I once went to a presentation by the President of Blenz Coffee, George Moen. Blenz is an international coffee chain that has over 85 stores internationally and growing. George offered this piece of advice for any business: If there’s time to spare, use that spare time to market and advertise your business as much as possible.

Marketing isn’t as simple as printing up business cards, and having people handing out flyers at the door during a slow night. Marketing requires discipline and understanding the habits of your customers and their use of technology.

Great Marketing Depends on Technology Trends:

Much or marketing depends on the trends of technology and the relationships that customers have with technology. What happens is that when a restaurant grows successful is that it often becomes complacent and uses old forms of media to continue to promote the restaurant. (more…)

As I write and work in the loyalty space, I sometimes stop to think about the places I consider myself loyal to. There aren’t a lot of them; I frequent my grocer and use a friend’s phone number instead of a club card, and I usually don’t cave to the deals offered by loyalty programs. For other businesses, I am fiercely loyal, and make it a point to recommend “my” businesses whenever friends or tourists ask. “Why so loyal?” you ask? Because they all have one thing in common: a socially-charged mission. (more…)

The growth in smartphone usage is phenomenal – there are more than 200 million smart phones in the U.S. and 100 billion text messages are sent every month.  Utilizing mobile marketing is now a no-brainer; the difficulty is how to use mobile marketing without being intrusive to your customers.

The Scenario

Your best customers have given you their mobile phone number and opted into your Mobile VIP Program.  The first message you send them is critical as it sets the tone for the relationship.

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You can provide a better POS system, add a loyalty program, add a new coat of paint to the business; and yet, the business may still fail.  The reason – the franchisee did not get the job done.

The corporation is responsible for providing the franchisee with all the tools and training necessary for the success of the business.  This post will identify the 4 types of franchisees and how to motivate them to do better, work harder, and ultimately succeed as a franchise owner.
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The AlwaysOn OnMobile Conference

RewardMe was recently featured at AlwaysOn‘s OnMobile Conference in Redwood City; a 2-day lecture-heavy exposé of the mobile and tablet industry. AlwaysOn has been one of the most prominent business media brand networking the Global Silicon Valley, with attendees of top executives from Fortune 500 Companies as well as successful technology startups.

Most of the conference was set around B2C businesses, but there were a few interesting B2B startups that could create some waves in the Restaurant and Retail industries.

Here are some highlights:

Mobile Technology Advancements For Restaurants & Franchises

Two things stick out here: automation, and dynamism. There were some big leaps in terms of automating various elements of the ordering process, but taking out the cashier can just be too automated in some cases. One startup is trying to take the online-ordering process to the next step — automating the process by taking the order directly to the POS and getting it ready for delivery. This could potentially help serve more customers during high-traffic times and lower waits for everyone. (more…)

I recently came back from a conference, the Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference, and at the conference listened to a panel of franchise marketing executives speak on successful marketing and customer loyalty tactics. One of the panelists, a CMO of a Fortune 1000 company addressed the importance of customer experience and brought up the notion of treating your customers as guests. Whether this means literally addressing your customers as guests or maintaining the underlying philosophy throughout your company culture, the bottom-line is understanding this mentality and championing it throughout your entire organization in the direction of building a better brand, increased customer loyalty, and ultimately a better customer experience.

The Disney Customer

Walt Disney made this famous with Disneyland’s iconic customer service and transformable customer experience. Disney called all the employees “cast members” and called all customers/visitor “guests.” Walt Disney may epitomize this philosophy and have taken it to an extreme extent, but if applied to a fraction of the degree as Disneyland, your customer service and experience will translate to a better interaction with your brand for your guests. This is not to say you need to turn your franchise or business into Disneyland, but understand that details matter and every single customer’s experience may be a new one. (more…)

Groupon, the nearly $15 billion behemoth of daily deal websites, is one of the hottest internet companies today. From their $6 billion Google acquisition offer to their purported IPO valuation of up to $25 billion, Groupon is making headlines everywhere. More recently, news about Groupon has been turning sour with articles from the New York Times, Reuters, and other numerous media outlets reporting horror stories of small business owners upset and traumatized with their Groupon experience.

How It Works

Groupon and the hundreds of Groupon-clones vying for you to strike a deal and sign up for their deep discount offering can be too much for any business owner to handle. Understanding how Groupon works and what to expect are the first steps in realizing whether Groupon is right for your business. Groupon and the likes provide a service where they offer potential customers a deep discount to a good or service. These discounts to the customer range from 50-90% off retail or face value. As a business, when you sign up for Groupon, they guarantee you increased customers. They do this in 2 ways, first the deal only goes “live” if a pre-determined minimum number of people purchase it and second, they send out your deal to their ever growing email list of subscribers which can be millions of new potential customers per city. (more…)

My team and I have a favorite Japanese Restaurant on Castro Street.  We love it so much that we go about 3 times a week for dinner.  Average order value is about $15 and we usually go with a group of 4 people, which means each month we bring in $720 worth of business.

It’s not the best Japanese food in the world, but it does have the best General Manager in the world – Robert.

Robert is awesome.  He welcomes us by name each time we enter the restaurant and provides us with Hot Sake on the house.

That’s the reason we keep coming back: recognition and free hot sake.

On average, we drink 2 bottles every visit.  I asked Robert how much it costs him to give us a free bottle of sake.  He chuckled a little and said, “To be honest, a bottle of hot sake only costs us a dollar.”

It’s not the dollar value that makes my friends and I feel special, it’s that Robert keeps providing us with bottles of hot sake without hesitation – because he appreciates our business.

At a cost of $24, he is able to consistently bring $720 worth of business each month.  If you could invest $24 to make $720 in a month, would you do it?

How good is your General Manager?

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What is Social Media

Social media is becoming all the rage with most businesses, especially restaurants and retail shops managing their own Facebook page and Twitter account. Five years ago, Facebook was barely mainstream, still catering primarily to the college market, and Twitter was hardly out of inception. Today, Facebook and Twitter decals adorn business’ websites and are prominently displayed on marketing collateral in hopes of having their customers connect with them through these social media channels.

Social media primarily refers to the use of web- and mobile-based technologies to share, connect, and interact with others. Through intricate and vast social networks, users are able to share and disseminate information extremely fast. The goals of successful social media campaigns are to connect with customers, reach new customers, and ultimately convert fans, followers, and loyal customers into actual sales. Some of the ways businesses are getting customers to engage with. (more…)

It almost seems like it was just yesterday that RewardMe went mainstream in the San Francisco Bay area, and within a short few weeks RewardMe has gone international and has launched in Vancouver, Canada.

RewardMe in Vancouver has partnered up with restaurants and cafes such as Starbucks, Robson’s All India Restaurant, Da Jia Japanese Restaurant, Sushi Mart, Beefy Beef Noodles, Trees Organic Coffee and Vancouver Magazine’s Best Cheap Eats Zero One Sushi.

The reason why these establishments have decided to sign up and use RewardMe Loyalty Program is because it’s designed not to focus on the one time bargain hunter who will enjoy the deal and then never come back. It’s a program that focuses specifically on how to get repeat customer activity.

What’s also bad is once a daily deal is done, a restaurant is no longer advertised with the daily deal company. The company is off to focus on the next company that wants to do a daily deal. They don’t provide continuous advertising and marketing for a restaurant. They don’t try to build a long term relationship to help improve the sales and marketing for the restaurant. They don’t mention a restaurant to their growing customer base. If you want to be able to reach their new e-mail subscription list you need advertise with them again, and again give them at least 50% off. (more…)