You're an expert chef with a beautiful restaurant, friendly staff and great food. In the past, you've successfully managed your customer flow through traditional advertising in local newspapers and you sponsor the local little league. Business is great, but a similar restaurant just opened up a few blocks away, and it's generating lots of buzz. The restaurant is using social media to its advantage, growing its customer base at an accelerated pace, and you're starting to lose market share. What's going on?
The Internet is the great equalizer, giving unlimited ad space and airtime to businesses no matter how big or small. Today, 70 percent of local businesses are marketing through Facebook -- more than anywhere else on the Internet.
It's one thing to have a social media presence, but it's another to manage it correctly. These sites are living, breathing entities. If you pay them attention and perform proper maintenance, then they will remain healthy and grow at a steady pace. With this in mind, social media-savvy restaurant owners are acquiring and retaining new customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.
So what have been some successful social media marketing strategies? Here's a list of restaurants that are leveraging social media sites to make a name for themselves in the digital space. If you're creative -- and attentive -- you too can differentiate your restaurant from the place down the road.
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I'm providing them support via http://www.GibBook.com and http://www.FaceBook.com/GibBook page.
According to them this has helped them get more customers in to their restaurant. For April we are planning on launching an online flyers so customers print and present on paying their bill to receive a 10% discount. Only Social Media can help get the message out there at a very low cost to all!
Typically, its the smaller more flexible ones that 'get it' first.
Limiting yourself to the terminally hip is fine starting out. The question is: do the owners want to still have the store in 5 years?
In fact a more interesting post might be: what happens when service establishments only reward a single social app & not all?
We're definitely on the same page with you in terms of reaching every aspect of your digital presence, and not just one medium (social) or a single site. While rewarding the early tech adopters is great for building vocal proponents, the majority of customers, today, aren't utilizing one individual destination, or app (outside of, say, Facebook).
With the exception of advertising on the Superbowl, it's nearly impossible to reach each and every customer - so it's best to be everywhere at all times. At SinglePlatform, we call this "Super Distribution". Connect with your customer wherever they look for local business specific information. Enhance the user experience outside of just a phone number and address. Add photos, specials, menus, hours, etc...
There is so much more than just the social web.
All the best,
Kenny Herman
VP, Business Development @SinglePlatform