading Social Networking Site with now over 300,000,000 users worldwide (many of them have been in your restaurant!), now spanning the generations (the biggest growth area in 2009 being the over 55yr age group - 523% increase).

As well as individuals setting up personal profiles a company can set-up a business profile - a 'Facebook Fansite'. Firstly you want as many 'fans' as possible to join your fansite as this is your customer database. Their are several ways to do this;

Invite customers whom email addresses that you have to join your fansite by simply putting their email address into the 'search' bar on any facebook page and then sending them invite - if they are on Facebook and have used that email address on their profile details page then it will bring them up. Likewise you can search for them through the usual methods, ie, their name and location, and then invite them.

You can add completely new customers who don't even know you but fit your target customer profile by using facebook advertising to design a simple advert for your company facebook fansite which will then display itself alongside the pages of Facebook users fitting your facebook profile. Remember that facebook is a world of raw data, however precise your target market your advert can be finally targeted - 30-40yrs, sheffield, likes eating out, etc, etc.

You should also promote the fact that you have a Facebook fansite in your other advertising, on your website (with a link to your Facebook page) and also through general initiatives in your restaurant, ie, when paying ask customers if they are on Facebook, if they are then give them your facebook address on a feedback card (or similar) and ask them to join your fansite to receive the latest information on you and special offers for your Facebook Fansite Fans - or take their details and invite them on line.

Basically, integrate into your day to day marketing and operational, customer-interaction, activities and work to expand and grow your Facebook Fansite customer Fan base. You will also find that your fan base will grow organically as if person Y joins your group, all their personal profile friends see that they have done through their homepage notifications, and a percentage of them will follow suit - a numbers game.

You can send out pictures, text, and video to all your Facebook Fansite 'Fans' instantly. For example, 'two for one desert offer this coming Thusrday night, book now..', as a 'status update' will then be posted not only on your restaurant profile homepage but also posted on the 'wall' of every single member of your Facebook Fansite for all your 'fans' to see as they logon to their facebook account that day (82% of Facebook users check Facebook at least once a day)..thats direct, targeted marketing that lands infront of the right audience everytime.

Upload a couple of pictures of the restaurant/staff/dishes and a paragraph or two of text and post this to your Restaurants Facebook Fansite and this forms effectively a 'mini press release' which once again, will be posted not only to your profile page but also straight infront of your target customers. You can also upload videos with the same coverage across all your fans content, as well as blog entries, and countless applications.

For example:

Last Thursday evening Willows was very proud to hold the North Manchester Business Network business networking meeting for September in our new function room. The meeting was attended by more than 60 local business people from a wide variety of businesses throughout the city who were able to network informally with each other - develop new contacts, sales, and relationships.

The new function room held up well on this its first official outing with the flexible format being perfect as the meeting was split into 'open networking' and a more formal 20-min presentation with both being able to be up and ready and the attendees could easily flip between the two. We served a light buffet throughout the three hour event and all seemed to go down very well with many attendees choosing to stay on a little later and moving on into the main bar for a few more 'casual' hours of networking.

How Can A Restaurant Use YouTube?

YouTube is the worlds second largest search engine with over 100,000,000 videos now uploaded, in 2006 26% watched videos regularly online, in 2008 it was 86%.....people now search YouTube as an information source and are now used to watching videos online - TV advertising is in vast decline?

Your Restaurant can have its own YouTube channel. Here you can host videos about your restaurant for both your customer base to watch and engage with you more, find out further information, as well as for you to engage with new customers - many people find brands and companies now for the first time through YouTube videos.

Users are used to viewing both amateur footage as well as professional videos through the same websites such as YouTube and your videos could be a combination of a video introduction to your restaurant and your staff, ideas, etc, and a great idea for restaurants is to develop a 'subscription' customer base following your channel on YouTube by adding something along the lines of a 'recipe of the week' (or something like that - use your imagination) which users would soon look out for and would showcase your restaurant.

Remember that Social Media and Networking is not about 'selling' and you should consistently review to make sure you are subtly marketing and sharing information and knowledge as opposed to selling, ie, a 'recipe of the week' could be a video of your head chef preparing a dish, providing the recipe and procedure to follow effectively free of charge to your customers - but it is your chef, in your restaurant, on your YouTube Channel - they may try to make the dish themselves but they will also want to try it in your restaurant.

YouTube videos are very 'embed-able', ie, they are not just used on YouTube, they can be spread very wide across your social media platform - facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and so on, and you should do as this not only 'spreads the word' wider but if it links back to your website, it will help to raise your website in search engine searches.

How Can A Restaurant Use Twitter?

At first many people don't get Twitter and its takes them a while (a very short while) to understand what a fantastic communication medium Twitter is and what a fantastic marketing tool Twitter and its associated platforms are.

Twitter is a 'micro blogging' service that really asks one question - what are you doing now? Users answer this question in no more than 140 characters and other users 'follow' each other. People who 'follow' you will be kept bang uptodate with what you are doing, they feel involved and in a relationship with each other, and they can interact by responding to the 'tweets' of their followers.

You get 'followers' by inviting people you already know, inviting people to find you, and by utilising some of the website and applications that has sprung up around Twitter to support the vast number of interactions and information that it produces.

The protocol tends to be that if you follow somebody they will 'follow' you back. Using applications such as www.tweepsearch.com' you can search for users based on what the have entered in their bio, ie, sheffield, food, etc?

Once again, you can send one simple message to all your followers instantly.

'Tweets' on the menu - Restaurants Using Twitter for Cheap, Effective Marketing

Taken from the Boston Globe, USA:

On Dec. 2, computer consultant Jen Deaderick got on the social-networking site Twitter and posted: “Tupelo02139 is preparing.’’ It was her first missive, or tweet, on behalf of the Cambridge restaurant Tupelo, where her husband is a chef. The restaurant was more than four months away from opening.

Other tweets followed, about getting inspected, planning the menu, picking the paint. By the time Tupelo opened at the end of April, word had spread among followers of the restaurant’s Twitter stream (@tupelo02139), and their followers’ followers, and so on. “Our opening night was packed,’’ Deaderick said. “At least half were there because of Twitter.’’

What can you do with 140 characters or less, the length of each tweet? A lot, restaurants are discovering - everything from posting daily specials to luring followers with offers of free appetizers to offering a glimpse of kitchen life. It’s all good for business. It’s instant and free marketing,’’ said Chris Barr, a manager at L’Espalier, which joined Twitter this month.

Restaurants are starting to sign on by the dozens, inspired, perhaps, by the success of Kogi, a Korean barbecue taco truck in Los Angeles that gained national notoriety by tweeting its whereabouts. (In February, Newsweek called it “America’s first viral restaurant.’’)

“It was two or three a week [joining], and now it’s closer to two or three or four a day,’’ said Aaron Cohen of the Twitter stream @eatboston, which spreads the word about the restaurant scene. He estimates between 60 and 70 local restaurants have joined - everything from high-end establishments such as L’Espalier and Craigie on Main to quick-service chains like Boloco and Papa Gino’s.

One reason for Twitter’s popularity is that it’s both easy and inexpensive. There’s no need to hire someone to design a website. You just log on and start posting. “You could be a pizza guy at a greasy spoon sending text messages from a three-year-old cellphone,’’ Cohen said. “You don’t need technology to be spreading your message on Twitter. It’s very utilitarian.’’

At Myers + Chang in the South End, chef and co-owner Joanne Chang is an active Twitter user. She updates followers about menu items (she recently added a Kogi-inspired taco to the menu), events, and news, but also offers thumbnail vignettes and mini-recipes, explains ingredients, and solicits customer opinions.

At 4:41 p.m. on June 9 she tweeted: “Should cilantro be listed on menu item when it’s an ingredient? A customer has requested it - didn’t realize cilantro was *such* a hot button.’’

Not four hours elapsed before she had her answer and implemented it: “Cilantro haters have made their voices heard! Will now indicate which dishes have cilantro; all can be made sans ‘soapy devil.’ (I heart it).’’

It’s this kind of interaction that makes Twitter a particularly effective tool, said Ann Handley, chief content officer at MarketingProfs, a publication that focuses on marketing know-how. These days, that increasingly means using social media. “The whole concept of marketing is to put yourself out there and be memorable,’’ she said. “Twitter adds in another layer of intimacy that marketing in general often lacks. . . . It doesn’t just remind customers you’re here, it engages them.’’

Jennifer Yukimura, a principal at a consulting firm, says that is one reason she uses Twitter to follow restaurants in her South End neighborhood. “I follow Myers + Chang, and it inspires me to go in,’’ she says. “I enjoy that they tweet about people coming in and what they’ve liked, a local customer or somebody from another restaurant even. It gives a kind of community feel to it. It makes me feel connected, like I know what’s going on with the chefs of the restaurants I follow.’’

It’s not just customers who feel more connected. John Pepper, chief executive and cofounder of the wrap-sandwich chain Boloco, uses Twitter to converse with his customers. It has a positive effect on business, he says.

“It allows us to build a better and stronger relationship with those customers in a way that’s comfortable for them,’’ he said. When Boloco wanted to set up focus groups, market research that would have cost thousands of dollars, the company turned to Twitter. Pepper contacted Tom O’Keefe, an online business developer (and avowed fan of Boloco competitor Anna’s Taqueria) whose Twitter stream, @BostonTweet, has more than 6,000 followers. “Within one hour we had 50 people,’’ Pepper said. “It not only saved us all kinds of money, but it turned out to be an amazing group.’’

O’Keefe says he started BostonTweet as a way to create awareness for local restaurants and bars in the down economy. BostonTweet hosts frequent tweetups, events where those using Twitter, a.k.a. tweeps, meet in real life.

“It’s great for business,’’ he said. “It gets people in and they spend money, but it’s also a very vocal group. People talk about the event leading up to it and while they’re there,’’ posting to Twitter via cellphone.

It’s also fun. “I meet so many great people,’’ he said. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’’

Boston Globe

It might be from the US (New York Times, 22nd July 2009, Claire Cain Miller) but this is a great article demonstrating the power of Twitter for small businesses…

SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on Twitter. Curtis uses Twitter to drive his customers to his changing location.

For Mr. Kimball, who conceded that he “hadn’t really understood the purpose of Twitter,” the beauty of digital word-of-mouth marketing was immediately clear. He signed up for an account and has more than 5,400 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his itinerant cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle.

“I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success,” he said. He has quit his day job as a carpenter to keep up with the demand.

Much has been made of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks andComcast use Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions. But today, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the free microblogging service, and in many ways, Twitter is an even more useful tool for them.

For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.

“We think of these social media tools as being in the realm of the sophisticated, multiplatform marketers like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, but a lot of these supersmall businesses are gravitating toward them because they are accessible, free and very simple,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst who studies the Internet’s influence on shopping and local businesses.

Small businesses typically get more than half of their customers through word of mouth, he said, and Twitter is the digital manifestation of that. Twitter users broadcast messages of up to 140 characters in length, and the culture of the service encourages people to spread news to friends in their own network.

Umi, a sushi restaurant in San Francisco, sometimes gets five new customers a night who learned about it on Twitter, said Shamus Booth, a co-owner. He twitters about the fresh fish of the night — “The O-Toro (bluefin tuna belly) tonight is some of the most rich and buttery tuna I’ve had,” he recently wrote — and offers free seaweed salads to people who mention Twitter.

Twitter is not just for businesses that want to lure customers with mouth-watering descriptions of food. For Cynthia Sutton-Stolle, the co-owner of Silver Barn Antiques in tiny Columbus, Tex., Twitter has been a way to find both suppliers and customers nationwide. Since she joined Twitter in February, she has connected with people making lamps and candles that she subsequently ordered for her shop and has sold a few thousand dollars of merchandise to people outside Columbus, including to a woman in New Jersey shopping for graduation gifts.

“We don’t even have our Web site done, and we weren’t even trying to start an e-commerce business,” Ms. Sutton-Stolle said. “Twitter has been a real valuable tool because it’s made us national instead of a little-bitty store in a little-bitty town.”

Scott Seaman of Blowing Rock, N.C., also uses Twitter to expand his customer base beyond his town of about 1,500 residents. Mr. Seaman is a partner at Christopher’s Wine and Cheese shop and owns a bed and breakfast in town. He sets up searches on TweetDeck, a Web application that helps people manage their Twitter messages, to start conversations with people talking about his town or the mountain nearby. One person he met on Twitter booked a room at his inn, and a woman in Dallas ordered sake from his shop.

The extra traffic has come despite his rarely pitching his own businesses on Twitter. “To me, that’s a turn-off,” he said. Instead of marketing to customers, small-business owners should use the same persona they have offline, he advised. “Be the small shopkeeper down the street that everyone knows by name.”

Chris Mann, the owner of Woodhouse Day Spa in Cincinnati, twitters aboutdiscounts for massages and manicures every Tuesday. Twitter beats e-mail promotions because he can send tweets from his phone in a meeting and “every single business sends out an e-mail,” he said.

Even if a shop’s customers are not on Twitter, the service can be useful for entrepreneurs, said Becky McCray, who runs a liquor store and cattle ranch in Oklahoma and publishes a blog called Small Biz Survival.

In towns like hers, with only 5,000 people, small-business owners can feel isolated, she said. But on Twitter, she has learned business tax tips from an accountant, marketing tips from a consultant in Tennessee and start-up tips from the founder of several tech companies.

Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter, said that when he joined the company from Yahoo in March, “I thought this was a place where large businesses were. What I’m finding more and more, to my surprise every single day, is business of all kinds.”

Twitter, which does not yet make money, is now concentrating on teaching businesses how they can join and use it, Mr. Banerji said, and the company plans to publish case studies. He is also developing products that Twitter can sell to businesses of all sizes this year, including features to verify businesses’ accounts and analyze traffic to their Twitter profiles.

According to Mr. Banerji, small-business owners like Twitter because they can talk directly to customers in a way that they were able to do only in person before. “We’re finding the emotional distance between businesses and their customers is shortening quite a bit,” he said.