Author Archives: Nash Sherchan

Mobile Text Survey: How Your Restaurant Can Conduct Surveys And Get Feedbacks For Improvement.

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

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A little known secret about doing customer satisfaction surveys and getting the proper feedback instantly for improvements is to do mobile text surveys.

Do you remember a day in your restaurant especially during the busy weekends where things didn’t go well as planned? May be the customer didn’t like service that he got from one of your servers or may be the quality of the food was not so good as expected.

The big question is how do we find out that critical information from your customers so you can correct those mistakes and avoid them from happening again. In this competitive restaurant market there is no space for any restaurants that keeps making the same mistakes on quality of food or service and still survive let alone be profitable.

Big chain restaurants have their survey done via email or 800 number. They can do it because they have big budgets. But for most of the smaller restaurants there is no system in place to get customers’ feedback. May be it’s the belief that it’s expensive therefore very few restaurants do surveys. Most of the times it’s just due to the lack of information. The reality it that there are some affordable system that any small restaurant can use to get the proper feedback and suggestions from their customers.

Though it seems difficult to do surveys, they can be done easily and you can get the response right away . One of the easiest ways to do is via text messages. The nice thing about doing it via text rather than email or postal mail is that it is instantaneous. People are more receptive to text survey because they are short and quick. Since the phone is right on their hand,if you persuade them, chances are that they are gonna respond to your text survey while they are in the restaurant right before they sign their final check. The experience is still fresh in their mind and the feedback will be more accurate.

The idea is to offer an incentive like 20% offer on your next visit for doing a customer satisfaction survey via text. You can have a sign up form which says something like “text your name to 404-894-897X and answer 5 quick questions for free dessert next time.” The server will hand it with the final check with proper explanation. The goal here is to persuade the customers to do a survey via text as he is getting ready to sign the check and before leaving the restaurant while he or she is still in the restaurant.

The key to make them do the survey depends upon few important things that you should do. There are few do’s and don’ts for writing an effective survey.

A great survey will provide you with the right feedbacks and opinions from your customers that you can directly apply to improve your restaurant business. A poor survey may or may not generate many responses and thus the survey might be useless and just a waste of your time and money.

Here are a few do’s and don’ts for writing surveys.

DO: Make sure you have goals before writing questions

A survey should have a simple, concise goal in mind before anything else.

A good example, is question like “Do you like the quality of food in our restaurant ?” and the answer with numbers 0 being bad and 10 being excellent.

A bad example is “What do you think about our restaurant” It’s too general, too broad and has too many open ends.

DON’T: Use many open-ended questions

Open ended questions might seem right initially since it can give you tons of information. But the problem with this strategy is that it takes more effort and time for your customers to answer. So the end result is that they give up in the middle or avoid in the first place. The key is to make it short and easy so that the survey can quickly done in less than a minute.Instead of making them respond long answers if you can create questions and have them answer in scale of 1-10, you’ll have more success.

DO: Keep it short and simple

If you keep your survey short you have a greater chance that people will complete your survey. If your survey is long, people will often abandon the survey before finishing.

If your survey is long, people will just scan the survey. After finding it too long it triggers psychologically in their mind that it’s too much work to even get started.

Cut out as many questions as you can. Be specific on what you exactly want to find out with the right questions.

DON’T: Start with difficult questions

Try to place the interesting easy to answer questions first. This will intrigue them into a mood of answering the survey. Once you get them into that flow motion they are more likely to finish it also.

Try to avoid boring questions. However if you have some complicated questions you should reserve them for the end of the survey. Doing this, there is greater probability that they’ll likely answer them any way since they’re about to finish the survey.

DO: Offer free give away offer, discounts, prize or incentive

There should be some kind of incentive or prize for the time and effort they are putting to complete the survey. With out some sort of prize they are not motivated at all. Run a contest. For example, run free food give away surveys, where one survey winner will win a certain food items..

You can also give away free appetizer or discounts to everyone who answers a survey. That way, they feel that they are rewarded for their time. This will motivate them to fill out the survey, knowing that they’ll get something out of it.

DON’T: Use complicated or technical language

Use simple language without any technical terminology that is easy to answer. Try to use short words instead of long words.
In other words, aim to make your survey so easy and simple that a ten-year-old could answer it.

I hope when ever you decide to do a survey among your customers you’ll follow the above do’s and don’ts. This will get you the right feedbacks that’ll indeed help you improve the quality to become a better restaurant. Have you ever conducted a survey for your restaurant or competed a survey for other restaurants. Please share your thoughts what you think about conducting a good surveys and how it has helped your restaurant.

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Posted in Marketing-General, Mobile Marketing

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3 Easy Steps On How To Market Your Restaurant Online

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

If I could sum up how to market your restaurant online in 3 easy steps, here is what they would be….

Step 1: Create Content – Build a regular and mobile website

Step 2: Connect and Capture – Go where your customers are. Connect with your prospects online via social media and get their contact  information for future marketing opportunities

Step 3: Convert prospects into Customers: Communicate with yourprospects via  email or  text messages automatically and convert them into paying  customers

Now, let’s discuss those 3 steps in further more detail…

Step 1: Create Content -
Build a regular and mobile website with useful information so that your restaurant can be  found online when prospective customers are searching via mobile or desktop

First step is to create a search engine friendly website – regular and mobile with great contents. It should be informative and valuable enough for it to appear on the first page of Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo. Don’t be misguided that just because the site has cool animation and is designed by a website designer, it will rank high on Google. To make the website work it has to be designed with marketing on mind so it will attract search engines first and thus your prospective customers. If search engine can’t  find your website, then your customers can’t find it either because there is no way search engines can bring up your restaurant listing on the search results.

Second thing to do is to get your restaurant listed in Google properties like Google Places and other popular online directories which will help your restaurant get better rankings.

This isn’t a “set and forget” strategy. Once your restaurant  establishes itself in these online locations, it needs to ensure its information “stays fresh.”

The internet search engines, directories and social media are similar to perishible products in your restaurant. There’s a “use by” date on everything you use to prepare your food, which means it expires over time. If your restaurant doesn’t deliver new or updated content on a regular basis, it will get “knocked off the shelf” by another restaurant that does, and it becomes irrelevant as it gets buried in cyberspace for no one to be able to find.

Step 2: Connect and Capture – Go where your customers are.
Connect with your prospects online via social media and get their contact
information for future marketing opportunities

Once your restaurant’s search engine friendly website is published, you need to make sure you also have a proper lead capture system that will automatically capture leads and manage your email and mobile text marketing campaigns. Without the system it’s going to be hard to attract and retain new customers.

The idea is to make sure that you entice those online visitors  to sign up for your email club or VIP mobile club. You can accomplish this  by offering them a free appetizer or glass of wine or some thing else that you think is appropriate. Remember you’ve only 3 seconds to convince him or her to sign up and take your offer other wise they are gone faster than you can think. You must have an email coupon sign up form. Along with that make sure you also offer a special deal that they can get exclusively  via text message. This will help you to not only attract this new prospective customers  but also communicate with them for future marketing promotions. Literally you have a power to fill up empty seats of your restaurant in a matter of 2-3 hours.

Now the question is, where should you find these prospects that could become your paying customers? There is a saying: “go where customers are.” You should reach out to prospects and customers where they spend most of their time online. So it makes sense to go to social media like Facebook to attract people. You can do this  by placing some Facebook Ads if your marketing budget permits. Since most of these users are always on mobile phones, make sure you are reaching them via mobile marketing too.They tend to more receptive to sign up via text message and deals.

3.Convert into Customers-
Communicate with your prospects via email or text messages automatically and convert them into paying customers

Once your restaurant establishes relationships with prospective customers online, you need to continue to provide valuable information and make offers because it is proven that it’s six to seven times easier to get an existing customer to buy from you again than it is to get a new customer to buy from you the first time. However, you should still continue attracting new customers; just be sure you are converting them to paying  customers and funneling them into your customers database.

Most restaurants miss opportunities to incrementally increase their revenue because they don’t follow up with their customers.

One of relatively easy and affordable ways to follow up with prospects is through text messages. It also provides a simple entry into mobile marketing for your restaurant business.

Text messages are effective because 97% are read and 90% are read within the first hour of receipt. A business like your restaurant can text a follow-up offer for a two-for-one special on a slow Tuesday night, and you can be assured that it will generate a near-instant response.

Furthermore, mobile coupon open rates are as high as 95% and the redemption rates are exceptional ― between 5% and 20% ― compared to traditional print coupon redemption rates, which average below 2%.

So now let’s recap how you can market your restaurant on the internet effectively at an affordable cost without spending tons of money on traditional advertising that doesn’t work any more.

Step 1: Create Content – Build a regular and mobile website

Step 2: Connect and Capture -  Go where your customers are.
Connect with your prospects online via social media and get their contact
information for future marketing opportunities

Step 3: Convert into Customers – Communicate with your prospects via email
or  text messages automatically and convert them into paying customers

I hope you’ll implement these three steps formula to market your restaurant online and get results in increased sales and profits.

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Posted in Local Search Marketing, Mobile Marketing

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Google Apps for Business: a recipe for success at EAT- a fast growing UK based restaurant chain

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Here is a video about EAT- a fast growing UK based restaurant chain that is not only leveraging Google apps for their business but also taking advantage of other emerging new technologies. They also have iPhone app and integrated contact less payment solution for their stores. In this new competitive restaurant market they clearly understand the importance of not just delivering fresh and delicious food but also managing every aspect of business operation efficiently leveraging new technology.

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Posted in Marketing-General

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7 Mobile Marketing Strategies and Techniques to Attract More Customers for your Restaurant

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

While you are trying to take your restaurant business to the next level with mobile marketing, there are a number of good techniques and strategies that you can use. Most of these have been devised by marketers who have conducted extensive mobile marketing campaigns and understand the way restaurant customers behave and how they’ll react to specific mobile advertisements.

Strategies and Techniques

  • Send reminders via text messages: Simple, yet effective, send your restaurant information, special menus, specials of the day via a text message. This, along with your contact information, can be sufficient to attract diners to your restaurant.  Make sure that you keep the message simple, precise, and relevant and that it adds value for your customers
  • Quizzing via text: Ask people to participate in quiz competitions that can be focused on questions about your products, for example: a specific recipe or the origin of a particular dish. Offer them free meal deals or great discount offers to attract them to your restaurant.  This is not only a great way to create brand awareness but to also increase loyalty among the existing customers.
  • Text Polls or Surveys: People like to give their opinions.  Conduct a text poll and offer some perks in return for opinions on items of interest to you.  Using this strategy, you can collect valuable customer feedback as well as phone numbers, the most valuable asset for your restaurant business.
  • Coupon sending (text or picture): Restaurant owners can decide to send either text or picture coupons.  Normally, the coupons sent by the restaurants are text based that I’ve experienced so far.  These can be presented at your restaurant counter and redeemed for free meals or great discounts.  They work well to attract new customers who want to try out your restaurant.
  • Ads alongside bulk SMS: A lot of people use free bulk SMS services and all providers need sponsors to ensure profitability.  Book your ads with these service providers.  At times you can benefit from viral marketing if a particular text message is forwarded to a lot of people by the person who received it.
  • Mobile friendly website: Make sure that the website you create has special features that enable it to be easily viewed via a mobile phone in addition to a PC.  For example, if you have a restaurant menu designed for a standard web site, update it for mobile devices, so that mobile users will find it easy to navigate.  Be sure to create a website that is compatible with most mobile phones and test it before rolling it out.
  • Create mobile apps: Mobile-based applications to play games or access popular sites are in huge demand these days.  Have one created with your restaurant name endorsed on it.  This enables you to establish your brand with a younger audience as they are more likely to be influenced by such applications.  You can also utilize existing mobile apps to help your potential customers link to your Facebook or Twitter account.  Whenever you post anything on your respective accounts, your customer will be updated on his or her mobile device. This gives you a better chance of reaching out to your customers in a short timeframe.

The tactics mentioned above represent some of the most preferred and well-tested techniques for mobile marketing. Plan innovative campaigns and tweak them to create better mobile marketing techniques of your own.Obviously, you don’t have to do all at once. You can choose what you feel suits best for your restaurant.

Have you ever tried mobile marketing for your restaurant? I believe that there is a huge opportunity for restaurants. Hope you will take advantage of this new mobile marketing trends.

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Posted in Mobile Marketing

Social Media and Mobile Marketing-How to Integrate both for Maximum Result

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and others continue to be a growing trend among both teenagers and adults.  There is no better place to advertise your restaurant business than on a social media site especially if you are  looking for low cost marketing channel for better return.

A large percentage of consumers access these sites via their mobile phones and have multiple social media applications downloaded on their mobile devices.  Develop a presence on these social media sites so that potential and existing customers can follow you and receive your latest restaurant updates.

Best Times to update for better response

Since mobile phones are accessible at any time, day or night, your message, when communicated via a social media site, will reach the fans or followers in a timely manner.  Keeping your social media site updated also enables you to grab the attention of prospective customers and create brand awareness in their mind.The best time for updates seems to be 11AM, 3PM, & 8PM ET.However you can test by updating on different times to find out the best times for better response from your fans.

Word of Mouth Advertising -How Social Media creates a Viral Effect

Social media campaigns can have a viral effect.  Your message can be circulated to more prospective customers than you initially targeted.  For example, when you send an offer on Facebook or Twitter, if your followers like the offer, they will share it with their friends. The message and your offer are then displayed to their friends on those respective social media sites.  Thus, your marketing campaign has a viral effect.  Make sure that you maximize your use of social media integration on mobile phones as most of people, about 50% of your total customers  may be accessing social media sites like Facebook and Twitter via mobile. Expect the percentage to go even higher as smart phones become a main stream.

Think integrating Mobile Marketing into your Facebook Fan Page

Consider developing a fan page on Facebook where customers can leave feedback or comments. Though this might scare some of the restaurant owners about the negative review, I think it is better to know your weakness and correct it soon and win back that customer than remain in the darkness of unknown. It might not seem obvious but in a long run you’ll win when you adopt this mentality. Why don’t take that same negative experience and turn it into an asset that you can use to gain confidence and trust from your customers.This shows the human side of your restaurant business. We all make mistakes. Let’s face it. But the key is whether we correct it in a timely manner. Actively updating your Fan page enables you to simultaneously acknowledge positive feedback, thank them where ever necessary  and learn about potential areas for improvement.

Always think how you can integrate mobile into any thing you do. You can also add a mobile coupon widget to your Facebook page to encourage customers to sign up for coupons.   It’s a great opportunity to implement customer satisfaction surveys and confirm to your customers that you listen to their views and act on them.  When you are using different social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and text messages to market your restaurant you have to ask this question to your self-  “how do I make sure that all of them work side by side and one is helping the other  for maximum result.” There is a power in a sum than just one marketing channel. When you integrate all our marketing effort stacking on top of every marketing channel you have previously used, you’ll see an exponential growth and return on your investment of time, effort and money.

Are you integrating social media and mobile marketing to get maximum results.I’d love to hear your experiences or any feedback.

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Posted in Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing

How to leverage Mobile Marketing for your Restaurant business

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

When you look at a mobile phone, do you see a new revenue source or a way to increase customers?  If you are a restaurant owner, you should!  Mobile marketing is a channel that can help you increase profits and customer traffic.  If mobile phones are the most popular and contemporary technology used by consumers today YOUR CUSTOMERS use them and that can help you.

Integrating Mobile Marketing
It’s easy and uncomplicated to add mobile marketing to your existing marketing mix.  To begin with, there is no inventory cost as with paper or plastic-based loyalty marketing programs.  Secondly, there are multiple components available that can be tailored to your restaurant’s specific needs.  A mobile campaign can be completely based on text messaging.   And, you can also utilize social media to make your message go viral and exponentially increase the value of your marketing effort.

Using Text Marketing
Text messaging (SMS) is the most common method of conducting mobile marketing promotions.  One benefit of SMS is that you can reach all mobile users whether it is smart phones like iPhone, Android or simple generic phone. It covers everyone. Unlike in the app, you can reach only the person who has smart phones. Not every customers might have the smart phones. Another advantage I see is that you can reach the entire customer list on your mobile database INSTANTLY at any time.

How Mobile Coupon program Works

There are two ways you  can do when you want to implement the mobile coupon program for your restaurant. The first program that I see most of the restaurants using, requires a simple touch screen computer at the front counter of your restaurant.  It is simple for customers to input their mobile phone numbers directly onto the touch screen to join your discount program. But the problem that I see especially for small restaurants is that it is little expensive and can sometimes be technically challenging. You have to invest upfront fees for the hardware and on top of that you have to have access to the internet connection. There are times when you are out of internet connection,and it’s really frustrating experience for the customers. Though the service might be great, just because of the internet outage, it creates bad experience in the minds of the customers. Worst it could  lead them to even opt out from the program itself.

The other program that I recommend is easy and affordable one. It’s very simple since the restaurant businesses don’t have to buy those expensive computer hardware and worry that it might break in the middle of lunch hour. You don’t have to worry about internet or the connections. You are rather using your customers’ mobile phone for your mobile marketing program. How cool is that.

So how does the other mobile marketing program really work then?

That’s a great question. Let me explain to you now. Conceptually this is how it works. You encourage your customers to sign up for either your Mobile eClub program or to register themselves by sending a SMS text message to a specified number.For which you promise to offer something in return. It can be something like Free appetizer or discount offer. Once they have subscribed, you can send them text messages in the form of coupon.  These messages enable customers to receive discounts or Free offer on their next visit to your restaurant.  This is a win-win for your customers and your restaurant business.

Everything is set up internally and is digital. All you need is few big posters for the windows,  signs for the counter-top, in front of the register and table tent cards with mobile sign up info. The signs will have the directions how to sign up for your Mobile eClub. It will say something like Text your name & email to 770-784-xxxx to redeem FREE taco instantly.

Obviously you can offer anything you wish is attractive to encourage your customers to sign. The better the offer, the more sign ups you will get at a faster speed. With this method you are killing two birds at one shot. You are capturing their email and mobile phone number. Essentially you can do email and mobile integrated marketing side by side. When you combine two methods of communication with your customers it becomes more powerful.

You can even use it for doing a mobile survey about the dinning experience of your guest when the experience is fresh in his mind while he is waiting for the check to sign.The waiter would say something like this, ” Mr Smith, I hope you enjoyed the food. We’d appreciate if you could do our simple survey about your experience. Since it is done via mobile, it will take just few seconds.As gesture of thanks for your feedback you’ll receive 20% discount on your next visit.” You can choose to offer  what ever you feel is good as a reward. This does two thing.

First, you are getting feedback on a real time about the quality of your food, service, cleanliness etc so you can improve them as necessary. This will help you to be in control of your restaurant and thus remain as a top brand in the minds of your customers.  Second, you are giving him another reason to come to your restaurant rather than go to your competitor’s restaurant. Occasionally you could send some surprise gifts or birthday gifts via text message. These are little things but it goes a long way. It shows that you do really care about your customers.This helps you to retain and motivate existing customers to remain loyal to your restaurant.  The system is affordable and readily available.

Do you think this type of mobile marketing program would help your restaurant attract potential new customers and keep them loyal to your restaurant. I’d love to hear your experiences, thoughts or any other ideas.

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Posted in Mobile Marketing

Can Social Media Be Effective To Keep Customers Loyal To Your Restaurant

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

Restaurant Loyalty Marketing is one of the key elements to your over all restaurant marketing mix to increase a chance of success in this competitive restaurant market. Obviously, many restaurants have been using traditional loyalty marketing system which are either paper or plastic based.

Though, the loyalty marketing system might have worked for some restaurants, it’s about time to upgrade it to mobile loyalty marketing system.There are several reasons why you want to do this.

First of all,to make sure your customers are loyal to your restaurant by giving an easy way to be part of your loyalty marketing program.They don’t have any obligation to remain loyal when there are so many other restaurants to choose from, just across the street and are tailoring their marketing effort to their needs and life style.Secondly, to make it as easy as possible for your restaurant business, so that it becomes an effective marketing solution and doesn’t turn out to be a headache while trying to manage them. More importantly to get better return on your marketing investment.

What are you offering to your customers for being loyal to your restaurant?

This is the key question that you have to ask your self. Are you offering them free meal on their 7th visit, free dessert for signing up with your loyalty program.

So the essence of having restaurant loyalty marketing system is to create raving fans who are loyal to your restaurant and on top of that they do the word of mouth advertising for you using social media like Facebook. The key to this system is to create it once and leave it on auto pilot so the system works itself and that you don’t have to lift a finger trying to manage it rather focus on your core business.

I’m sure some of the restaurants that you visited in the past years,have handed you the paper or plastic loyalty card.I remember I had one for Subway and recently from restaurant Nothing but Noodles near by my place. I’m glad that they are offering me something for the loyalty to their restaurant. But the problem is that my wallet is full of those kinds of card after visiting several restaurant over the few months. Though I like their offers, I don’t want to carry all those paper or plastic loyalty cards. I assume you also had similar experiences in the past.

There are times when you have earned 6 points already and when you are just about to redeem the points for your FREE meal, you don’t find it and realized that you lost it.

What if ?
Instead, what if we used virtual loyalty cards for Restaurants?

Imagine if that same paper or plastic loyalty card could be turned into virtual card that could reside on the smart phone. One of the 3 things that people always carry is the phone. That means, when your virtual card is inside the smart phone, they never forget your loyalty card. Another benefit is that they don’t have to go through “wallet syndrome” where their wallet is getting fatter and fatter that it is hard for them to sit properly.

Now let’s take it to the next level….
What if once the customer redeemed the Free meal on the 7th visit and could share the experience on Facebook encouraging them to sign up for your loyalty program or any other deals marketing campaign. At one click you have literally enabled them to do word of mouth advertising for your restaurant. Let’s say the customer had 100 friends and what if some of his friends decided to try and share their experience in the same way.. That goes on and on and on……

See how your marketing is spreading viral like a wild fire. This is the difference between the word of mouth advertising done in traditional way in the old days versus doing by leveraging social media like Facebook in this new age.It’s the SPEED that you can leverage to reach the maximum number of customers at the shortest period time.

Best of all you are leveraging your own customers to do the marketing for your restaurant.

Hope you are seeing the possibilities for attracting potential new customers and keeping them loyal and also creating your restaurant brand awareness quickly and efficiently with having you to figure out all the complexities of restaurant loyalty marketing.

Do you feel if this kind of restaurant loyalty marketing solution would help your restaurant? Please feel free to share your experiences or any thoughts…

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Posted in Loyalty Marketing

Facebook Places-What Does It Mean To Your Restaurant?

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Nash Sherchan| 7 Comments

Facebook Places, a new geo-location sharing service, introduced by the social networking site-Facebook allows users to share their location in real-time. The application works over smartphones like iPhone for now (may be on others later) and is simple to use. Users simply scroll through nearby locations and check-in at their current location where ever they frequent. Most of the time people like to check in when they visit to their favorite restaurant. After checking-in, users can also tag all their friends who are also with them at the location and the update shows up on their news feeds.

So why should restaurants care?
Facebook Places also notifies individuals when a friend is nearby or at the same location. It also includes an activity stream of past friends who visited the location. For restaurants, there are a number of possible benefits to Facebook Places. Most obviously, it can stir interest in a restaurant and help increase it exposure to local citizens. Especially for restaurants which specialize in specific niches or more exotic types of cuisines.

The application can also turn a restaurant into a hotspot. The more people check in to the restaurant, the more people decide to meet up with friends there, and so the restaurant increases its chances to increase customer loyalty and keep them coming back for more.Have you ever been to a new place and didn’t know which restaurant to visit? Lets say you didn’t have a time nor any energy to check out on Yelp or any other restaurant directory online. Well after all we are hungry, right ….You are driving in search of restaurant and suddenly you see ton of cars on the parking lot in one of the restaurants among many others. I’m sure you would visit that particular restaurant. Why? Because you got the social proof by looking at the number of people that decided to visit that restaurant as appose to other restaurants. Now imagine a similar situation with Facebook Places. Except now it’s is in the form of digital. Instead of physically driving you are scrolling your facebook app on your iPhone (for now, more on other smart phones later). As you saw the car parked out side the restaurant, you’ll see the digital footprints of some of your own friends and many others. This is powerful. Because you are getting recommendations not only from strangers but your own friends too.I hope you see the power of Facebook Places.

Maybe the most important part of Facebook Places is the Places Page. This page includes all the information on the restaurant, including a map of its locations and the activity stream. By taking ownership of the page, you can merge it with your official business Facebook Page allowing you to share videos, links, photos, events and Facebook ad campaigns. You claim the Facebook Places once and then the rest of the marketing is done by the greatest fans of your restaurant. This is a great example of crowd sourcing. It is the collective power of recommendations by the crowd.

Have you already claimed your Facebook Places for your restaurant business? If not please do so. You’ll be far ahead than those who are hiding their head in the sand as if nothing has changed in the social networking world or who don’t believe in power of social media. Good Luck and please do share your experiences as you are using Facebook Places for your business.

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Posted in Face Book Marketing, Location Based

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iPhone 4- With its amazing new features can iPhone become an indispensible tool for your restaurant business?

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Nash Sherchan| 12 Comments

iPhone 4-is going to be available starting June 15th.With amazing new features it makes iPhone more powerful, easier to use and you can do pretty much everything from taking photos, recording videos and so many other things that can be helpful to your personal or business life. It is almost like a powerful computer in a compact tiny device that fits into your palm.

Some of the new features they talk about on the video are:

  • FaceTime
  • Retina Display
  • Multitasking
  • HD Video Recording & Editing
  • 5-Megapixel Camera with LED-Flash

FaceTime

I used to dream about video calling a decade ago. Finally it seems that iPhone 4 is making it a reality on mobile phones. I know for some restaurant owners especially during the initial years of business they leave their home early in the morning and come home night. They work so hard on making the business success that they don’t even get to see their kids. When they leave in the morning the kids are asleep and when they come home by night they are again asleep. After all they have to wake up for their school next morning. But no worries. Seems iPhone 4 will be able to help you in connecting with your kids face to face on video while  talking to them. With just a tap, you can wave hello to your kids, share a smile and feeling of love even from your office at your restaurant far away from home. By the way just want to inform you that it works only on Wi Fi and between iPhone 4 to iPhone 4. Still it’s a worth purchase that will connect to your loved ones may be help in  bridging your family relation with your kids and wife.

Multitasking

One of the critical skills required in restaurant business is Multitasking since it requires you to do millions of things at one time. (Well just kidding may be not million but at least multiple things. You know what I mean) iPhone 4 introduces cool feature that enables multitasking. Now you can run your favorite third-party apps — and switch between them instantly. Just talking about apps there are so many that you’ll have to jump from one to another while you are tackling your day to day task from restaurant operation to social media marketing. This Multitasking feature becomes very helpful and will make you productive. You will feel like super human who will be able to do so many tasks in so less time.

HD Video Recording & Editing

If you are a chef or even an owner of a restaurant, I think this new  HD Video Recording & Editing feature is kind of cool. You can shoot your own movies in high definition right in side your kitchen or restaurant. Even when you shoot your video inside the restaurant, it capture impressive video even in low-light settings, since it has the advanced backside illumination sensor and built-in LED light. Check this one out. This is cool. You can edit and create your own mini-masterpiece right on iPhone 4 using the new iMovie app that is  coming soon to the App Store for $4.99.

5-Megapixel Camera with LED-Flash

One of the other new improvements on iPhone 4 is the increase megapixel of 5 with Led-Flash. Now you can take beautiful, detailed photos of desserts, or delicious food, wine and any thing you can think of with the new 5-megapixel camera with built-in LED flash. Even when you are inside your restaurant the advanced backside illumination sensor will help capture great pictures even in low light. If you want to take pictures along with some of your customers the new front-facing camera makes it easy to take pictures with out cutting off your head.

Well these are few advantages to name few, but there are several benefits that is beyond this one single blog post. So I’d encourage you to buy it and use it and discover the benefits as you go by using the product to your advantage for personal life or restaurant business use.

Are you using iPhone right now for your restaurant? Do you use any iPhone apps on a regular basis to help you on your restaurant business? I’d appreciate if you could share some of your experiences or thoughts on how iPhone 3G/3GS has helped you in running your restaurant business efficiently. So now that iPhone 4 will be soon available what do you think about the new features? Do you think iPhone will become an indispensible tool for your restaurant business?

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Posted in Marketing-General, Online Order

iPhone 4-Do you have mobile marketing strategy for your restaurant leveraging iPhone apps.

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Nash Sherchan| 2 Comments

Few months back Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs provided a peek at some of the new features coming to its iPhone 4 that is going to be available on June 15th.He presented some upcoming new features  update to its iPhone operating system.

Among so many updates that caught my eyes is the ads in iPhone apps and the potential that it offers to any businesses-big or small including restaurants. It allows them to tap into this new media to advertise to the new mobile iPhone-iPod users. Iphone OS 4 will also give developers more tools for putting ads in iPhone apps.That means more developers will be building great apps to monetize. I’m sure there will be some apps that will also target restaurants. The iAd platform system presents a big potential mobile customers to your restaurant.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple in his own words says “Average iPhone user spends over 30 minutes a day running third-party apps. If you put an ad in every 3 minutes, you’d have 10 apps running during that 10-minute period per user. We will soon have shipped 100 million iPhones and iPod touches. That will happen sometime this summer. 100 million times 10 is a billion ads impressions per day from the iPhone and iPod Touch community.”

Think about this for a moment. 1 Billion ads impressions per day. That is huge. The question that remains to you is that if your restaurant business  is ready to take advantage of this new platform that didn’t even exist few years ago. For get about Yellow Pages. No body looks at them now. For me, I haven’t seen them for years. When I get them on my door, they go direct to thrash. I’m sure you relate to this too as I presume you do the same. After all who wants to deal with that outdated yellow pages when you can get your information at a click of a mouse or push of a button on iPhone or other smart phones.

Though it’s just beginning, I believe this advertising model will be big in few years. You have a great adantage to dive into it right now when everything is fresh and virtually no one in your neighborhood is in it. I just wanted to share my thoughts where mobile marketing is heading and more importantly want you to be aware of the huge opportunity and plan accordingly from right now and reap the benefit.

Have you explored mobile marketing strategy for your restaurant? Have you tried  to advertise your restaurant business on any any iPhone apps? I’d love hear your thought.

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Posted in iPhone Marketing

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