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"Do you want to know what this competency is all about? Here’s how Kerry Kramp, CEO of Sizzler, described how he radically improved the performance of the restaurant chain:"
“We kept our finger right on the pulse of the guests’ feedback.” As they gave us indications of what they liked — either verbally or through the product mix, what were they ordering — we kept adapting our business to the direction that they wanted us to head in.”
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I recently met with some clients of mine — two enthusiastic and bright young entrepreneurs who will use their website as a hub of communications and eventually sales for their new business. As we talked about site architecture, usability concerns and marketing objectives, one of the gals said casually, “Oh and we want a blog, too.”
I cautiously followed up, “What will you blog about? Who will do the writing? How often will you keep it updated?” She said, “we were thinking we’d blog every day, you know, just a few paragraphs.” About what, she could not completely articulate.
I think the idea of adding a blog to a website is very sexy for a lot of small business owners: it allows you to communicate with your customers, it helps drive traffic to your website, it can centralize your social networking efforts and helps your site come up on search. However, if you’ve never blogged before, a word of caution: it’s extremely difficult to maintain a writing schedule of “a few paragraphs per day,” and blogging is really about far more than just adding paragraphs to your website anyway: it is social media, and requires the commitment of regular social interaction and monitoring.
Should you blog? Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do MY customers read blogs? According to the latest report from eMarketer over half of internet users read blogs despite a generalized belief on the part of some that blogging is being overshadowed by social networks. What about your customers and target customers?
2. What value will my blog add to my marketing, to my customers’ experience and/or to my relationship with my customers? In other words, if my customers read blogs, will they read my blog because they are getting value there? You need a content strategy!
3. Do I like to write? Or do I like to write enough to make a commitment to write on a regular basis?
4. Do I have the time to blog or better yet, can I set aside a specific time to devote to my blog. This includes writing, responding to questions and/or comments and building community by reading and engaging with other blogs. It is labor intensive and it doesn’t fit into everyone’s schedule. If you can be realistic about the time commitment before you launch a blog, it can save having it turn into an unpleasant burden rather than something that you enjoy. We have found based upon our own personal experiences and those of our clients that if you enjoy blogging it has a positive impact on the content that you produce; but if it is not enjoyable, well that shows through also and soon after the blog is abandoned.
5. How will a blog fit into my marketing mix and business goals? A blog is one available tool in the social media tool box and can be the hub of your marketing mix or it can be a spoke. As we have said, it all begins with your overall business goals which will be supported by the successful execution of your marketing mix.
We will be writing more about various ways to use a blog for the restaurant business. Contact us if you would like to discuss making the most of social media for YOUR restaurant business!
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- Three Problems that Make Me Leave Your Blog in Three Seconds (problogger.net)
- Yes, You Do Have Time to Blog! (buildabetterblog.com)
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Happy Friday everyone!
I was updating a site for one of my wonderful clients this morning, and stumbled upon this fabulous (hilarious) video. It demonstrates the competing priorities of an organization and its customers, and there is a lesson here for virtually everyone with, or planning, a business website.
I’m going to be sharing some tips on how to make sure your website is usable and useful to your customers in the coming days but for now, enjoy …. and happy weekend!
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You probably have seen this by now: MacDonald’s Ups Foot Traffic 33% on Foursquare Day. Everyone loves these seemingly huge social media success stories and this one had the winning buzzwords: Foursquare, casestudy and 33% traffic increase. Econsultancy had the story direct from the mouth of Rick Wion the brand new Director of Social Media For MacDonald’s.
Speaking at the Mobile Social Media Conference earlier this week Wion described the promotion that he implemented on Foursquare Day. He said that MacDonald’s offered a chance to win 100 gift certificates valued at $5 to $10 to FourSquare users who checked in at MacDonalds on April 16th. The results sounded impressive. Econsultancy said that there were over “50 articles and blog posts written about the special and over 600,000 new fans and followers” for MacDonald’s. Wion stated that Foot Traffic was his most important metric and “With this one little effort, we were able to get a 33% increase in foot traffic to the stores.”
Mashable and a multitude of others wrote about the 33% and it was Tweeted and re-Tweeted by countless more. Then Frederic Lardinois, one of the smart folks at Read, Write, Web wrote, Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic because of Foursquare. Their issues? The first question was about the equating of Foursquare Checkins to Foot Traffic. Gavin Dunaway from Adodtas asked MacDonald’s Wion that question in a tweet and Wion responded that indeed, MacDonald’s considered a Foursquare “check in to be the same as a person entering a restaurant;” which I guess means foot traffic. Right there it starts to get as fuzzy as Al Gore’s math.
Lardinois makes the valid observation that given Macdonald’s 28 million customers and Foursquare’s base in April of approximately 1 million users, that a 33% increase in check ins equating to a 33% increase in MacDonald’s foot traffic is mathematically impossible. But there really are some more important issues here than that. And maybe MacDonald’s didn’t want to share the specifics of their strategy, metrics and how they measured the ROI of this promotion or plan to measure the ROI of social media. However the statements that foot traffic is the most important metric and “with this little effort we were able to get a 33% increase in foot traffic to the stores” seems like too much fast and no food.
So, if you are wondering about using social media to promote your restaurant business or are wondering how to evaluate the impact of your social media efforts on your business first think about what the objective of your business, any business is: transactions, revenue, profits. The cost of social media like traditional media is an investment in your business and investments must have positive returns in order to achieve objectives. So when we start thinking about, for instance, a promotion that offers Foursquare users a chance to win gift cards for checking in at our restaurant on a given day what we really want those people to do is check-in at our restaurant and become our customers and along the way have that check-in notify that customer’s social networks that they are dining at out restaurant; even better that they had a great meal, met up with lots of their friends and won a gift card and better still that they signed up for our newsletter, became our friend and follower on other social networks and are planning to come back.
There are lots of important metrics in that scenario beginning with the cost…. in time to implement the promotion as well as the cost of the gift cards. This $1000 was insignificant to MacDonald’s but if you are going to try this at home, don’t forget to start with the costs and then set specific measurable objectives that will define success for you. And to most of us, success ultimately needs to convert to sales.
Traffic? Yes, it is a metric but it is only an important metric if that traffic generates an increase in transactions; transactions that wouldn’t have occurred without the promotion. At MacDonald’s from what we know, foot traffic could have been people walking into the restaurant, seeing if they won a gift card and walking out. At your restaurant, what would a 33% increase in traffic mean?
Check-ins? Well that is an interesting one because a check-in is important as media; it is word of mouth. A check-in by a customer at your restaurant puts your restaurant on the “radar screen” of that customer’s social networks and the size of that network, the influence of the customer that is checking in and if that check in is followed by more user generated content will determine the value of that check in. And the true word of mouth value of that check-in may not be confined to one day. Setting up the criteria for determining the value of a check-in needs to factor in the measurements that you use for your individual business including a baseline and a time frame.
A 33% increase in check-ins or in traffic doesn’t have a lot of meaning if it is a stand alone, one day event.
So, certainly for MacDonald’s 600,000 new fans and followers (and btw that info was not very precise either; was it Twitter, FourSquare, Facebook?) and “50 articles and blog posts” sounds pretty good for $1000. The 33% increase in checkins less meaningful…..33% of what? And then of course, check ins are not necessarily foot traffic and foot traffic is not necessarily an increase in revenue, especially at MacDonald’s.
Rick Wion was also quoted by EConsultancy as saying that an app is not a strategy and we couldn’t agree more on that one. Olivier Blanchard has a great series of posts on the ROI of social media and uses an acronym for Frequency, Reach and Yield….those are the kind of FRYS that belong with your social media strategy!
Related articles by Zemanta
- McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic (mashable.com)
- McDonalds and the supersized Foursquare impact (broadstuff.com)
- HUGE: McDonald’s Cashes In With Foursquare Stunt – Where’s Facebook? (businessinsider.com)
- Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (readwriteweb.com)
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“You are what you charge for”*
According to a recent NPD restaurant industry survey, traffic declined for the 7th straight quarter but the declines are not as steep as they were in 2009. So, it has come to this: the good news is that things are not as bad as they were. Well, the NPD survey indicated that 1/4 of all restaurant traffic is represented by”deals” such as discounted pricing, daily specials and coupons and that the declines over the past two years in restaurant traffic would have been much worse if not for discounting.
But with restaurants from Morton’s to McDonalds serving up Value Menus where is the value? In other words, for customers the pervasive discounts, specials, buy one/get one price has just become the actual everyday price. And for restaurants, same thing. For instance competing in the fast casual/QSR segment are 2 entrees and 1 appetizer at Chili’s is $20 and 2 entrees, 1 appetizer at Applebee’s is $20. TGIFridays? A slight variation: Buy 1 entree and an appetizer and get 1 entree free. With similar “discounts” being offered by all, there really is no perceived extra value by the customer. It’s commodity pricing. And the result? NPD reported that visits to US restaurants declined by 3% (versus 9% in 2009) for the year ending May 2010 but that dollars spent declined by 1% the first decline in spending since 1976. One can only guess at the profit numbers.
Another pervasive commodity promotion is “Kids Eat Free”. Judging by the search results from those three words, this promotion is as popular an online topic as it is at IHOPS, Denny’s and thousands of independent and chain local restaurants across the country fueled not only by slow nights of the week but also the slow economy. And “Kids Eat Free” seems to have a nice appealing sound to it….”FREE” and the no cooking and dishes for mom. And even though, the kids meals at most of these restaurants are heavily discounted already it can still save a family some money. BUT, if there are so many kids eat free offers virtually 7 days of the week, the market price for kids to eat is free, isn’t it? So, where is the benefit for your restaurant to join in with a” kids eat free offer”?
Pine & Gilmore* in their 1999 book, The Experience Economy wrote that “you are what you charge for and if you are competing solely on the basis of price then you have been commoditized.” They go on to ask, “What would you customers really value?” And their answer, experience, is still correct. However, differentiating by experience in 2010 is different than partying like it is 1999. In 1999 themed restaurants such as Rainforest Cafe and Hardrock Cafe had long lines of customers willing to pay high prices for a “movie set” dining experience, but the novelty wore off quickly leaving only high prices for mediocre food. Today’s cash-strapped customer is much more demanding with the definition of value and experience.
If discounts are a necessary part of the restaurant business right now, how do you make the discount part of your value proposition so that it makes sense for your customer and for you? How do you create an offer that not only gets them in the door but makes them want to come back again (value to you) and breaks through the clutter of all of the other competing discounts and offers? How do you make the discount yours and yours alone … i.e., make it reinforce your unique reason for being.
3 Ideas to Add Value to Discounts
1. The Blue Plate Special: The idea is economies of scale. Offering a limited menu “bundle” of appetizer, salad, desert and a drink for a modest set price, and only one or two “bundles” during slower days of the week or slower times of day so that you gain efficiencies in food ordering, preparation, and service (the server doesn’t have to make as many trips to the table explaining desserts or lots of specials) and the customer knows exactly how much everything costs and gets to sample your great desserts and appetizers that they might ordinarily skip.
A restaurant here in St. Louis, Farmhaus offers a Blue Plate lunch special, Monday – Friday from 11AM-2PM for $10.00 and they announce the menu everyday on Twitter. The Blue Plate is the only choice for lunch that day. Their unique value proposition is stated as “We focus on using fresh, seasonal ingredients to create a memorable and intriguing dining experience. The menu of small plates and tasting menus changes daily reflecting chef Kevin’s inspirations.” So I have no idea if Farmhaus looks at their lunches as discounted, but as a customer it sure sounds like a great deal and a great way to try their awesome food. When I was in New York City recently, a sign at EJ’s Luncheonette caught my eye: Recession Blue Plate specials on Monday and Tuesday nights. Limited menu, set price. EJ’s has an extensive menu with lots of choices to build a dinner in what is mostly a breakfast and lunch place. This bundles the choices and makes dinner a time to sample their food.
2. Moms Eat Free: Everyone is offering kids eat free. Why not take the opportunity and twist the offer a bit. Instead of focusing on the kids, make it special for Mom. Kids eat free, no dishes, no cooking, ho hum. If the focus is on Mom you might not only break through the clutter of the kids’ offers but also build a closer relationship with mom. Maybe if you have space and a willing server you could have a kids’ table so that mom and dad could eat alone and the kids could sit at a table with other kids and order from the kids menu. Depending on what kind of “kids zone” you have the space to create maybe you don’t even have to offer mom a free meal. Maybe just being able to eat out with the kids but without the kids would be enough. If families are an important part of your customer base, try thinking beyond “kids eat free” to other ways to promote your kid friendliness.
- Expensive restaurants: Of bits and bites (economist.com)
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