When was the last time you Googled the name of your restaurant? And then your restaurant + city name?
You should do that. You might be surprised at what comes up and in what order.
Your website better be number one. You’ll probably also see your Trip Advisor page. Your Yelp page. And then we get into the weeds a little bit, if you haven’t been diligent. You COULD see your Facebook page and your Twitter account page. Even your Foursquare page.
But you might also see the Yellowpages.com page. Your Superpages.com page. Your Urbanspoon page. Your Zagat page.
It can be overwhelming, sorting through all these “outposts” you’ve got to keep tabs on. We’re going to offer some help with this with a post coming up next week, stay tuned. Alright, with that exciting teaser, let’s get to this week’s news roundup of restaurant marketing news and ideas.
- Stephanie Miles of Street Fight, as usual, has written an outstanding loyalty case study on the MAD Greens chain out of Colorado. Leveraging multiple social networks and Directory member Privy, MAD Greens has strung together a mini-powerhouse marketing program for just 12 locations. One takeaway: the brand’s use of Google Adwords, which I’ve heard many restaurateurs downplay as useless for the industry. My one recommendation: get mobile. MAD Greens’s current website is tough to read if I’m searching while on-the-go and navigate to it.
- OpenTable is now testing in-app mobile payments. Logical next step, huh? And the timing makes sense, huh? Of course, as one might assume, this is going on in San Francisco for now, and not even with all OpenTable app users. See? Do you FINALLY believe that you’ve got to get your leadership team together and get your heads around your mobile payments approach?Â
- Hospitality Technology magazine has published their 2014 New Tech Showcase (registration required to download). It’s a 12-page PDF with a few vendors mentioned (all in our Directory!) and a few articles about mobile POS and waitlist. If you’ve got some down time, go for it.
- From the I Have Mixed Feelings About This Department comes this update: you can now launch a Groupon deal without dealing with a human. For what that’s worth to you. Proceed with caution if you’ve got an existing customer base — you obviously don’t want to erode your margins unnecessarily.
- The Foodable blog features its Top 10 restaurants successfully using location-based actions at the core of its marketing. Number one on the list is Smashburger, the 255-location chain was also recently named a Forbes Top 10 of most promising companies. The Foodable criteria makes sense, read the post to learn more.
- We told you this was all going to happen fast: Marble Slab Creamery and Moe’s Southwest are rolling out mobile payments via Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, no less. This comes to us via Mobile Commerce Daily. The chains are using iMobile3’s platform to roll this out.
