A Tale of Two Mothers Days

Mother's day card - vector illustrationLeading up to Mother’s Day, I constantly watched Twitter for holiday specials and promotions.  Many restaurants did a nice job of promoting their offerings, but I had no way of knowing if they were successful or not.   But let me tell you a story.

As is their tradition, my daughter, wife and mother-in-law went out in the morning and came back to grab me for lunch.  My daughter wanted to introduce my mother-in-law to Tryst.  Since it’s just down the street we hopped in the car and were on our way.  We walked in and the place was packed.  I asked the hostess how long the wait was and she said there is no wait, you can’t get in.  They were completely full for the day with reservations.

Tryst had consistently posted on Twitter, Email and Facebook every other day or more, linking back to a page on their website and the results were clear to see!

Tryst Restaurant@TrystRestaurant 9 May
Make last minute #MothersDay reservations at Tryst. She’ll never know you waited this long… we promise http://fb.me/NbJ3XIXQ

No need to rain on the parade of the restaurant we ending up going to, but it was mostly empty and we didn’t even wait to be seated.

Moral of the story – start promoting a Father’s Day menu or special now.  Do it often and consistently and see what happens!

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Prove the ROI of your Restaurant’s Website

I wrote this past Saturday about different reasons people give to not have a website for their restaurant. I missed one though, an important one.

“A website is a waste of money. We spent 10 grand on a new fancy website a few years ago, and it didn’t change our business at all. As far as I’m concerned they’re a complete waste of money.”

These are serious people, and their concern is definitely a real one. An investment their business has SHOULD have a return, otherwise why do it? Proving an ROI from the investment in a Restaurant Website and Internet Marketing can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. The key thing to keep in mind though, that a website is a tool. It’s not a solution. The website helps you CREATE a solution.

More often than not, people who didn’t get an ROI from their website bought a 10 grand dud that they threw up on the web and ignored and abandoned and then were upset that it wasn’t making any money for them, even though they weren’t even adequately tracking to see if it were the case.

Ok so… How CAN we not only prove an ROI, but make one more likely? There are a variety of ways, and it involves both online and in-restaurant activities.

1) Track Your Specials. Let’s say you sell pizzas and you have 20 different gourmet pizzas. Well keep track of how many of each you sell every day of the week. Even chart it on a graph (visuals help). Then offer an online special. Put it on your website, put it on Yelp, put it on Foursquare, Tweet it, Put it on your Facebook page. Don’t mention it in your restaurant. Then see if there is a difference in the numbers sold. Or you could even make an original creation as an online special and tell people to ask for the “secret pizza of the day” on your website. See how many people order it.

2) Make it a Game. Game mechanics are a great way to get people involved from a customer loyalty standpoint. Complicated systems can be expensive, but there are inexpensive third party options, or you could run it yourself from your website. Have people sign up on your website, have them participate in your “game” and then track the results of that. The more people participating in the game online, as well as in restaurant, are definitive numbers.

3) Have an Internet Marketing plan. Honestly, this is the most important, and in many ways encompasses the above two options.

If you aren’t tracking your website traffic, and comparing it for correlations or causation’s with your actual business, it makes it hard to see if there is anything in common. Start with the tracking of your website, see what kind of traffic you’re getting there, what kind of traction you get on Twitter, Facebook, and Social Media, and work on an Internet Marketing plan for 5-6 months (we are blogging about a rough internet marketing plan for restaurants as well, it’s something we help all our customers with custom plans for their restaurants, as well as implementation.). After a few months, depending on your plan, and how well you’ve stuck to it, you can then compare your website traffic, and other internet marketing intitiatives, with your actual customer receipts. If you’ve increased your traffic, grown your Facebook fanbase, grown an email marketing list of hundreds of customers, and coordinated it all, and more such as contests, specials, and game mechanics, through your website, you WILL see an increase in your overall business.

Websites are tools. If you don’t use them, they can’t help you at all. If you spend money on a website, and then ignore it, you probably won’t get much out of it. If you bought a SUV to drive up into the back woods to go fishing, and then left it parked in your garage all the time, would you complain that your new shiny unused SUV never caught you any fish? A website, and spending money on one, for your restaurant is only the start. It’s purchasing a TOOL to help you increase your business. It alone can’t do that. Not without your help.

But if you use that tool, then we can help you track and prove the ROI of purchasing it. If you’re interested in more contact us today to talk, and even try a membership, no contracts, or if you have a great site, let us help you maintain it and enhance it only $50 per hour – we can do many updates in an hour.

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Your Restaurant Should Be Using Twitter, Here’s How

When a restaurant is new to the internet, and wants to leverage it to increase their business, asks us what kinds of things they can do, one of the suggestions we have for them is to post on Twitter, and to use it regularly. Twitter, if you don’t really get it, is a place where your restaurant can sign up and get an account.

Then you can post a short message or ‘status’ of 140 characters (ie 140 letters, numbers, spaces, etc). Anyone can see them, anyone can search on them.

They’re a great way to do a number of things for your restaurant though, from informational

b.good@b_good_ 23 Apr west side & southwestern salad get better today. kinfolk, check inboxes for details & an incentive to try them asap pic.twitter.com/lZ6p9cEN9L

to customer service:

@boloco 3 May We just announced the winner of our @personsname burrito-guessing contest! Head to http://facebook.com/boloco  to find out the answer!

The problem usually is though that people don’t know what they can tweet. They’re sitting at their computer and don’t know what to put in. Here are some ideas to help you.

  • Don’t try and put in what you are literally doing. “I’m grinding beef” Try and put something in that’s interesting that caught your eye. “It’s amazing the difference between good local beef and national chains beef.”
  • You should be blogging as well as tweeting, and when you blog you should post a link to it on twitter. Don’t just post the link though, describe what the blog is about, see below:

@TrystRestaurant 7h  Give Mom what she deserves this #MothersDay: a special two-course pre-fixe brunch menu and a complimentary Mimosa!… http://fb.me/Np9h62v7

  • Ask questions. Hopefully over time people will follow your tweets and you can ask questions and get answers from people.

    @b_good_ 17 Jan debating next “seasonal veggie”. start brussels (w/ bacon, apple, dried cran) or bring back our homemade veggie chili? pic.twitter.com/zo2bYrcN

  • Search for topics that interest you IN twitter, and find people who post interesting things about those subjects. Then you can “retweet” those items to YOUR followers.
  • Give advice. Any basic things involved in your restaurant that you can share with people. Advice on how to properly fry french fries, or make a certain type of salad.  Include a picture or a video.

@MarcusCooks 4 May The best tips for you to get restaurant-perfect brussel sprouts in your home. http://bit.ly/10Sw3Wo

  • It’s important to show your human side to on Twitter. Be social. Pretend that you’re actually talking to a customer. Don’t be a robot.

@JerryRemysGrill 7h #RedSox need to win – it’s been nice without the doomsday mentality! #Bruins took care of business … c’mon Sox!

  • Don’t get to cocky and constantly toot your own horn. Be modest in your tweets. Humility goes alot further than braggadocio. At the same time don’t be afraid to link to good reviews.

@Houlihans 18 Apr Shout out to our new location in the Columbus, OH area (Upper Arlington). Only open 5 weeks & already getting props: http://expi.co/0eRa

  • If you have any local partners, say a next door business, promote them as well. If you help promote companies you work with or who are near you, they might see it and help promote you as well.
  • Lastly, and most importantly…Tweet your food. Every day send out a tweet about your specials, or a specific menu item. Remind people about your food. Link to a picture of it on your website or put your picture directly into your tweet (sweet new functionality from twitter). Do it in the morning, and you’ll see a difference in your lunch crowd.

@bostoncafecater 20h Fun and healthy dessert made possible!!! http://fb.me/1Gxu9RTKg

Lots of things you can put on Twitter and a few minutes a day can gain you more regular customers.

You could also twitter stalk a few restaurants who do a great job of communicating, marketing and having a good time, here are a few suggestions to start with: @TrystRestaurant, @boloco, @b_good_, @piperspub, @JerryRemysGrill

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Just Say NO To Image Phone Numbers

image-phonenoAttention eating establishments – if you do any takeout business or take reservations via phone, your phone number should be listed as text and NOT an image on your site. Why, you ask? When someone views your site on a cell phone, if your phone number is listed as text, it is automatically converted to a click-able link so all your potential customer needs to do is hit the link and they’re calling you for an order or reservation!

The alternative is potential customers trying to dial your number from memory – this is what happens if you have an image phone number on your site. Customers have to go to your site, try to remember the number and go out to their keypad to dial it, instead of making one click. So take five minutes -go to your website from your cell phone and make sure your phone number is listed as text. If it is, great! If not change it yourself, call your web guy or call us and we can do it for you.

I wrote this from personal experience with trying to order restaurant takeout and make restaurant reservations. It’s annoying. Don’t annoy your customers before they walk thru your doors.

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Let Your Website Bloom!

You’ve gotta commit to your website if you’re going to be successful. It’s like anything in that regard. How many things do you know that work if you just ignore it, leave it alone.

If you want even something like a garden to thrive you’ve got to tend it. Water it when it doesn’t rain. Weed it. Put up sticks for the peas to climb, to hold the tomato plants up. It’s not your whole day (as long as it’s not a huge garden of course), but it’s something you keep an eye on, do a few minutes every day, maybe a half hour, and then let it work for you.

But if you do nothing? The weeds will overwhelm it, the rabbits will eat it, the plants will sag, and at best you get some mediocre production out of the garden. But for just a few minutes a day, you can get a huge return back in the quality and quantity of food that your garden produces.

It’s the same thing with a website.

Sure if you put it up, it’s gonna maybe get you some stuff. People might find it, come in to your restaurant. But you’re going to have the same reaction to the garden. That it’s not really doing much for you. It’s not wowing you. Yet you’re doing nothing.

You don’t need to spend hours and hours every day on it. You just need a little bit of time. Post a blog, post a picture, tweet your specials for the day, post something on your Facebook page. if someone responds, or asks a question, check in regularly to respond to them and help them out. Heck even running contests, using game mechanics, writing an email newsletter and doing email marketing, none of that will eat up your day, but if you do it and do it regularly, by the end of the growing season, your website will be like your garden, and business will be blooming….

…er… booming…

To find out more about how we can help your restaurant’s website bloom, sign up or contact us today!

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How To Make Your Own Website

So what can you do to make a website by yourself for your restaurant without paying anyone else a dime, including us?

1. Get a domain name. Go to godaddy.com (or any other domain name registrar) and find a domain name for your restaurant. Be sure to follow good usability measures in picking one, but other than finding a good domain name that works for your restaurant both matching your restaurant and SEO practices as well as usability all you need do is purchase it. Prices vary but figure 10 bucks a year. You can’t get around this cost.

2. Get a web host. I’m am going to call out a specific company here but you can go on the cheap and get a company for less than $10 a month, if you dig under $5 a month. Of course every host isn’t the same, we recommend WPEngine.  If you don’t go with WPEngine, be sure it gives you access to PHP and MySQL or mentions that you can install a WordPress blog there.

3. Point your domain to your new host. You’ll need to log into Godaddy.com and then adjust the DNS settings on your domain to point to your new host.

4. If you want to have email with your domain name you’ll want to set that up as well. We recommend using Google Apps. Good email hosting for free, plus you get shared calendars, and webmail separate from your web host. It’s a good idea to have your email on a different server from your website. So sign up for Google Apps, and then set up the MX Records in Godaddy.com as well to point there, and then configure your Google Apps settings for your email, and get it set up.

5. Download WordPress and install it on your new hosting environment. Once you sign up for your web host you’ll get some log in information. You’ll need to FTP up to it (you’ll need an FTP program if you don’t have one yet) and move the WordPress installation files up to it.  Once they’re there you’ll also need to set up a database on your web host, and then run the installation files for WordPress.

6. Find a theme you like for WordPress. There are tons of free ones. If you’re lucky you’ll find one that matches your restaurant enough to not throw people off. If you’re in doubt go simpler rather than more complicated. Once you find one install it into your WordPress installation.  You could also use Headway, which allows you to drag and drop you design.

7. Enter your information. Lastly be sure to set up the information on your site, probably you’ll want to create a front page template to be just your front page, so the front page isn’t a blog roll, and lists out the pertinent information about your restaurant in a attractive but informative way. Create other pages and put your information on them, enter your menu, locations, get an embedded google map, etc. Download some plugins to help out your ongoing things like submitting sitemaps to Google and Bing, as well as any social sharing helpers like Shareit.

And voila. You’ve made the site yourself.

One more thing, that should help you immensely.  Install the OpenMenu Plugin.  Easily create posts that is based on your OpenMenu. Fully integrates an OpenMenu(s) into an existing theme. This is the official WordPress Plugin for OpenMenu. From creating custom menu posts, to widgets to display specials and restaurant information, to the ability to add menus anywhere (any post or page) in your WordPress Theme, this plugin handles it all.

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Does your website work on Smart Devices?

Yes, you still need a website, but the game has changed. Potential customers are no longer just searching for places to eat or drink on traditional computers. Smartphones, tablets and IPads are everywhere.

During a recent trip to Washington D.C., I was startled at the number of people cruising Yelp and other websites using smart devices while out and about. These days, when your potential customers find themselves in unfamiliar neighborhoods, they look up where to go on their smart phones and computer tablets.

So if your site is unreadable on these smart devices, you are missing out on many customers (butts in seats). Do something about it – now is a great time to update any website. The advent of content management systems and open source technologies has brought prices down to historic lows for quality websites (that work on smart devices).

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