The Importance of Mobile Marketing for your Restaurant:

The Importance of Mobile Marketing for your Restaurant:

As a restaurant owner, you already know that promoting your business is an important key to success. However, marketing and promotion has always been a daunting task for many businesses. Printing is becoming more expensive everyday as well as TV ads, Radio ads, and other traditional forms of advertising.

Worst of all, these advertising methods are no longer as effective as they used to be when it comes to getting your restaurant in front of your local consumers. For instance, people don’t watch TV like they used to. When they do, they fast forward right through the commercials thanks to the new recording technology available.

Newspapers are not as effective due to the fact that newspaper sales across the world have dropped drastically in recent years. This is because most people now use the internet to catch up on the daily news. So running a newspaper ad is almost useless for restaurants these days.

Remember the Yellow Pages book? If you are spending a lot of your marketing funds here, you should take a hard look at whether or not it is really working for you. It is difficult to track how much business comes from Yellow Page ads (which is another downfall). However, just think about this… how many people do you know who still go to the Yellow Pages to find local restaurants?

Everything is going digital, so it only makes sense that your restaurant follows in the steps of technology if you want any chance of cornering your local market.

Since most of your local consumers are online, your restaurant must incorporate some new marketing strategies that will allow you to put your business right in front of them.

We are living in an era where the internet is used for just about anything, including socialization, conducting business, collecting information, and shopping – just to name a few.

In fact, did you know that some studies have shown that more than 90% of consumers search online for local restaurants? A large portion of them perform these searches from their mobile devices, which can be another marketing vehicle for your restaurant.

Let’s take a closer look at some statistics…

According to an official 2012 report by eMarketer:

• More than 75% of the population will use the internet in 2012
• In 2012 83.9% of internet users will make a minimum of one purchase through the internet
• More than 66% of internet users will use one or more social networks
• Facebook will have more than 90% of the total social media users
• There will be a 17.1% increase in mobile internet users to 113.9 million
• There will be an estimated 242.6 million mobile users in the US alone in 2012
• Mobile shoppers will hit the 72.8 million mark
• There will be 54.6 million mobile video viewers in 2012

As you can see by these numbers, moving to the digital age will clearly help you reach a wider local audience. You probably agree that it makes sense to market your restaurant’s brand where your target audience is spending a majority of their time – which is online and on their mobile devices.  
However, there is a lot that goes into marketing a restaurant effectively in a way that yields results. Not only that, but there are a lot of factors to consider when deciding exactly which marketing strategies you will use.
But before you get to that point, you have to understand what your options are and exactly HOW your restaurant can produce more customers and profits using these methods.
Marketing is all about connecting with existing and potential customers. It involves distinguishing your business from your competitors and taking that method to consumers.
Online marketing makes all of this possible by providing the tools you need to build your brand as well as establish more visibility for your restaurant.

10 Stats About Mobile:

Not convinced that your business needs to be mobile friendly?
These statistics say it all.
1. 85% of mobile devices will be web enabled by next year.
Source: Google “Understanding Mobile Users”
2. 9 out of 10 smartphone users use their phone on a daily basis.
Source: Go-Gulf.com Smartphone Users in the World Infographic
3. Mobile searches have QUADRUPLED in the last year
Source: Google “Understanding Mobile Users”
4. 30% of restaurant searches are from mobile devices.
Source: Google “Understanding Mobile Users”
5. 61% of smart phone users call a business after searching and 59% visit the location
Source: Go-Gulf.com Smartphone Users in the World Infographic
6. 91% of people keep their phone within 3 feet of themselves 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
Source: Morgan Stanley
7. 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour
Source: Mobile Marketer
8. Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.
Source: Borrell Associates
9. 60% of humans (4.2 billion) are active texters.
Source: MBAOnline.com Planet Text Infographic
10. Over 193,000 text messages are sent every second.
Source: MBAOnline.com Planet Text Infographic
For more information on getting your business mobile friendly contact:

iTextVIP   623-703-5626   North Phoenix Office

How to Set Up a Customer Service Promotional Deal

During the first week of October, business owners everywhere celebrate National Customer Service Week. Although this is a great time to plan a promotion, celebrating great customer service can happen anytime of the year. A promotional deal like this allows you to remind customers of your commitment to customer satisfaction and offers a great opportunity for your customers to come on in and see what’s cooking.

A great example of how to use customer appreciation as a promotional tool is found in the “Customer Appreciation Day” campaign from the sub sandwich shop, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches. In 2012, this deal offered customers a limited selection of $1 eight-inch subs during a specified amount of time within the selected day. This tactic created long lines and increased popularity for the brand throughout the day.

To get the word out when you hold an event like this, post on your website, tweet, posted on Facebook and notifiy local news outlets to spread the word. But most importantly, use text/mobile marketing to contact your loyal customers.  They are the ones that are building and spreading the word about your restaurant.

The appeal of a customer appreciation or customer service-related promotion is that it is something that is instantly accessible. Customers don’t have to keep a loyalty card, rack up points or do any other activity other than show up and purchase the discounted item. In order to implement this type of promotion successfully, food and beverage business owners need to put a few parameters in place:

• Create a limited time offer (LTO).  Clearly post the promotion’s time limitations. Plan on a defined cut-off time for people in line or seated at tables, such as “customers must be in line by 3 p.m. or table orders must be made by 10 p.m.” 

• Limit accessibility to the deal. Restrict the promotion to just in-store orders. This eliminates delivery timing issues and creates the “what’s going on over there” effect that long lines broadcast to onlookers. 

• Staff accordingly. Be sure to plan ahead for excited and pushy customers. Remember the whole point of the promotion is to showcase great service and appreciation for your customers, so make sure to have enough staff on hand to handle the extra demand. This promotion is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate what your business can do. Make it a pleasantly memorable experience for everyone.

• Watch costs. Take a look at the most popular item on your menu. Consider using a top-selling item to draw in the crowds, but be careful to not lose money on the deal. Create smaller portions of fan favorites or simplify the deal to an item that will attract customers that are likely to order more than just the promotional item. 

• Capture customer information. Use this opportunity to capture customer contact information for future promotions. Be sure to have contact forms and plenty of pens available. Another, more interactive approach is to have a couple of staff members with digital tablets or paper notebooks collecting information from customers in line. You can use this information for loyalty clubs, birthdays, anniversaries or any other direct contact promotional offers used in your marketing plan.

With the right plan in place, a customer service or customer appreciation promotional offer can generate a lot of positive buzz about your business. Keep your goals and your promotion organized for the best and most profitable outcome.

5 mobile rich media tips for retailers

September 28, 2012

Elena Perez

By Elena Perez
Mobile has worked its way into every aspect of our daily lives and shopping is, of course, no exception.
Nielsen recently reported that half of U.S. consumers say their smartphones have influenced their purchase of an item in-store. Meanwhile, an OPA study affirmed that tablet users are making purchases from tablets, spending $359 on their devices in a 12-month period.

It is numbers like these that are inspiring retailers to make greater investments in mobile rich media advertising. But dollars alone do not translate to success. Here are a few tips to ensure that retailers get the most out of your mobile rich media campaigns.

1. Embrace mobile creativity
Mobile devices offer an endless range of creative possibilities.
From multimedia capabilities such as video to touch-based interactions including tap, swipe and drag, mobile provides a fresh palette with which to capture and keep your audience’s attention.
Retailers can create swipe-able product galleries, 360-degree images and video demos and keep product details, features and pricing literally at consumers’ fingertips.
To extend the impact of the creative, build in email subscriptions and social media features that keep you connected to consumers after the campaign ends.

2. Make sure you are mobile-ready
One of the great benefits of mobile rich media is the ability to create a deep experience within an ad unit without even asking the consumer to visit a Web site landing page.
This means you can create mobile rich media experiences even if your Web site is not quite ready for mobile traffic.
That said, if you do choose to direct users to a Web page, make sure that you are ready for them.
A non-mobile optimized Web site experience is a quick way to cut engagement short.

3. Do not get too hyper on geo
There is a lot of geo-innovation happening in mobile.
The classic go-to example is the ad unit that targets consumers within the range of a store location to drive them inside.
But it is important to keep in mind that this level of targeting can limit reach without necessarily increasing relevancy.
If in-store traffic is your goal, there are rich media features to consider.
A store locator, for example, can leverage GPS when enabled or simply prompt users to enter a ZIP code to find the nearest location. It is an efficient way to provide location information without limiting the reach of your campaign.

4. Success is a story, not a number
One of mobile rich media’s great values is the ability to view detailed insights into the performance of your ad creative.
Success is not told in a single data point. Explore metrics such as the number of expands, engagements, time spent and, importantly, custom metrics based on the creative of your ad unit.
Find out what products are users tapping on the most, which items are users viewing pricing details, which video demos are watched most frequently. These are actionable metrics that can bring value beyond the life of the campaign.

5. Do not delay
It is true that keeping up with mobile technology and trends, from in-store product research to location marketing to mobile payments, can be dizzying.
But mobile is a dynamic space that will continue to evolve over the next months and years. As such, waiting for innovation to slow down will not benefit anyone – except your competitors.
Fortunately, mobile rich media advertising offers a more accessible path to reach smartphone and tablet advertisers.

Sure, many brands are pushing the envelope in mobile creative. But you do not need to operate on the cutting edge to try mobile rich media.  The creative capabilities described in this article are already being implemented today.
World-class brands are already using mobile rich media metrics to tell detailed stories about their campaign impact. And best practice is already in place to make it easy, even if it is your first mobile campaign.

In other words, mobile rich media advertising is ready for you now. Why wait?

By Elena Perez
 _______________________________________________________________

Why wait Elena says?  iTextVIP.com is your way of getting into the game today.  If you don't, your competition will.  IF YOUR COMPETITION BEATS YOU TO THE MOBILE WORLD, THEY WILL HAVE THE ADVANTAGE AS THEY WILL HAVE YOUR CLIENTS MOBILE NUMBERS DRAWING THEM TO THEIR BUSINESS NOT YOURS!

Imagine being able to contact everyone in your database with a text and have 98% view and readership.  Imagine the opportunity to invite your loyal customers by text to come in to your business "today only for a deal" and watch them flow in like crazy.  Send out broadcast before lunch or dinner to capitalize on your clients hunger and cravings.  Keeping them loyal to you as you engage them through mobile at the most opportune times keeping them away from your competition!  Now imagine it integrated with your facebook and twitter accounts so all your fans know of your deal of the day.   THE POWER OF ITEXTVIP.COM!

Rick Tuita
Owner
iTextVIP.com

9 Amazing Mobile Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know!

9 Amazing Mobile Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

Post September 26th 2012 by Rick Tuita 

This is a guest blog post written by Jamie Turner. As the founder of the 60 Second Marketer, he is an in-demand marketing speaker and is currently writing a book entitled Go Mobile with Jeanne Hopkins, the director of marketing for HubSpot.
I attended Dreamforce in San Francisco last week to learn about new sales and marketing tools and techniques.
The hot topic this year was mobile. (Okay, truth be told, there were three hot topics – cloud computing, social media, and mobile marketing. But for this article's sake, let’s focus on mobile.)
Of course, all this begs the question: What data do we have that supports the premise that mobile marketing is the next big thing?
Glad you asked.
Here are 9 amazing facts and figures about mobile marketing that’ll help you wrap your head around why mobile is going to be bigger than radio, TV, and the personal computer – combined.

9 Amazing Mobile Marketing Statistics

1. The growth of the iPhone was 10 times faster than the growth of America Online. (Source: Nielsen) (This is an amazing statistic for those of us who remember mailboxes stuffed with AOL discs during the 1990s.) (Tweet This Stat!)
2. It takes 26 hours for the average person to report a lost wallet. It takes 68 minutes for them to report a lost phone. (Source: Unisys) (Tweet This Stat!)
3. There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone, but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. (Source: Mobile Marketing Association Asia) (Tweet This Stat!)
4. In some countries, there are more mobile subscriptions than there are people. (Source: Mobile Marketing Association) (How can this be? It’s because some people own more than one mobile phone.) (Tweet This Stat!)
5. It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. (Source: CTIA.org) (Tweet This Stat!)
6. 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour. (Source: Mobile Marketer) (Tweet This Stat!)
7. Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons. (Source: Borrell Associates) (Tweet This Stat!)
8. There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs. (Source: Jupiter) (Tweet This Stat!)
9. 91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7. (Source: Morgan Stanley) (Tweet This Stat!)
(Source: Mobile Marketing Association)

Mobile Marketing Takeaways

Try mobile marketing for yourself. If you’re like most people, you’ve never scanned a QR code or clicked on a mobile banner ad. But you have to use mobile marketing to understand mobile marketing, so dive in.
In addition, make sure you have a mobile-optimized website.
The bottom line? Mobile is here to stay, and your consumers are using it virtually every day of their lives. Given that, isn’t it time for you to get started and dive into the world of mobile? Hopefully, the statistics and takeaways I’ve outlined above will lay the foundation for you to take the next step.

 

A Text Message is an excellent way to REWARD your Loyal Customers

 

 

Sending emails is an important promotional tool most businesses use for marketing purposes. Besides PCs people can easily send them using their smartphones and other mobile devices. Email marketing is still powerful but sending enormous number of emails every day to numerous email addresses seems to look like spam and therefore become an annoying thing people don't want to get. That is the reason why many emails get straight to spam folders and never will be read and replied.  Piles of emails are just sent out in vain. Here comes the time of notifications. Let's see which advantages they can offer us and how they differ from usual emails.

Push Notifications become more widely spread as the popularity of mobile gadgets is growing, more and more people all over the world buy devices for their work and entertainment.  Users receive pop-up messages telling them some news, discounts, any stuff which can be helpful. Push notifications are like email 15 years ago, people actually pay attention. Having an iPhone,iPad or Android app will allow you to store a lot of different notifications you get. Notifications can be scheduled on sent ad hoc. That's a excellent way to show your attention to customers and reward their loyalty. Share with clients not only special offers but congratulate them on holidays and wish them good holidays. They will appreciate this for sure. Except some short lines notifications can contain URLs and images to provide more info on the subject. Geo fencing will allow sending notification when users are within certain geographic area like driving by a store. Notifications give a plenty of opportunities every business can use and get benefits.

Text messaging has sexy facts!

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Youth are dominating the texting world.  For example, younger people are the most voracious texters. However, there were some data points that merited further exploration — such as the wide disparity in texting between income and educational levels. Seventy-three percent of cell phone owners text one another, and send or receive an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day. This comes to approximately three messages every waking hour. However, this figure is largely unchanged from that reported in 2010. It’s still higher than 2009, when an average of 30 texts a day were reported. Has text messaging reached its saturation point?
Not surprisingly, young people are the most voracious test messages. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day — or about seven each waking hour. (assuming they’re getting more than 3,200 texts per month.
Interestingly, the less education and lower the income level of respondents, the more they were likely to text. For example, respondents with less than a high school education reported an average of 70 texts a day, versus 24 a day for those with four years or more of college. The survey authors did not offer an explanation for this disparity.
The Pew Research Center also asked those texters in a survey how they prefer to be contacted on their cell phone and 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53% said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14% said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation.

People do not like to be sold, but they love to buy!