Aug/101
Restaurants lead the way online
Restaurants, above most other types of local business, have the greatest opportunity to acquire new customers through online marketing. It is not only that they are catered for by a number of online companies offering to bring them new diners. It is also that people like to research online before deciding where to eat. Your job, of course, is to make sure that the people searching in your area decide to book your restaurant.
Having recently completed a review of the various services available to bring new diners to restaurants, I’m unable to think of a good reason why a restaurant should be without one of these.
Take Livebookings as an example. They work with over 500 websites, such as Yell.com and TimeOut, where diners go to search for restaurants. That is a total of 500 million potential diners worldwide. As the UK is a stronghold for Livebookings, a significant number of those 500 million will be potential customers of yours. If you use Livebookings, any of those people can book a table at your restaurant with a couple of clicks of their mouse. And you get an online booking facility for your own website too. The price for access to these new diners? A small fee for each new customer they bring to you.
Once you have those new diners in your restaurant, it is down to you to capture their contact details, particularly email and mobile phone number, so that you can entice them back in. Good food and service is not, by itself, enough. Particularly as there are almost always other good restaurants nearby. People are busy and have lots of choice. Collecting their details enables you to remind them, by email or SMS, about your restaurant and perhaps lure them back this week with a tempting offer.
Jul/100
Traditional marketing v new marketing
There is still a great deal of confusion, particularly amongst business owners who consume little digital media or don’t participate in social networks, about the difference between traditional marketing and new media or social media marketing. Hopefully, the following examples will help to ignite debate around the distinction.
A traditional marketer will focus on broadcasting a message to the local area using newspapers, posters or flyers. The message will reach people who may or may not know your business and will talk about why they should become customers. He is fighting to capture the attention of the masses, regardless of whether they are likely to be interested in your business. A new media marketer will concentrate on creating a piece of online content (a photo, video, blog, podcast or similar), which is aligned with your business and which your target customers will find entertaining or interesting. She will distribute it through the online networks of existing customers and draw attention to it in several places online, where people can find it. She is building a bridge (as Brian Solis would call it) between consumers and your business’ online presence.
A traditional marketer will want to improve your product or service and will start by asking your customers to complete a questionnaire. Maybe even an online questionnaire. He is producing a structured piece of feedback that will help you to make improvements. A new marketer will make sure that communication channels are constantly open with your customers such that they feel comfortable posting a comments on your Facebook wall or via Twitter to let you know about a bad (or sometimes good) experience. This marketer will take time to monitor the digital channels for conversations about your business. She is providing a simple and convenient way for customers to talk to you when they have something to say.
A traditional marketer will seek to acquire new customers. He will place adverts in the local press, invest time and money in making your website appear at the top of Google ranking lists when people search for certain keywords and perhaps pay Google to make you appear at the top as a sponsored link. He is forcing your business into the offices and homes of local people. On the other hand, a new marketer will focus on engaging existing customers and getting them to talk to their friends about your business online. She will give them a reason to talk to their friends about you. This could be an engaging piece of online content that they will want to share with their friends. She is making it easy for local people, at least those who are interested, to find you.
Agree? Disagree? Like it or not, social media is important to your business. As a local business owner, the most important thing is that you do your homework and form an opinion. At the very least, join Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare and see for yourself what all the talk is about.
Mar/100
Forget advertising. Grow by word of mouth alone.
Everyone knows it is great to have word of mouth but how do you make it happen? Conventional wisdom says that all you need to do is provide a good product or service and word of mouth will do the rest. The truth is that it is less straightforward than that and there are a few subtle issues to contend with.
Some people love to find new things and tell their friends about them. If your business is something new or different, you’ll need to seek out early adopters because many people don’t like change. Your effort to find early adopters is usually rewarded as these people love to tell everyone about the great new things they have discovered. A word of caution, though. If you expect people to change their buying habits for you, your product or service will need to be remarkable.
What if yours is the type of business people don’t talk about very much? How often have you raved about the wonders of your gynaecologist over dinner with your friends? Do you talk about contents insurance at the pub? Not every product or service can grow by word of mouth alone.
Can you make it any easier for people to talk about you? Think about how your customers communicate. Can you send an email or an SMS with a special offer that they will want to forward to their friends? How about creating a Facebook page for your business and posting news, events and offers there? When someone becomes a ‘fan’ of your Facebook page, their network of friends will be able to see that.
Let’s assume you have provided a great service, you have given people a reason to talk about you (maybe an incentive), you have made it easy for them to remember you (perhaps a branded box of matches to take home or an occasional email update), made it effortless for them to talk about you and you have identified your most influential customers, paying special attention to them. What next?
Well, what do you want them to say? Can you describe what is great or unique about your business in the few seconds of captive attention you would have if a prospect were travelling in an elevator with you? It’s not always obvious and big businesses spend thousands working out their ‘elevator pitch’. If you can’t, it’s very unlikely that your customers will be able to. If you think it could be hard for customers to ‘sell’ your business in a few words when they bump into a friend at the supermarket, do something about it. Come up with a strap-line for your business and make it visible in your premises, on your van or your business card.
The good news is that, for some types of businesses, such as restaurants and bars, word of mouth alone can bring great success as long as they pay attention to the subtle details. For others, they’ll need to think carefully about how to get people talking about them.
Dec/090
The problem with doing nothing
There are many reasons why you should do nothing.
- I can’t use a discount to attract new customers because my existing customers will be upset.
- I can’t change my supplier because it will mean rewriting our menu.
- I can’t send marketing emails or SMSs to my customers because they might find it irritating.
Your job, if you wish to make a difference and grow, is this. Put to one side your comfort with the way thing are today. Then, find reasons why these activities do make sense. Not only why they make sense to you, but also to your staff and customers.
- Create a separate promotion exclusively for your existing customers. Perhaps an incentive to try a new or premium service.
- If you can’t easily change your menu, you are wide open to local competitors who might change their menus daily. Do yourself, your staff and your customers a favour by redesigning your menus to be more flexible.
- Get your customers’ permission to send them messages and make sure you send messages that are relevant and compelling.
The problem with doing nothing is that you are learning nothing. You’re not finding out what works and what doesn’t. The problem with learning nothing is that you are not moving towards the situation where your hard work generates more money.
Dec/090
Snail mail, email or SMS?
So you’ve decided that you want to communicate with your customers or try to reach some new ones. You’ve got something to say and you think that people will want to hear it.
What next? Do you put it in an envelope, write it in an email or text it? Once you have answered the following questions, you’ll have a good idea of which route to take.
- Who is your target audience and what form of communication are they likely to most appreciate and find convenient?
- Is your message an urgent one? Is it a last-minute offer or an exclusive deal, where your customers could miss out if they don’t get the message instantly?
- Does your message require a response and how would your audience most like to respond?
- Is your message simple or complex? Can it be said in 160 characters or does it require prose and pictures?
- Do you have an exclusive brand that requires your message to be delivered in a premium way?
- Is it essential for your customers to be moved by your communication? Email provides the ability to move people using the written word and images. Physical mail adds touch and smell to the experience.
- Do you have the time and resource to design a suitable email or hardcopy mail?
- Is cost a big factor?
As a general rule, your message shouldn’t inconvenience your customers. Whichever route you take, you will be interrupting their daily routine, so make sure the message is worthwhile.
If your message is more complex and requires you to tell a story, then email or snail mail is your best bet.
When the message has a clear and immediate selling point, such as an exclusive, last-minute offer, a text is impossible to beat for both you and your customers.
Oct/090
You get what you deserve
What do you get when you continue to do what you always did? The answer is, you get the same results that you always got. And that is what you would deserve. So if you want things to be better than they were in the past, you have to do some differently, right?
How good is your marketing now? Think about each piece of marketing you have done recently. What was your return? It can be tough to work out how much you made from a piece of marketing, so keep it simple – how many people responded to your advert, flyer, email or whatever method you used?
For most forms of local marketing, it can seem pointless trying to measure. For example, it’s hard to find out how many people came to you as a result of a recent advert you placed in the local paper. And is it really worth the effort involved in trying to measure that? Let’s come back to that question at the end.
There are many ways to measure. You can sometimes measure effectiveness by incentivising people to respond to your campaign. Other times, it’s simply about training your staff to ask – where did you hear about us? If you’re using email marketing, it’s much easier to measure. If you’re using mobile marketing or SMS marketing, it’s hard not to.
Think of it this way. Of all the different pieces of marketing you could possibly do, there are a few that will work far better; a few where you will make noticeably more money as a result. Do you want to find out which methods make a real difference to your business? Well, you can only do that by experimenting, by trying out different marketing ideas and methods.
In fact, this process is what makes marketing fun. Try something. If it works, do more. If it doesn’t work, try something new. Repeat until successful.
There’s just one catch. You’ll never know what works until you measure.
Sep/090
Is it worth advertising in local newspapers?
Is it worth spending the money to advertise your local business in the local paper?
On the upside, you know that the paper will be read by people in your local area and…well, that’s about all you can know.
You don’t know who’s going to read it and how appropriate they will be to your business. Local papers don’t offer that level of detail when it comes to their audience.
It’s also tough to tell how well a local paper advert has worked. You can try to include a coupon for readers to redeem but many people aren’t too keen on cutting out and carrying coupons around nowadays. They’d much rather show you a coupon on their mobile phone screen.
Local papers are also not appropriate for advertising last minute offers or special promotions. If you need to generate business for this weekend, you probably haven’t got time to create an ad before the newspaper’s print deadline. Mobile phones are the best way to send time-sensitive offers.
With all of that in mind, you’d think that it would be cheap to place a local paper ad. But in fact it isn’t cheap at all. You’d be doing well to place a small ad buried in an insignificant section for £50 – and that’s for one week! Try to get prominence or go for one of the local glossy mags and you’ll pay in the hundreds. That doesn’t include the cost of designing the ad. Compare that to zero cost in the case of an email or under 10 pence in the case of an SMS.
If you want to target, if you want to measure response, if you want to generate business instantly, if you want to make life convenient for your customers, find another way to reach them. If you’re determined to use the local press, forget about paying for exposure and focus on getting free PR in your local newspapers instead.
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