Category Archives: Marketing-General

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Restaurant Marketing Ideas That Can Help Attract Customers To Your Restaurant.

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 2 Comments

5 Restaurant Marketing Ideas That Can be effective during the Slow Economy:

Yesterday I had a chance to have a breakfast with one of my friend- Alex at iHop who has years of hands on restaurant experience from Asia, Europe, Australia to US. He has successfully ran quick service restaurants like Great Wraps, Gorins Sandwiches and currently runs Dairy Queen as a owner, located in Atlanta. I thought it would be great to talk direct to the restaurant entrepreneur who has seen the business very closely in good times and bad times like today. So I was curious to know how he was doing his marketing in order to survive this economic turmoil. I was intrigued and fascinated by some of the simple marketing techniques that he is implementing yet very unique and very effective in a long term. Alex was frank and honest to tell me that he had learnt some of the ideas from marketing books and some that he just picked up from some of the chain restaurant. Never the less, he is successful in executing those marketing techniques whether it is his own idea or some that he emulated from others and modified to make unique to his restaurant business. Some of the marketing ideas that we discussed are:

  1. Free entree during the next visit with the receipt of previous purchase
  2. Free Entree for the winner on the Roulette Game Contest.
  3. Free Coffee with the purchase of the Chicken biscuit breakfast.
  4. Free Cheeseburger with the purchase of fries and drinks.
  5. Local Charity Drive-50 % of the sales on that charity day goes to the Local Charity Organization

Free entree during the next visit with the receipt of previous purchase: During the slow economy, people have a tight budget so they are always in a thought of savings. So keeping in mind the current customers economic situation, Alex has decided to offer a free entree which is a Dairy Queen burger in his case, to the customers who ever purchased a combo meal or any item from the menu and presents the previous purchase receipts. This strategy does two thing. First of all it pulls the regular local corporate customers into his restaurant as he has offered an incentives as opposed to nothing by his competitor who doesn’t have a clue what is he doing. If he was serving 300 customers daily on a regular day, with this promotion he has a chance to increase to 500 customers. With the increase of that extra 200 customers he has made enough to pay for the free item that he gave away. But the important thing that Alex achieve is that despite sluggish economy, he does his marketing very effectively and increase his sales  and profit. More importantly his customers like him more than ever because he is the only one giving them free stuff.

Free Food for the winner on the Roulette Game Contest: The marketing idea behind this is to attract customers with the idea of contest to begin with. His Dairy Queen is inside a Mall so there are lots of people from other states just visiting. So outside the store when they create some sort of contest like “Roll the Roulette and have a chance to eat FREE Fries or Blizzard”. Then this becomes interesting and fun for the people walking by. They don’t have to pay to play. But they will have a chance to win. Most of the time they do win some thing. So lets say a walking by customers plays a roulette and wins FREE fries. He is going to redeem in Dairy Queen.Chance are that he is going to buy burger and drink with the Free Fries that he redeemed.  So this guy who was there just visiting with no intention to eat at Dairy Queen, is entertained to dine with Dairy Queen. I call this selling by entertaining.

Free Coffee with the purchase of the Chicken biscuit breakfast: Free is a magic word that works in your restaurant marketing if you use it correctly. Alex does it very well with this promotion. Now he understands that coffee cost is may be 10-20 cents. So When he offers this as free with the purchase of 2 Chicken biscuits it is very attractive to the customers as customer saves almost $1.59 and may be more if you go to Starbucks. At the same time, Alex doesn’t lose a lot in his food cost as it  is very minimal on the coffee. This strategy of offering free coffee is recently used by McDonald’s to attract Starbucks customers to theirs.  Every now and then I see this kind of promotion with Dunkin Donuts too. So it is a proven strategy and it works. All you have to do is modify to fit into your business.

Free Cheeseburger with the purchase of fries and drinks: This strategy is good for lunch and dinner and in between break time. McDonald and all the other Chain restaurant does it which they call it “Dollar Menu”. But Alex’s marketing idea is little bit different than McDonald’s in the sense that it is free in the first place however with the purchase of Fries and drinks. As we all know that McDonald’s or Dairy Queen, they all make their most of their profits from those two items Fries and drinks. I believe Alex’s marketing idea is more attractive and sustainable as he is able to attract more customers which would not have come had there not the free cheese burger promotion. Though he lost little bit on his cheese burger which is not that high any way in food cost can be be recuperated by the high margin sales of Fries and Drinks. The success formula in this strategy is that with the free cheese burger he is able to increase the number of customers he attracts to his restaurant. The extra customers that is funneled into his restaurant pay itself for the cheese burger that he gave away to those many customers. On the other hand, McDonald’s $1 menu strategy is not a revenue generating rather customer attracting strategy with the hopes that they would buy other high margin food like fries and colas. But what guarantee is there that the customers would buy the other items. That’s why the $1 menu in most cases for all the major restaurant chains has been the loss leader but just because of the competitive restaurant market they have to put it there. But smart restaurant entrepreneur like Alex doesn;t have to follow that. He can take the idea , modify it and make it profit generating strategy.

Local Charity Drive-50 % of the sales on that charity day goes to the Local Charity Organization: They also recently had Local charity drive where they pledged to provide the 50% of the sales of that particular day to go to the Local Charity that Dairy Queen had picked. This achieved two things. First thing, people were thrilled and supportive towards this promotion that was for some great cause. Their customers had a chance to support the cause indirectly by buying food from them as they knew that 50 % would go to the Local charity. This instilled respect in their customers mind towards Alex’s Dairy Queen. They felt that Dairy Queen was not in their community to suck the money for profits only but also do some great work for the community sharing the same values and aspiration, and hope for better community. Second thing, because of this huge support from the community for this local charity event more people were involved and there were more people than any normal day. So when they added up at last, though they had to give away 50% to the charity, they made more because of the extra volume that they did on that particular day.

I looked at the promotion that was on the menu stand while we were having breakfast. Basically people can go their for breakfast and their pancake is free on that day. The customers who ever feels like offering some money as a charity for the cause can voluntarily do  and that would go towards that particular Children’s Miracle  charity. Thought I liked Dairy Queens charity promotions where the business  gives away  50% from the sales, the idea of customers giving away for charity is also good. Whatever the case may be or strategy you may implement, it has to be aligned to do good for the community. Since your business is within the community and depends on the people living in the same community, it is at the best interest of your restaurant business and the community to help each other and flourish and grow strong.

Tomorrow is national pancake day at iHop. There is a buzz on Twitter. Every body is talking about iHop national pancake day. I even tweeted about the iHop buzz word on the twitter to my followers. Imagine how many people might have tweeted and retweeted the same stuff before it has reached to millions via web on computers and mobile phones. This is the power of Twitter that can be so effective and powerful if you use it cleverly and effectively.

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Advertising Vs Marketing-How Can You Turn Your Advertising Into Buzz That Spreads Like A Viral.

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

What is the difference between Advertising and Marketing?

Advertising and Marketing in restaurant business is sometimes confused  to be the same thing. Though it sounds similar, there is a difference.  Both has the same goal of achieving customer’s attention. But they are totally opposite in their approach of getting the customers attention.

Advertising to me is a short cut approach of introducing your product ie delicious food and service like catering to the mass by using traditional media like television, radio, newspaper or yellow book whether they like it or not. In a simpler term, it is like going to other people house without their permission and asking for them to eat at your restaurant. The problem with this approach is that the person though he might have liked your restaurant and the food, he doesn’t appreciate the fact that some body came to his house without permission. So with this bad first impression he might never come to the restaurant.

However, marketing takes a different approach. Marketing is a process of attracting customer’s attention with a long term vision of building your own little community based on shared common goals and values respecting each other’s privacy which  starts with permission. It tries to build rapport , and then relationship and then friends and then only customers.

Why Advertising doesn’t work effectively as it used to during the Tv industrial age?

In today’s information age people are bombarded with thousands and millions of advertisements on televisions, radios, newspapers and the list goes on just to get people’s attention. The problem is people have less time and more choices now than the industrial age when there were may be 2 or 3 tv stations and 3 or 4 newspapers in the town. In this chaotic fish market where every one is claiming their product is the best, the question arises who to trust? When I look at the television advertisements, the testimonial seems so obvious to me that they are paid to lie about the product. You cannot deceive the generation Y and baby boomers who are one of the most socially aware group in the world. They will figure out whether you are genuine or fake with a push of button on their mobile phone and a click of a mouse. I wouldn’t recommend you try this with these groups.

However  advertising can be turned into viral buzz with some creativity and imagination. On the video there are several examples of advertising from the billboard in the bus to bag carried by the lady which are simple but different and stands out from the crowd. They are so eye catching and unique to our normal eyes that they can’t resist looking at them and telling to their friends about it. You can also take some idea from this and use some to your restaurant advertising. “To Go” bags are the most underrated advertising tools that any restaurant have at their disposal that are not used to it’s potential. It is like having all the ammunition and not using in the war. If you want to win the battle of competitive restaurant business, then you have to use every weapons at your disposal. Make it different from the rest of the generic bags that you can get from any restaurant. Stretch your imagination and you will see the magic it does to your restaurant.

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What Is A Restaurant Branding? How To Create Your Own Great Restaurant Brand?

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 1 Comment

7 Important Aspects Of Great Restaurant Brands:

When you talk about a restaurant brand, it is a trade mark or identity of a company that reflects the quality of it’s product or service. For example Starbucks is a brand. Starbucks- it’s name and the logo  embodies the representation of the quality coffee, great service and experience that the company provides to the customers. So restaurant brand is a uniform recognition of a company’s  quality product,service or experience that is derived from the art of great marketing

Watch the video and listen from David Schoenecker who talks about his experience and perception about a local pizza restaurant branding. There are seven key aspects for any restaurant brands to be successful. They are as follows:

  1. Are Always  Consistent
  2. Provide excellent and unique experience
  3. Have Unique Brand position
  4. Have Specific Target Market
  5. Have same quality equipments and products
  6. Constantly Timely Delivery
  7. Quality Customer Service

Great restaurant brands are always consistent in the message they communicate with their customers. Whether it is on Tv, radio or on internet, the message of the marketing should always be the same.David on the video tells how the local pizza restaurant have everything  the same maintaining the quality from the decor to the music they play.

When you visit Starbucks, the customer is always served with hot coffee at a great speed.They also provide a unique customer experience of homely environment where any one can go and hang out with their laptops, or have a personal meetings with friends or business partners.

Chipotle is another great restaurant brand which position itself as a trendy, fast casual Mexican Grill. It positions itself as a leader in this fast casual restaurant industry by introducing new technology like Chipotle Mobile Ordering System. Essentially it allows any body to order the food by using iPhone and that their customers have to never wait for long waiting lines. Chipotle has a unique brand position.

Moe’s South West Grill is another fast casual restaurant based out of Atlanta. Their target markets are blue collar office workers aged from 25-34, Parents with Kids aged between 34-48 and generation Y aged from 18-25. They have specific market they target. They just don’t go and try to attract any body they see. Because different people have different eating preferences. Moe’s understands this so they target only specific market.

On the video David talks about the local pizza restaurant that has built a great brand. They have been successful by implementing quality efficient POS Systems and other equipment required by the restaurant. They just didn’t buy some generic register to save some money to ruin their long term reputation which is the brand. They also made sure that they were using the same quality paper and utensil product for the customer to give the same product quality that they have been used to with it’s brand.

Pizza restaurant should be able to deliver their pizza with in 30 minutes and no later than 45 minutes if there is traffic. The timely delivery should be maintained and not be neglected. If one day they deliver in 30 minutes and the other day they take 1 hour 30 minutes then that is not constantly timely delivery.

Last but not the least is the customer service. The customer service should be excellent. I mean really excellent. Delivering on customers anticipated request is excellent service. It’s like reading customers mind and delivering even before customer requests.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of a great restaurant brand and more importantly to create your own great restaurant brand.

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Restaurant Discount Marketing Is What A New York Restaurant Implements By Cutting Prices. Is This The Right Strategy To Survive The Recession?

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Note- The idea presented in this article is based on latest trends in food industry that I have been reading in newspapers, customers perspective on food expenditure habits that I saw on  CNN and some  hard brainstorming. Success is not guaranteed. But it is worth giving a shot.

I watched the CBS news channel online and they were talking about restaurant industry that has been hit hard due to the Downturn Economy. Even the high end New York restaurant like Le Cirque who enjoyed the luxury of serving the elites from Hollywood stars like Sinatra  to powerful political figure like Jacqueline Kennedy, is suffering due to the slow economy. There were times when customers had to fight for the seats at the restaurant. But now the restaurant has to fight for the customers to fill those  seats by even cutting the prices of the food in their menu.

No doubt it has not only affected the high end restaurants but all types of restaurants around the country. But is it this the right strategy to survive in this Economic Downturn?

To survive one has to do anything that would help sustain their restaurant business. But cutting the price alone will not help as your profit margin decreases significantly when your rent, mortgage, food cost remain the same. So what should we really do as a restaurant owners? This is a big dilemma.

In the midst of this economic chaos, there is another restaurant chain McDonald’s that has increased the sales and profits during this year than last year.  So why is this happening when one is losing and the other is winning?

There are several factors why McDonald’s is still profitable even during the economic downturn. One of the key reason is the Pricing. Their pricing is so economically scientific  that it is virtually recession proof. Be it good time or bad time, people love the price. In fact during the bad economic times like  now, people are more attracted because they want to survive but at an affordable price. Let’s face it, no matter how bad the economy is people need to eat in order to survive. I don’t think people are going to say, that economy is bad, so I won’t  eat for now and I will eat later when I have the money. Truth of the matter is that even if you don’t have money people will have to eat even if they have to do it by borrowing. They can postpone the vacation or furniture they planned to buy but not the food that they have to eat in order to survive.

The question is  what can you as an independent restaurant do to attract those customers who don’t want to cook at their home and try some other reasonable alternative?

Well, I can not tell what you can do or can’t do because every one’s situation is different from one another. But what I can share with you is some of the creative ideas that people have implemented to grow their restaurant business in non traditional way and may be make more profit than you would make other wise.

I read this in one of the newspapers article that there is a trend getting popular in the restaurant industry  in some countries like Australia, England and also some Asian countries.The trend is that they offer            “Pay What You Think Is Right” for the food that they serve in their restaurant without ever handing the restaurant bills. Considering the tough economic situation, looking at the new trends and combining with the right pricing logic behind McDonald’s success even during the Economic Downturn, it sparks an idea of introducing the similar “Pay What You Think Is Right” pricing model here in United States too.

During tough economic times customers have less disposable income to spent in fancy pricey restaurants. So the barriers for any body to eat in a decent restaurant is the price. In order to get rid of the price factors from the mind of the people restaurant could introduce“Pay What You Think Is Right” pricing model. So now the people who wanted to have a good food at a nice restaurant without having to fear the pricey tag are more comfortable to go and try their food. Psychologically it  takes off the price pressure from the customers mind. Now this soft sell enables them to allure more customers who would otherwise not come or would try other alternative like cooking at their own house or go for other cheaper food at some fast food chains. After having the meal, to your surprise the customers actually would leave little more than what you would charge them on the actual invoice. I think this is natural that when people are not controlled they tend to be flexible. In fact they tend to pay more as they feel obligated for the trust that you have on them for their best judgement. Well all of them might not drop the same amount. In most cases larger proportion  would drop more than you would charge them. Though there might be few who might drop less than the meal value, when you average all of them, you would still be a winner. Because with this strategy, you would fill the restaurant which other wise would have been empty anyway.

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7 Tips On Marketing Your Business In Downturn Economy By Seth Godin.

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Seth Godin-entrepreneur and best selling author of 10 books has successfully helped thousands and thousands of small and big companies to be remarkable. He has a great wisdom of knowledge to all the businessess-small or big including restaurants during this Economic Downturn.He encourages everyone to change our idea about industrial age mass media marketing and laser focus in leadership marketing built around community which he likes to call tribes.

After watching the video released on Mashable and listening to his interview on Ducttape marketing podcast, what I learnt from him as a restaurant entrepreneur are:

  1. Less competition- Best time to shine.
  2. Show up.
  3. Be the best.
  4. Hire irreplaceable people
  5. Speed and Timely delivery
  6. Focus on relationship marketing not advertisements
  7. Be creative and innovative to even beat the large multi billion dollar restaurant chain
  • Less Competition – Best time to shine. -During the Economic Downturn most of the business including restaurants pull back because they panic and starts thinking irrationally. They cut down their marketing expenses. That’s why there is less competition.That means there are less restaurants in the battle field. This is the best time to shine and grab all the customers that are looking for great restaurant with remarkable food and great service.
  • Show up- Again because of the slow economy restaurant entrepreneurs think that there is no business so there is no point to show up in any events be it trade show or marketing coaching seminars. But this is the time to show up in events to network and fine tune your marketing campaign to laser target the customers you desire.
  • Be the best. He encourages you to be the best restaurant in  your area. Don’t be a generic brand sandwich store. I can make the same thing at my own home. He talks about a Greek Supermarket in New York. They are the best market with in driving radius miles for  the best goat cheese. So when people need the goat cheese they don’t look for sale in Wal-Mart or Costco. They go straight to the Greek Supermarket.
  • Hire irreplaceable. Restaurant Business is known for high turn over. There is a general concept of hiring cheap labour. I understand that as a business you have to control labour cost. At the same time, one has to focus on hiring the people with the right people skills who can stay for a long haul. You will save more in a long term than that you might save 50 cents an hour on the labour who doesn’t posses the skills required for hospitality industry and most probably leave your restaurant once he or she finds another restaurant who pays that extra 50 cents an hour that you were hesitant to pay.
  • Speed and timely delivery- Speed is critical especially in this fast paced world. One of the key ingredients to McDonald’s success is the speed. No wonder they make billions by delivering billions of burgers at a lightning speed. If you are taking more than 2 minutes and 45 seconds to deliver your customer food in a quick service restaurant environment or taking more than 30 minutes to deliver your pizza then it is time to structure your business to fulfill that timely delivery demands.
  • Focus on relationship marketing and not advertisements- He argues that the ad that we saw during the Superbowl were great to watch. But they are expensive and short lived. They die and fade away after Superbowl. What you want to focus is on the relationship with your customer by understanding their needs  and fulfilling those demands. It all starts with permission.
  • Be creative and innovative to even beat the large multi billion dollar restaurant chain-Every economic crisis has opportunity. In this economic down turn be creative and think out of the box.With your innovative online marketing you have a chance to even beat the big multi billion dollar restaurant chains. He says Twitter one of the fastest growing company online today doesn’t have millions and billions of capital with them. All they have is a great team of few people with a laser focused vision.

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Restaurant Business Productivity-How Google’s To Do List Can Help You Remain Productive.

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Google has released it’s To Do List on Gmail which I thought to share with you.Since every one of us has to do list that we don’t want to forget, it is a vital tool that can help us become productive. Considering your restaurant hectic schedules, I understand how organized one has to be and most importantly not to forget theimportant tasks necessary that might impact your business financially. I believe this simple tool would help you both in personal and business life.

The nice thing about this feature is that it is online. That means it is mobile. Even if you forget your mobile phones you can access your to do list from any internet enable devices be it desktop, laptop or other mobile phones and from any place be it Paris or Singapore or New York. You can manage it with your Gmail account. All you have to do is type Gmail.com/task and it will lead you to its online To Do List tool. You can
save it and bookmark it on your iPhone or GPhone or any other mobile devices which has internet access.  You can add the important things to be done on your mobile to do list online tool. Once the work gets done, you can delete and focus on the other important thing. This might keep you organised and be productive especially in fast paced, hectic life of your restaurant business.

I hope this might be useful to you. Do let us know how it is helping you in your restaurant business life. We would like to share with other restaurant owners like you who could benefit from this.

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Increased Restaurant Sales And Profits During The Economy Downturn-How To Do It?

Posted on February 5, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

1 out of 10 restaurants started in America fails in the first five years. Why most restaurant business fail despite the best food in the town?

Most of the restaurants get started with the good intention to make profits. But do they make it to the end. I don’t think that 9 out of 10 make it. They doom to fail within first five years.It is sad but true statistic from the Small Business Administration.

Most of the restaurant fails not because they lack great food but because they lack great marketing. And that is Online Marketing.

Has it happened to you or that you have seen some restaurants with average food that has attracted big lines at their doors and the one with the great food doesn’t have customers at all. Well the fundamental difference is that the restaurant with lots of customers focuses his effort in marketing. He spends 80% of his time creating some brilliant marketing campaign for his restaurant so he can attract more and more customers every month like a clock works. He has marketing system in place where he opens and closes the valve of the marketing to increase and control the volume of business he wants.

My question to you is, do you have the control over the flow of traffic to your restaurant?

If not then it is time to think differently. It is time to focus on marketing. By any means I am not suggesting that you don’t have to maintain the quality of the food. You have to have a great product to begin with. In fact you can have an average product and if you market it well then you are far ahead than the guy who is hung up on making the best food in town and having no clue about marketing his product. Take an example of McDonald’s. It doesn’t have the best hamburger, and yet it is the most profitable and the largest restaurant chain in the world.

McDonald’s has one of the best system that produces the so called great hamburgers at a greater speed than any restaurant chain. In the past they created the drive thrus to speed up the service. Well now you might say that McDonald’s has great amount of capital. Truth of the matter is that you don’t have to have tons of money in this age of technology. All you need is your time and creativity into online marketing that can be systemized leveraging the internet.

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4 Reasons Why McDonald’s Has Increased Sales And Profits Even During Economic Downturn. What Can Your Restaurant Learn From It.

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Today every restaurant entrepreneur are feeling the pain of economic downturn. There is no doubt that it had an impact on all businesses including restaurants. It had an effect of sales decrease by 30% and in some cases up to 50%. Despite all the economic turmoil, there is one restaurant empire which in fact has increased sales and profit this year than last year as reported by the Quick Service Restaurant Magazine. So the question is how on earth, McDonald’s is able to make more sales and more profit while other restaurants are suffering with low sales and less profits.

Well the answer lies in their mantras that they have been using for years and still continue to use them today. The four key ingredients to their success are

  1. Quality
  2. Service
  3. Cleanliness
  4. Speed

Watch the video where they talk specifically about those four things and execute them consistently. The first thing starts with the quality of the product. Their new item go through rigorous quality control before it lands to the menu. They introduced their new coffee which went through several tests. They are consistent in maintaining the quality so every time anyone goes to McDonald’s he or she receives the same flavour or taste. No wonder it has challenged even the king of coffee- Starbucks.

Second thing they focus is the Service. No matter how good your food is, if you don’t provide a good service to deliver them then it means nothing to the customers. They have several training programs to teach and train the employees to deliver the food with service of excellence.

Third thing they focus is the cleanliness. One of the Manager at McDonald’s said that before anything he makes sure that his restrooms are clean. If a restaurant can’t keep the restroom clean, how can the customer trust the cleanliness of their kitchen. That holds true to everything in the restaurant and the surroundings. So they make sure that not only their kitchen, dining room are clean but most importantly the restrooms are clean and also outside of McDonald’s surroundings.

Lastly the most important thing to their success is the speed. Their success depends upon a system which can deliver the millions and even billions of hamburgers, fries, and cola to their customers at the fastest speed possible. That is the reason McDonald’s came up with drive thru to speed up the service back then.Today if you would like to speed up the service, then technology is at your disposable. Without spending millions and virtually for no money or little money you can implement a system based on internet technology that will enable the small restaurant owners to deliver their food at a greater speed than before.

I hope this will give you a clear picture to reflect upon and rethink about your restaurant business model and see if you follow the similar models if you want to succeed in the 21st century,new digital age of restaurant world.

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3 Effective Ways You Can Use Web 2.0 Technology To Your Restaurant Marketing Advantage During An Economic Downturn.

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

It has always fascinated me how President Barack Obama has used the web 2.0 technology to influence the voters and win the hearts and minds of millions. Never in the history has any politician been able to use the emerging web 2.0 technology this effectively. His presidency has proven for the politicians to rethink about campaign marketing effort in reaching their supporters during the time of election. I believe the marketing in the politic arena has changed for ever and will never be the same again if at least the smart, emarketer at heart politician wants to win.

Timing could not have been as right as 2009 Presidential Election for president Barack Obama to seize the opportunity to change that was taking place not just only in web 2.0 technology with several social media tools that were emerging but also the sentiment of the frustrated people who were seeking for change in Washington. The social media tools like myspace.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, youtube.com and many more were emerging with pools of people building huge community in the cyber world. With virtually no money and resources available to him, the only option he had was a  web 2.0 technology which was virtually free readily available to him. Without those technologies, it can not be denied that it would have been harder if not impossible for Barack Obama to win the election and be the president of the United States.

Now after winning the election, it is apparent that the president Obama is using web 2.0 technology to make his government more effective, efficient and transparent. I can not think of other great marketer than our own president Barack Obama if we want to learn and incorporate some of his ideas into your restaurant marketing effort. Below are some of the ideas that can be incorporated into your restaurant online marketing should you want to win the 21st century restaurant race in a new digital age of web 2.0 and social media.

Communicate Effectively

Through your restaurant website or blog you should be able to communicate what exactly your restaurant specializes in. Lot of restaurant websites are generic with no one unique selling proposition. As soon as a customer checks out your restaurant website one should be able to know all the details about your restaurant from menu to contact information like phone number, address, maps and directions. I would recommend a dynamic blog over a static website because it tends to get indexed by Google, Yahoo and Msn in their search engine which would enable your restaurant to be found on the web when customers make searches for local restaurant online.Another advantage of the blog is that you can have two way communications in the form of comments when they post their feedbacks to your informative articles or new menu dishes. Alternatively you can also provide a separate link as a suggestion box for customers’ feedbacks and suggestions. So that you can make improvements whether it is the quality of food, service or any thing that needs change.

Provide Service Efficiently

One of the things that Web 2.0 technology allows to all the small restaurants is to provide leverage against the big chain restaurant by leveling the marketing field plain. It means that you also have the same online marketing tools as big chains and that you can compete at the same level. Money is not the prime factor here to decide who wins or loose. But it is the innovative online marketing ideas that wins at the end regardless of the size of the company. We see Pizza hut, Dominos and Papa Johns using online marketing effectively. So can the small restaurants if they strive to learn about it and pursue to implement the online seamless ordering system. The restaurant would be so efficient especially during the busy lunch and dinner time. Think about it, it is dinner time. People are calling on phone non stop to order pizza from your restaurant. You have one staff for telephone order taking. Since phone is analog and can handle only one customer at a time, you can only take one order at a time and not more than that. When you do it with online seamless ordering system, you can take orders for as many people as you want at one time without you having to take the orders which ultimately saves your time. Time is money after all. So integrating online ordering web based system can help your restaurant provide the service faster and accurate.

Engage your customers to participate

One of the mistakes with restaurant website design that I often see is that it is not made with the mind set of customer online interactions. Due to the lack of time or proper knowledge restaurant owners don’t seem to engage their customers on the internet. When you have a restaurant blog, then people have a chance to comment on the latest signature dishes you recently introduced. It becomes two way interactive communications between you and your customers. You will be better equipped to understand what your customers like and dislike. This way you can plan accordingly for your new seasonal menu that you might update next summer.

There are other ways you can engage them to your blog. You can have a video talent contest like Chipotle and Dunkin Donuts. Once your restaurant videos are ready you can upload it in You Tube free video sharing site. It would provide a chance for the customers to comment on the videos that you would upload in You Tube at http://youtube.com. That way it will create excitement to your customers and itself become a marketing vehicle for your restaurant. You don’t have to work as hard. Your customers are going to proactively do the marketing for you. We like to call this marketing by entertaining.

Have them submit their pictures of best moments in your restaurant. Create a flickr profile at http://flickr.com/ and make an archive of all the photos. Send them the links and they would be interested looking at not only their pictures but also other peoples pictures. It is just human’s nature to be curious.This in itself is a viral email marketing. If some of your customers like some of the videos then they would definitely email them to share with their friends and family. This would create another viral video marketing.

If you use the web 2.0 technology to your advantage and adopt just some of the online marketing techniques then your restaurant would be far ahead than those average restaurants who one day will wake up to realize that their customers have moved away to their competitor’s restaurant at a click of a mouse and push of a mobile phone button.

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How Small Restaurants Can Win Even Big Chain Restaurants.

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

At times some of you as a small restaurant owners might have felt hopeless when those big multi billion dollar chain restaurant pops up all over your back yard with different concepts. Obviously they have big money and resources. But you don’t really have to get intimidated with their size. Because it is not the size that matters any more in this internet information age. It is speed that counts. As we all know when it comes to speed it not the big guy who wins, it is normally the small guy who is fast that always wins. If
you look at those multi billion dollar chain company, you are right that they have all the money. But when it comes to implementing new marketing ideas, new strategies they are slow.The approval process of any program including marketing takes so long that it seems like their corporate Bureaucracy is pretty much like bureaucratic government. Even if they approve it after several months of going from one executive desk to another, the strategy might have been outdated or moved to another marketing strategy. So it becomes
like chasing after the new social media marketing strategies and by the time they catch up the market has moved on to another new marketing strategies. In this case small restaurant like yours where you make your own decision fast and implement it as soon as it is available you have an advantage over those big  chain restaurants. All you have to do is identify the tools and use it to your advantage.

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