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Conversion Focused Websites, Local Business Lead Generation, Local Business Apps

8 Effective Ways To Promote Your Restaurant Through an App

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In the world of restaurants, small and large business owners often run into the same issues and find themselves asking questions such as:

How do we get customers to dine with us?

How do we gain loyal regulars?

How do we attract those who know nothing about our chain, food or services?

All restaurant owners desire busy nights, pages of wait lists and lines outside of their doors – these are signs of success and a good problem to have that can’t be beat.

There is an abundance of restaurants in any given town or city. Food is everywhere and a restaurant's customers dining options are unlimited.  

So how do you make your restaurant stand out from the rest?

The solution: 

​Your very own restaurant app.

Lead generation for restaurants are made easy with a personalized restaurant mobile app.

Restaurant marketing can be a time consuming and expensive, especially through radio, print or TV commercials. 

The average person rarely listens to the radio anymore, as AUX cords have become the leading way to listen to music, which eliminates a large portion of leads from radio promotion.

Few individuals watch television due to Netflix. But if they do, they have a fast forward option to skip commercials.  This leaves us with print advertising for leads, and thanks to social media, who really reads the newspaper anymore?

The truth is, traditional marketing is dead.

The solution is quite simple, a restaurant app.

In today’s digital age, the average smartphone holder is consumed by their mobile device for over 5 hours a day (hackernoon).  So why not market through a medium that is guaranteed to be seen?  

In this post I will explain why every restaurant owner should incorporate a mobile app into their marketing plan and I'll describe the business benefits of having a personalized app.

But before we give you the features to help your restaurant grow with an app, Learn some Key Elements to Implement Into Your Marketing Strategy to Outshine Competition 

As a business in the food, drink and service industry, there are four key element that you are going to want to focus on in order to optimize your marketing strategy through your app and to stand out from competition:

Engage:

Successful restaurant owners are constantly engaging with their customers. Engagement is important to gain loyalty with your customers, to keep them coming back and to allow for them to be advocates for your brand.  

Connect with your customers and provide relevant information with your app, for this will ensure the apps use and will bring people through your restaurant’s doors.  

Convert:

Engagement with your app alone will not equate to a successful restaurant. You’ve got to convert as many visitors as you can.  

There are a number of ways to convert customers; in-app food ordering, in-app payment for delivery/take out options, gift card sales, even store merchandise such as beer glasses or t-shirts. Integrating a personalized marketplace will allow for you to make sales through the app alongside your walk-in sales.

Advocate:

Receiving customer endorsements will cut costs and increase efficiency. Generating new customers can be tricky, but keeping existing customers around is very beneficial.

Loyal customers act as brand ambassadors and they will be the advocates for your restaurant and will recommend and bring in friends and family, like a chain reaction.  Prompt customers to post reviews, as positive reviews will increase your online reputation and will allow for web circulation and future business.   

Reward:

Your ongoing regular customers want to be rewarded for their loyalty, so by introducing a loyalty rewards program, they'll become more loyal to your restaurant and are more likely to advocate for your business.  

Provide them with a mobile stamp card through your app to offer specials benefits and discounts in order to continue to build a rapport with your most loyal customers.

So  here is how you can help customers use your app effectively through these 8 features. Bring them back into your doors and advocate for more business sharing their experience with your restaurant with others.

8 Key App Features for Restaurant Apps

Through Getcha Mobile, there are an abundance of ways to ensure that you are designing the perfect app for your restaurant.  Here are 8 key features that would be beneficial to your personalized restaurant app and take you from chaotic to organized:

1.) Food ordering:

Allow customers to order their favourite meals and pay directly through the app.  Your benefit to this feature will be cut down on call ins, less spontaneous orders, more organization and less staff required.

2.) Menu:

Feature your menu directly through the app so that customers know exactly what they want to order upon arrival.  This feature will also allow you to showcase seasonal promotions and limited time dishes.  

Your benefit of this feature will be a faster table turn over due to customers using less time to glance through the menus, increasing revenue, and will lead to optimization of sales on special menu items.

3.) Loyalty:

Reward your loyal guests with an in-app loyalty stamp card. Allowing them to collect stamps for each visit and to redeem rewards such as free appetizers or store merchandise. The Loyalty app feature is sure to keep your most loyal customers pleased and coming back for more!

This will benefit you in the long run by having to advertise and market less due to an increase of loyal members, word-of-mouth marketing and will overall upsurge lead generation for your restaurant.

4.) Reviews:

Prompt app users to write reviews in the app after their dining experiences.  Make sure there is a reward for writing a review such as a voucher for a free appetizer next time they dine in, for that will increase the chances of the review being positive and will bring business back to the restaurant.

Reviews are beneficial because they allow for you to manage your online reputation and they will help to boost your SEO ranking.

5.) Messages:

Setting up push notifications to remind your customers about special promotions, happy hours specials and lunch deals will keep you connected with guests.

This will benefit you by saving you the time spent on sending out individual messages to each guest email and will bring business back to your restaurant with the constant weekly special reminders.

6.) Merchandise:

​Creating a custom in-app marketplace or integrating an online shop to sell restaurant merchandise is the perfect feature for your food fans.

Not only does merchandise work as a promotion tactic, but it also brings money back to your store which would not have otherwise been made simply through food sales.

7.) Events:

Use an in-app event calendar to promote and update customers on upcoming event nights at your restaurant. Whether it be a bar competition, live performance, Halloween night, charity night or paint night, make the event known and get the people in through your doors.

This will allow your restaurant to be deemed as the place to be on specific nights, increasing the fun factor of your store, and in turn will increase sales.  

8.) Image Gallery:

Showcase your establishment and most popular menu items in this app gallery to attract customers.  Remember, visual representation is key because we eat with our eyes first.

This feature will benefit you by bringing your app to life. Images are important for they allow the user to see what your restaurant has to offer and this will be sure to bring in more clients to dine in.

The 8 app features above will be the most beneficial to your personalized restaurant app and are recommended as a starting point, however, Getcha Mobile also provides other app features such as:

Around Us: Draw attention to hotspots in the area using the app.

Direction View: One-touch directions to your restaurant.

Call Us: With one tap, call the restaurant for inquiries or reservations.

Email Photo: Allow users to email photos/videos of their experiences from the app for you to use on your social media platforms, creating a community and sharing space for app users.

Contact: Displays important general information such as business location, website, URL, contact info and hours of operation.

Custom Form: Promotes customer feedback and allows them to easily make reservation requests.

Fan Wall: Allow users to connect over their shared adoration for your business. Users are able to comment, ask questions, share photos and discuss with other users what they love about your restaurant.

Tip calculator: Make splitting the bill and leaving a tip simple for your guests to ensure that your servers are being properly taken care of while your guests are organized.

Youtube Channel: Link your restaurant’s YouTube channel to your app to increase your social following.

The Benefits of Mobile Marketing

Marketing through apps allows you to be personal.  Your restaurant app creates the opportunity to collect consumer data like an opt in to be able to tailor to their wants and needs and makes their app experience special.

Having a mobile app will allow you to see how your customers interact with your features, how they want to receive communication from your restaurant and what notifications they are wanting to receive or eliminate – allowing you to tweak your app accordingly. 

Apps allow for a seamless marketing operation.  Since the majority of us already have smartphones, a restaurant app is easily integrated into someone’s everyday life, especially with the right features. The mobile audience is ever growing.  

Take advantage of the power of the smartphone and connect yourself with your community.  Mobile marketing is here to stay.

To remain relevant amongst your competition, make sure that your app is adaptable, personalized, easy to navigate through and is equipped with features that your customers want in a restaurant app.

Stay ahead of your competition by creating your own personalized app for your restaurant.

There are not many restaurants who have taken this leap into the future of marketing for the food and service industry. 

Allow yourself to be a leader and start the trend.  Apps are the future. Know your audience, include features that will add value to their lives, play to their wants and needs and keep them coming back for more.

10 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs Its Own Mobile App

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There’s something cathartic about commiserating with business owners who say they’ve tried it all and yet they have no understanding of online marketing and how people interact with their brand. Some of the things I hear when introducing a mobile app for their business are: We already have this or We don’t need this and yet they don’t know the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app.

Or if they do understand the technology at worse they will say, My business does not need a mobile app or mobile website. We go by word of mouth, so we don’t need this technology. Go figure. Later you see their business struggling to make ends meet or closed and out of business for good. The irony in all this is they take that same mindset to their next business thinking they will succeed in it because it’s a better idea. I’m sorry to say, it’s not the idea that sucks but the marketing process of how you attract your users for your product or brand. Anyone can have a great idea, but if your business does not have the right tools or marketing strategy, you’ll fail.

As a marketer who has been doing this for years, I’m pretty blunt when I see business owners who have not caught on how things have changed. I’ll say things like, “Your website sucks and looks like a dying breed” or “You have no presence at all, how do you expect your customers to find you or trust you when you can’t even update or spend a little extra money for marketing your business? Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come.

With that being said, being cheap with marketing will not be able to help business owners with succeeding in the online game of the internet and where majority of their customers live and breath, their Smart phones. The following 10 are reasons why your business or organization needs a mobile app.

1. Get In Front of Your Customers by Being Visible 24/ 7

More and more Americans spend more time in front of their devices. The average American spends more than 2 hours a day on their mobile device. A handful of them use applications in their total usage.

2. One Stop Direct Marketing Channel

Your branded mobile app can have many functions: They provide general info, prices, important forms, search features, user accounts, messengers, news feeds, sharing capabilities and more.

As a business owner, non-profit or establishment, your organization has to determine what pertinent information you’d like to provide to your customers and users. Do you have a special sale going on? Is it an event you are promoting? Is it reminders to be sent out? What about traffic to a certain form on your website or mobile app? With push-notifications you can get a two-way engagement with your customers in real-time. Because it’s permission-based marketing there is no longer the desperation of trying to get your customers to see your brand with interrupted messages that they have not opted-in to.

3. Build Value with Your Customers

With existing business patronage, your customers expect to be taken care of: that means building value in the eyes of your customers. The question is, how will you do that as a business owner? How do you build value for them? Loyalty rewards and programs can bring them back to your business on an on-going basis. This builds trust with your customers. Because they trust you, they’re more than willing to share with their friends and family members about your brand, which brings us the next reason.

4. Create Brand and Recognition

When you create a brand, you create an identity of your product or service. Your brand tells your customers who you are and what you do. As a business you create awareness, so let’s talk about brand and recognition.

Brand
Your branded mobile app is like seeing a billboard sign up on the highways, it drives traffic to your brand without the high cost of billboards or advertising. This brand can be established by an apps function, informative messages using the right features that can be change on the fly.

Recognition
Get your customers involved with exposures to your brand. To get a call to action to do something whether it’s through an incentive or promotion.The more often you can get customers involved using your app, the sooner they will be inclined to buy your product and/or service because they recognize your brand through frequent use. In advertising this is called effective frequency it’s the number of times a person must be exposed to a message before a response is made. Response varies to the individual.

5. Better Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is a process of interacting with your product or brand. If you have ever eaten out with your family or friends at a restaurant and you want to be seated, who is the first person you see? Or course it’s a person who takes your reservation. They are the first step of engagement of your brand. Just like online customer engagement can be used in your app through a reservation form or like a platform like OpenTable Reservations. There has to be that exchange to start the process of getting to know you. However, your mobile app can take your reservation via text instead of calling it in and without a 3rd party reservation platform like OpenTable or GrubHub. Now that’s effective and convenient without the high cost of 3rd party platforms that are based on performance.

6. Separate Yourself from Your Competition

A big question you have to ask yourself as a business owner is: Are you competitive? Are you keeping up on technology and how smart marketing is changing the way businesses attract customers? Marketing and how we use technology is changing how we do business and customer behaviors are changing how we market to them.

7. Bring Back Customers with Incentive Programs

As we spoke above about loyalty programs, customers want value. Creating value can save your business not only monetary, but also where your business falls short when it comes ineffective marketing. Customers are smart, they don’t fall for interrupted messages anymore. They respond when you care about what they need. Ways you can do this is through mobile coupons, QR coupons and GPS coupons and tailoring your messages based on their needs.

8. Drive Existing Traffic to Your Establishment

We all know that potential customers find you through search, but what happens when they find you? It is said when a customer finds you through search the first time around, they never go back to your business the second time not unless there is an incentive to do so. The best way to attract them again is through your mobile app. When users know you have a mobile app, they are more likely to download your app to their device, by doing this they are giving you permission to contact them with more offers you can provide in the future.

9. Measure Your Marketing Efforts through Metrics

With all the work in bringing your customers in your doors, how do you measure your marketing efforts in all this? Mobile app metrics can tell you how customers respond to your functionality on your app and the messages you push out to them. They give you the information on how well you’re doing with your brand. This allows you to test and tweak messages or functions to better suit your business and its users.

Just like numbers tell the story on how well a business is doing financially, metrics tell you the story on how well your customers are responding to your business offers and messages. Do you need to change your marketing message for better response rate? Or do you need to delete the ineffective function or message? Either way you have creative ways to change things up for your business or organization.

10. Apps Are Becoming The Dominant Form of Digital Interaction

On my last post, “Mobile App Usage Will Only Increase In 2015 and Beyond” It’s happening and still going strong. More and more people are on their mobile devices than they spend more time on television. Yes that’s true. And Smartphone users are spending 80% of their time in mobile apps. Jay Baer from Convince and Convert when interviewed by: Kyle Lacy from Exact Target say’s that Your Website will eventually be the AM Radio of the Internet.

Why Apps May Become More Important Than Your Website.

So it’s not a matter of when an app is a way a user is going to interact with your business, but a matter of time. The big question is, What will you do when your business hasn’t caught on while everyone else is working smarter and more efficient with their online marketing strategy? I guess they’ll just go to your competition.


A Demand for Mobile Applications

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Mobile technology is bursting at the seams with it growing astronomically, mobile users literally have thousands of applications at their fingertips. A device, be it Apple or Android can do things for a user that just aren’t possible with the pen and paper. With this technology, the mobile device world is becoming more advanced by the minutes, and it’s showing no signs of slowing.  Along with all this advancement comes trends. Trends in applications, devices, usage, you name it. The mobile “world” trends will affect everyone from the simple cell phone “I only use it in emergencies” user to the “I work from home… on my mobile device” user. While those users that use their phone for simple interactions such as making a call or sending a text message might not see the trends affect him or her so much, for business owners it makes a huge difference. Recently, mobile phone devices have been starting to roll out into the market with a larger screen size than that of its predecessors. That is great for any user, but to the “business” user, this means more room to capitalize on and an easier work or marketing experience. A larger screen means more available at once to the user, allowing for faster work time and perhaps more free time!

Several trends are predicted to roll out in 2013, (keep in mind this is only last year) and according to eweek.com here are 10 that are definitely sure to help out the business user and their work life:

  1. Bigger Screens
  2. 4G LTE Service
  3. Android Everywhere
  4. NFC- Near Field Communication
  5. Slim and Light devices
  6. Bigger Tablets
  7. Better Tablet Covers
  8. Better smaller Tablets
  9. Heavy Investment in UltraBooks
  10. Business Focus

10 Mobile Technology Trends Sure to Impact Your Work Life In 2013

Along with mobile “trends”, comes new applications. Lately, it seems that there REALLY is an application for everything. With the mobile world exploding in the recent years, there is a high demand for applications with people to develop them. According to Computer Training Centers

“The demand for skilled & talented mobile application developers still far exceeds the supply”

The demands for developers are so high, that in the next 10 years, an estimated 300,000 jobs will need to be filled to develop mobile applications. That’s an increase of 32%! The mobile world is becoming so popular with users, that it is “heralding one of the decade’s largest increases for any occupation (IT or otherwise)”.

top 8 mobile operating systems in the united states from april 2010 to march 2013

http://www.developer-tech.com/news/2016/mar/02/research-insights-state-app-developers-2016/

Several hundred thousand applications are available in both the Apple App Store, and the Google Play store. Each one of those applications needs to have a developer, if not a group of developers to design, build, and execute the application and market it for success. Could you be the next mobile application developer? Could you be the next business owner who would not need to know programming knowledge to build a functional mobile app for your company?


BOOM! Here Comes The Mobile Explosion!

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mobile.revolutionYou see it everywhere, the subway, on the street, in restaurants… someone on their mobile device, whether its a smartphone or tablet, the mobile world is growing rapidly. In fact, it’s impossible for everyone to keep up with the constant changes in technology. For every day heading to work human, this really doesn’t have any great side effect. However, for the mobile developer, this means war! War on keeping up with the changes to not only devices, but the languages, syntax, and other functionality that helps these devices do everything from place a simple phone call, to find your sushi dinner in the middle of downtown Sydney and order it before you arrive.

“In the next 10 years we will witness more changes than during the past 100 years”

(mwc2013.tieto.com/blog-cateogry/handling-data-explosion#USvPWOs4XWo).

What does this mean for you- the mobile developer?

Well, it means you best stay as up to date and educated on the new and rising mobile developments as you can Bucko! As a roimobile developer, it’s extremely important that you stay ahead of the game. New technologies mean new languages, practices, and syntax among other things. New technology means research, and even more research for you; the mobile developer. With that said, you must have the research tools at your fingertips to keep up with the pace with the ever-growing mobile world.

As a mobile developer, do not be afraid to jump right into research starting with the very basic of practices that you know, but need to expand on. Developers have a number of tools available to them, one of the most powerful being the Internet. You can find anything from common practices of coding, tutorials, and eBooks. The information is out there, make sure you jump on it!

What does this mean for you- the small business owner?

You are also in luck Mr. Small Business Owner! Since mobile applications (and the mobile world in general) are exploding, there is pretty much a mobile application for anything, and someone out there knows what you want and need. Want to keep your inventory at your fingertips? No problem. Want to allow your customers to place an order of their favorite pizza over the Internet using their mobile device? No problem pizzan!

As a small business owner, taking advantage of every advertising opportunity is a huge deal to get your name out there. Making your customers experience an easy and carefree as possible is a big part of your job as a business owner too. Just imagine, having a mobile app that lets the user browse your inventory and store and eventually make a purchase without even having to leave their couch. That my friend, could boost your business a ton! Can you say as a business owner, “I’m never leaving money on the table again”?

What does this mean for you-the marketer?

Woohoo! JOB SECURITY! As long as there is a demand for mobile applications and mobile technology, there will also be a demand for
hiringpeople to get out there to sell it and help people test it out. So, that being said, you have the ability to become the “head honcho” of sorts in the mobile marketing world. Just think, one successful campaign out on the road “selling” mobile apps for a chain of restaurants like Chuck-e-Cheese could put you on the map as the worlds “most desirable marketer”.

Just keep yourself up to date on mobile marketing techniques,  what people want, what is good and what is not, and you’ll go places. As long as someone develops it, someone has to market and sell it. No boring infomercials needed, just an out-going marketer to spice up the delivery and BAM! IT’S SOLD!

The Push Notification Revolution

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By 2015, over 80% of handsets in mature markets will be smart phones. 20% of those will be Windows phones. By 2015, tablet shipments will be 50% of laptop shipments.1

The average smartphone user has 65 apps installed on their mobile device.2  As the use of mobile apps rises your attendees push-notification-picwon’t ask about them, they’re expecting them. There are millions of events and meetings held each year, how does yours top the list? Mobility can get you there.

What’s the gain you ask? It’s about engaging with your attendees fans or customers. Not only do Mobile apps give your users an easier way to share their overall experience, allowing them to make your event more socially interactive. Mobile apps also give you the ability to send Push Notifications to your users even when they aren’t actively engaged. The notification will send them a message as an alert or banner. When they tap it to view, it will direct them back to the app for more information.

How would you like your mobile app users to be notified that their a.m. breakfast meeting they’re heading to has just been moved to a new location or that their credited program has been pushed back an hour? What about alerting fans which venue your band is playing tomorrow? You can also send quick push notifications on specials you’re having for the weekend. How does that increase your loyalty for your clients, customers, attendees or fans? How much is that worth to you? Push messages can provide a clear communication platform that your clients, customers, attendees and fans will value.

The Push Notification Revolution is the leader of mobile engagement. It’s time to make your meeting place the leader of all events.