There’s a new movement afoot in the urban centers of this country. It started sometime last year and is still in its infancy, but given enough time, it could become the next MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter of the social media revolution.

It’s called “hyperlocal” social media. One of the pioneers of the movement, Everyblock, provides all kinds of information about every single block in a city, from restaurant reviews to police reports to foreclosure information. A more recent, and for restaurateurs a much more intriguing, option came online earlier this year. Foursquare describes itself as 50% friend finder, 30% city guide, and 20% nightlife game.

It works like this: as you patronize your favorite local haunts, you “check-in” with Foursquare, which allows you to see if friends are nearby and post tips/information about the venue you’re currently in. The more you check-in, the more “badges,” or awards, you get. For instance, you can become the mayor of certain bar or club if you check-in the most times from that location in 60 days.

Tech-savvy restaurants and bars caught wind of the mayor and other Foursquare badges and started advertising to this ready-made customer base, offering free drinks and other comps to the Foursquare mayors of their establishment. Most people had no idea what the heck a mayor was, but those that did quickly spread the word to their friends, and it turned out to be a hot way for restaurants and bars to market themselves effectively to their hippest customers.

In general the hyperlocal movement is beneficial to the food service industry because it provides a real time medium through which restaurants can advertise to their customers. For now, Foursquare and the inevitable copycats that are forthcoming will be largely limited to big urban centers like New York, Chicago, and L.A., but it’s not that farfetched to imagine a hyperlocal medium of one kind or another servicing communities of all sizes.

For those of you who are located in ultra-competitive large urban centers, you can’t afford to ignore this new phenomenon. If you haven’t already, start advertising to your Foursquare customers. Offer some sort of discount to regular customers. Some have gotten creative with the scheme, like putting the word out through the web application that anyone who barks like a dog on Thursdays gets a free drink. Others ask to view their customer’s iPhone to verify they have actually checked-in at their restaurant.

No matter what your scheme, Foursquare can become an important vehicle for driving buzz and traffic to your front door. For the rest of us, located outside the super hip downtown scene of the big city, we can only shake our heads at the pace of technology and wonder when these trends are coming to our neck of the woods.

Gregory Scott McGuire is a regular contributor to The Back Burner Blog, a resource of restaurant marketing written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and supplies.

There are many good reasons why restaurants, taverns and bars should be using social media marketing. It is a great way to interact with new customers and keep up with existing ones. It drives traffic to your website. It is much less expensive than traditional advertising mediums like television, radio and print.

Stacey Kane, Director of Marketing for California Tortilla, says: “For smaller restaurant chains like us, social media is an easy and inexpensive way to reach our customers. It is a way to reach people instantaneously. There is no big backup on producing artwork or a radio spot. You have the idea and you can send it out.”

Here is a recipe for social media success:

Build Your Community

Building a good community is like preparing a good meal. You start with the right ingredients. Open a Facebook account – the world’s largest site for social media marketing. Facebook has become a digital calling card for many restaurants. It allows you to network and stay in touch with your current customers and make new ones.

Twitter is the other good social media site for restaurants. It asks the question, “What are you doing?” Write short one-liners announcing new services, specials and menu features. Start conversations. Be an authentic voice of your restaurant. Try to blend humor with your message. Don’t over do it. Go with a natural flow and you will fit right in.

Pay Attention to What People Are Saying

Now that you have a community, listen to what your fans and friends say. What is their favorite food? What was their favorite restaurant experience? Who is their favorite waiter or waitress? When you participate with your fans on social media platforms, you make them feel wanted and you make them feel at home.

Pay Attention to Your Competition

Keep an eye on what your competition is doing. Where are they listed? Who are their fans on Facebook? What kind of promotions do they offer? If your competitor has a website, check inbound links for their business directories and then add yourself to the same directories. Make sure your restaurant is on Google Maps, too. You can do this by signing up at Google’s Local Business Center.

Promotions and Contests

Nothing beats a promotion or contest. Create promotions regularly and then give them an event name. When you tie-in Facebook Events for your promotions, they are automatically promoted on your Facebook Page. Post lunch or dinner specials for your restaurant. Promote monthly wine tastings if you own a wine shop. If you own a bar, create a Facebook event each week for happy hour. California Tortilla has an exciting contest called “Secret Password Day” – a password is released on a specific day and people use the password for free food and items. Discounts are a great way to endear yourself with your social community. When you give them special coupons, you are not only telling them you are a good restaurant, but you are a good person, too.

Building a community around your restaurant by leveraging these social media tools takes time and dedication. If you are able to participate and add value for the members of your community, you will succeed in social media marketing and fill up your tables as well. Bon appetit!

Dan Chambers
Vesta Digital
http://www.vestadigital.com

Mobile marketing is beginning to sound like the movie Minority Report, where pedestrians had their retinas scanned by computers as they walked by stores and voices addressed them by name and encouraged them to buy products tailored to their personal preferences. That would be scary, but it’s never gonna happen to me, right?

Surely you’ve seen TV ads asking you to text such and such to a number and receive deals or promos. The companies doing that kind of advertising get your number when you text, and use that to target you for future promos.

Seems like we’re getting warmer, Steven Spielberg.

Until recently, nobody in the food service industry was thinking about applying some of these new technologies to an old game: improving sales and customer retention.That’s changing, and one of the agents of change is Fishbowl Inc., a technology-based marketing company for the food service industry. The firm has built email and internet marketing campaigns for over 30,000 restaurants and is recommended by the National Restaurant Association. They recently expanded into mobile technology marketing, where new marketing techniques have revolutionized how restaurants reach their customers.

Scotty’s Brewhouse in Indiana increased to-go orders placed on the internet by 500% with a two-for-one promo that went out via email and applied only to those internet orders.

Smoothie King chain restaurant locations offer a free smoothie in exchange for a text message from customers.The cost of the smoothie is a fraction of the value of having that customer on an email and text list for future promos, and sales are up on promo days by 24%.

Jack-in-the-Box has even experimented with placing a small computer chip in special promo posters that communicates with mobile devices and alerts customers to local store locations and deals.

Maybe those retina scans aren’t that far off after all.

As marketing methodology improves using these new technologies, restaurants will be able to reach their customers in increasingly innovative ways. Building email and text number databases of customers will help connect customers and businesses and allow restaurants to improve sales in slow periods and maximize customer retention. Most importantly, restaurants can learn about their customers and cater more directly to their needs. Knowing what customers want when they want it is half the battle in any service industry, and especially in the food service industry.

Gregory Scott McGuire is a regular contributor to The Back Burner Blog, a resource of restaurant news and trends written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment, supplies, and equipment parts

http://blog.etundra.com
http://www.etundra.com

Advertising Your Restaurant Effectively:  Advertising or Public Relations?

Positive public recognition is important for your restaurant’s success; this recognition can be accomplished through “public relations campaign” as well as advertising.

Note that a “public relations campaign” and advertising are two very different things. Both are meant to elevate the interest of consumers in a service or product and both use generally the same tools, like radio, television, print and the internet, advertising uses ads and public relations uses news.

Here is a look at advertising and public relations differences:

Message control

As to how, where and when an advertisement flows, is very controllable. An ad space bought in the correct format like radio, broadcast, online, print, etc. implies that you have control over the messages that you want to communicate.

On the other hand, while the message creating process by means of public relations is also very controllable, it is what happens or results after your message has departed is usually uncontrollable, which brings up the question of whether potential customers perceive the information you supplied as newsworthy. In public relations, it makes sure it is.

Information Personalization

Advertisements, being very costly, don’t provide you with enough room to customize or personalize your restaurant’s story.

A public relations promotion does this, by creating a story of multiple angles aimed to successfully reach various media outlets like daily newspapers, business journals, food service publications, city magazines, entertainment and dining publications, national magazines, etc.  You increase your broadcast and reach more audiences that will be educated about your restaurant.

Implied Endorsement

In advertising, you pay somebody to have your message directly filtered to your prospect consumers.

With public relations however, it can afford the reliability of an indirect endorsement of a “third-party”. Meaning you don’t pay to get advertised, publications offered to you for free, granting you space so you can rely your restaurant’s story to customers. This endorsement is an efficient tool in sculpting public opinion.

Cost-Effectiveness

There can be no comparison to the “cost” of display advertising in a magazine or publication as to the “cost” of distributing and writing an informative press release.

Hiring a firm to create press releases for your restaurant is definitely many times cheaper compared to advertising costs.

Furthermore, press release articles are viewed by more audiences since consumers are more interested in stories as opposed to advertisements.

Life Span

With public relations, a well-constructed story can have the attention of the reader for a long time, where an ad is noticed by the viewer in a span of just about 5 minutes.

Consumers normally clip certain articles they read, such as a new destination that they would want to visit or a new restaurant where they would want to sample food. 

The goal of public relations is to maintain a “noise” or sort of an ongoing talk about your restaurant and what it has to offer, and build up credibility. There are many media outlets that you can easily reach when you have made a “well-expressed” plan as well as the appropriate public relations company to execute it.

So when will you be using public relations? Why and when to advertise? The answer lies with you and you alone.  It all depends on your needs and on what you want to accomplish. You can use both advertising and public relations as your marketing tools together, or separately as the situation demands.

Market Analysis: How to Keep Your Focus in the Restaurant Business

The food service industry caters to a universal need of humans – to be nourished. However, the way food appeals to humans isn’t at all universal. Mankind is a diverse group and there isn’t one particular operation of food service that could satisfy this diversity.

This is one reality that aspirants in the restaurant business find difficulty to accept. Many hopefuls think they can catch everyone, but such efforts end up in failure. They neglect to consider that trying to cater to everyone results into not being able to cater to anyone at all.

It is best to just concentrate on a small part of the market, say ten percent or so, this way, you can offer the best service for that part of your choice. This is done by doing a market analysis – the study of the potential target market.

The senior market is composed of people who are 65 years or older. Seniors generally live on fixed incomes, from their pension or sustenance by relatives, and thus have a rather inflexible spending power. Most seniors usually go to family-oriented eating places such as lunch buffets because they offer good food and services at affordable prizes. Less active seniors usually prefer smaller portions as they may have smaller appetites.

When targeting seniors, it is best to make them special by offering senior promotions, or lowered rates. You can also market your restaurant as senior-friendly by emphasizing safety features such as ramps and handlebars.

The late adult market is composed of people aged 50 to 64. They are usually the ones who are experiencing the empty nest syndrome, where grownup children have left the home. This market usually has the most stable financial status as they could be in the most advanced stages in their careers. At this point, price usually doesn’t matter. This is the age when people start trying to really enjoy life and its pleasures. So the main concern is good food and service. When targeting this market, it is good to present your restaurant with elegance and sophistication. It would be wise to invest more on ambience and class.

The middle aged group is composed of people who are around 40 to 50 years old. These are very productive years as most executives and prominent career people fall in this market. Money is rather plentiful and thus spent with more generosity. In this age, people are quite fond of trendy and high-end, fine dining restaurants. Many people in this market already have grandchildren and thus this is also good for family-friendly eating places which that are more formal than those frequented by the senior market.

The young adult market consists of people in their mid twenties to just before reaching middle age. This is an age of great effort for established families. The main concern here is enjoying children and keeping a good relationship with them. People belonging in this market usually look for eating places that are conducive for bonding with their children. Places that offer food fast, and with bigger quantities such as family brunch buffet restaurants which are big hits for this market. It is important to offer comfort and a laid-back ambience for this type of market.

The young market comprises of those in their early twenties and younger. This is probably the most diverse market. The main concern of people in this market is instant gratification with low prices. This is the primary market for the fast food industry. A good strategy for this target market is keeping updated with the latest trends and offering food services in association to what is “cool” and “hip”.