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.

Should You Post About Topics Unrelated to Your Business?

Current Events and Topics

Often times, there are current events, professional sports games, political movements and other things happening in you community that are important to your customers and followers. Should you get involved in the conversation about these topics? Obviously there are are some simple examples. Sports Bars should definitely post scores, reactions and announcements about your local teams. Sports Bars' customers want this information and may even consider their favorite sports bar a source of information on this subject.

But what about a small retail store or a non-profit? When is a good time to take part in the conversations and when should should they just stick with posting about what they have going on? If you run a local non-profit group, your followers will most likely not be looking at you as a source for updates on every single game during the baseball regular season. But if the local team wins the World Series, that probably warrants an excited or congratulatory social media post.

The magnitude of the topic or event should be considered. Does this impact my organization and its followers? In the example just given, regular season baseball games don't the non-profit or community, but winning the World Series is something the whole city and community celebrate. As part of the community, you should not be left out of the celebration.

Your Social Media Experts Should Not Project Themselves

An important factor to always keep in mind is the voice of your social media accounts. Like all aspects of your communication and marketing there should be a consistent voice that is concurrent with your brand. Is your organization, young, fun and casual? Then the way you chat on social media should probably reflect this.

It often seems that one or two people are put in charge of creating the content and messages that will be posted on social media accounts. These people always need to remember they are posting as the organization and not as themselves. The wording, phrasing and expressions used should reflect the brand of the organization, not the personality of that individual.

They should also consider this when it comes to current events. The questions should be "Is my organization and my followers interested in this subject?", "Is this topic beneficial and does it positively reflect my organization?" The top or current event may be very important to the individual in charge of your social media, but it may not reflect the brand of your organization.

Marketing During the Holiday Season

Well, the holiday season is upon us. This week, in the U.S. we will celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas is fast approaching. This is a huge time of year for retail, restaurants and other businesses as people take time off, buy gifts, spend time with family and take advantage of special offers and sales.

Holiday Marketing

Because more stores, restaurants and businesses offering specials and sales during this time of year, there is more noise to compete with. Consumers are bombarded with ads from every angle. If you want to be heard this time of year, you may consider increasing the amount of messages you publish to social media, run more events on "off" nights (such as the middle of the week) and make your promotions can't miss opportunities.

This time of the year is one of the most competitive. If you don't want to be missed, you have to make sure your offers/events are heard and you have to make them worth coming to. Remember that most every other business is also running a sale. Let people know why yours is better.

Cyber Monday

Don't forget about Cyber Monday. If you have an e-commerce website or even if you allow people to purchase gift cards or simple items online, make sure to take advantage of Cyber Monday. Every year, millions of people participate in an online shopping surge the Monday after Thanksgiving. Make sure your business or restaurant does not miss out.

Play Off the Current Events and Holidays

Back in July (in honor of the Olympics), we presented a Tuesday Tip with suggestions for playing off of current events and pop culture with your events and promotions. These type of themes promotions can be used even by small businesses and give your marketing a sense of relativeness and freshness.

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Monitor Twitter Keywords and Generate Leads

In the Social Conversation Area of Squareberry, there are three main sections: Search, Social Feeds and Inbox. The Search section allows you to monitor keywords on Twitter. Any keywords you add will be on the left tabs and feed in public tweets using those keywords.

Search Tips

1. Use quotation marks to search for phrases. When you are inputting a search term, you can add quotation marks to search for the whole phrase. If you search for multiple words without quotation marks, your results will include Tweets with those keywords, though the words may be separate in the tweet.

2. Add Local Terms. Use your city name, neighborhoods, or local phrases to help bring in Tweets from people talking about your specific area. There are so many Tweeters out there, you want to do the best you can to bring in the best possible leads.

Reply to New Leads

Social conversation goes both ways. Not only will you monitor what is being said, but you can easily join the conversation. Hit "Reply" next to any of the Tweets in your search and you can instantly reply to that person. Recommend your business, answer their questions or even ask for feedback.

Think of these Tweeters as leads. Everyone out there Tweeting is a potential customer or new follower. The more you engage and be part of the conversation, the more traction your can gain, people you can influence and business you can generate.

Snag Your Favorite NBA Team's Schedule

The NBA season is here! With the MLB season just ending and the NFL season in full swing, it is now time for the NBA season to launch. It is a great time to utilize Squareberry's SNAG features and grab your favorite team's schedule to display on your calendars and widgets and share on social media.

SNAG an NBA Team Schedule

http://squareberry.com/nba

Click the "Snag" button in the top right corner of the NBA calendar at the URL above. You will then be asked to login (if you are not already). Then, select the team you want to Snag and continue.

Now, that team will show up as a Category in your account. You can display this category on calendars and widgets (just like your created categories) and even set social media publishing settings for your team schedule.

Marketing With Your NBA Team Schedule

The most immediate and basic advantage to having your NBA team's schedule Snagged, is that you see the schedule on your social planner. This makes scheduling messages, events and coupon promotions to coincide with your team's games easy.

For restaurants, publishing messages on the day of a big game can help draw attention and get more people in the door to watch the game at your place.

This strategy can be taken even further, by running coupon promotions to go along with the games. Simple promotions like "Buy 2 Drinks, Get One Free" or "15% Off Everything During The Game" can help bring in groups of people to watch the big game. Running these promotions heavily at the beginning of the season can help you establish your place as the location of choice for grabbing some food and drinks while watching the games.

Making Your Mobile Website a Place to Come Back To

The key word in the title of this article is "back". Like your website, Facebook page and your actual business location, you want people to come BACK. One visit is good, but repeat visits is what you are looking for. Your mobile website needs to be an ever-updating hub of happenings, news and fresh content. Tell people to use it and keep them coming back.

Events and Promotions

For many businesses, special events and coupon promotions are what draw people in. Your mobile website should serve as the ideal location for people to find this information. Create calendar pages on your mobile site to show off your upcoming events and promotions. People, who are out and about, will be drawn in by your happenings.

Mobile News Source

News pages are a great way to keep your mobile website fresh. With Squareberry, you can feed in RSS (such as a blog) or publish your Twitter feed. These options give your mobile website fresh news content without the need to login and update the news page. Your mobile website keeps updated via your existing main news publishing tools.

Keep It Updated

The most important thing to do is keep your mobile website updated with fresh content. Squareberry's calendars will automatically hide past events/promotions, but page content needs to be maintained (if applicable). Don't leave a message about New Year's on your home page until March. Out of date content can turn off potential customers who will think nothing has changed at your business.

If you are a restaurant, keep your current menu updated/available on your mobile website. Squareberry offers an intuitive Menu/Catalog page type which allows you to easily create and update a full menu of items.

Tell People It Is the Place to Come Back To

Signs on your door and/or tables can go a long way. You are probably already featuring Facebook on your collateral, do the same with your mobile website. Tell people they can easily see what's going on, gets news and find promotions on your mobile site. Spreading the word helps get them on your mobile site. Fresh content, news and events/promotions keep them coming back.