Make Your Mobile Presence a Helpful Tool for Your Customers

There are so many companies, mobile websites, mobile apps, online tools and resources out there. When you are competing in a cluttered market, you need your presence to stand out as much as possible. Your mobile presence should be a useful resource and tool for your followers and customers.

Provide Helpful and Informative Mobile Content

The easiest way to make your mobile presence a resource is by feeding in useful and relative information. Squareberry offers a "News" page type in the mobile management area that allows you to stream in a Twitter user's tweets or RSS feed. Using this, you can instantly make your mobile website/app a source of valuable news and information.

Instead of one large RSS feed or a single News page, you can break things up into more detailed pages to offer a more comprehensive experience. Start by adding a Sub Menu to your mobile content. You can call it "News", "Resources" or whatever else works for you. Then, add News pages to this sub-menu, each with a different source. For example, if you are a financial consulting company, you can have news pages for Stock Market, Retirement, Investment, Financial News, etc. You can grab a different RSS feed for each of these topics and create a more extensive news sections of your mobile presence.

Quick Mobile Tools

It is easy to add elements to make your mobile website a useful tool. A financial firm can add or link to mobile financial calculators, provide tools for quick quotes etc. A restaurant can have a simple form for placing an order for pick-up.

The more useful your mobile presence is to your customers and followers, the more likely they are to keep coming back and utilizing your mobile presence. This keeps your organization at top of mind. When your organization becomes a useful resource and tool, you are associated with and instantly thought of when the topic, type or need or geographic area is on the mind of the customer.

Restaurant Promotions That Bring Groups

If you run a restaurant, you want as many people coming in the door and buying food and drinks as possible. You also know that running promotions and throwing special events can help drive more traffic. For most local restaurants, coupon promotions are an essential aspect of marketing. There are weekly flyers, local papers, mail-outs and more that feature local businesses. Your competition is usually present in these areas, so if you fail to be, you are missing out.

Coupon promotions can be great. But is there something you can do to make sure they draw in groups?

Optimize Promotions for Groups

Instead of offering a 25% off coupon for lunch, try a 50% Off One Lunch Entree When You Buy Another or Buy Two Lunch Entrees Get One Free. These small changes mean two people are buying entrees (and hopefully more) for lunch instead of just one person.

When it comes to after work drinks, you can offer discounts on pitchers or "Table Discounts" to encourage larger groups to stop in. Whenever you run promotions or include coupons in your marketing plan, always consider these options and how they can encourage larger groups of people to come in.

Group Events Too

This strategy does not need to be restricted to coupon promotions. You can hold special events that draw in groups. A great example is a "Trivia Night" which has teams going against each other to answer trivia questions. Your marketing for this event should point out the number of people per team, such as "Bring Your Team of 4 to Compete". This event is easily drawing in groups of at least 4 people.

Get the Word Out

Of course, with any promotion or event, you have to get the word out. Schedule various messages to go out on social media accounts leading up to the event/promo. Add the happening to your Facebook Page calendar and website calendar. Promote your upcoming events in your restaurant itself.

How to Not Get Repetitive

Feel like you are getting repetitive with your social media? This is something that can happen to many small businesses who run similar weekly promotions and keep regular schedules. The problem is, this can lead to your followers tuning you out. The more repetitive you are, the more your social media followers will grow accustomed to your repetition and be willing to unfollow you or simply look past your posts on Facebook and Twitter.

Handling Repeating Patterns

Squareberry offers the ability to set your events, messages and promotions to repeat in a variety of ways. Instead of repeating something in a standard weekly way, you can try various repeating patterns to mix-up your schedule. You can run promotions bi-weekly or on the "2nd Thursday of Every Month" etc.

If you still want to run a standard weekly promotion, you can mix up the messages when talking about it on social media. For example, if you have a promotion that happens every Wednesday, you can schedule 3 different social messages that repeat every 3 weeks. So week 1 message 1 would post, week 2 message 2 etc. This allows you to have a different message every week instead of repeating the same exact message each week. Even something as simple as this can make your social feed appear much more diverse and less repetitive.

Play Off Special Occasions or Dates

Another idea for mixing up your promotions and messaging is to play off special occasions and days of the month. You can have a "First of the Month Promotion" or run promotions that go along with National Holidays and special occasions (Valentine's, President's Day etc.) These type of schedules appear much more current and lively than a simple weekly promotion that never changes. Mixing up your schedule and avoiding repetition can breathe life into your social media communications and promotions.