Off the Pass: week of November 29, 2010

Lately the two major online marketing trends in the restaurant industry have been vouchers with all kinds of formats and twists, and location based marketing (so called check-ins) for attracting new visitors with deals and creating virtual loyalty schemes. Based on the volume of press these check-in services have received you would think Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places and the recent Yelp check-in feature are used by almost everyone.

Not so. Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that on average 4% of online American adults use location services. On any given day 1% of Internet users use such services. The same survey done in May 2010 showed similar numbers, so little change since.

Why are the numbers not higher? One in five mobiles sold are smartphones with the ability to run these services, more than 25% of the UK population access the web from mobiles. Well, perhaps the slightly stalkerish feeling that comes with announcing to the world where you are has something to do with it.

There is also the issue of being useful, most location based services simply aren’t. Fun, playful, sometimes bringing you rewards, sure. But not much in terms of actual value, like Twitter can help you get a random question answered, or quickly tap your network to find out what the road conditions are like in Scotland? I do appreciate the tips about venues left behind by Foursquare users, but the gems are few and far between. Taking the time to check in at a venue then quickly becomes a chore.

From a business perspective, cheating is still easy (GPS accuracy allows you to check in when not even in the venue, much less being a paying customer), getting access to useful historical data isn’t all that easy, and using these services to build your guest database is difficult.

Once we see services like these more easy to use for consumers with privacy as a key concept, and more verifiable for businesses, perhaps we will see some real pick up in numbers.

In other online marketing, technology and restaurant related news:

Talk of the town THIS week will most likely (still a rumour…) be the Google acquisition of Groupon at $2.5 billion. If true it will certainly give Groupon the necessary muscle to start accelerating beyond all the clones. In a timely post The New York Times Small Business section shows how to do the math on a Groupon deal. It’s a new world. The old math still works.

Tying back to last week’s Off the Pass, there has been lots of writing on the impact of Facebook’s new “social inbox” messaging system on traditional permission based marketing using email newsletters. NRN ask the experts who say that the new Facebook Messages will not kill email marketing. Marketing Experiments feel much the same, given that most people still hold several email addresses and the new “social inbox” won’t 100% replace email any time soon. Similar to my own thoughts, ReputationOnline makes the point that brands need to make sure to be relevant and useful to not get blacklisted by the people that matter the most.

NRN also writes about how Facebook drives online orders for restaurants, quoting the Chicago concept Wow Bao as having seen a 10% increase after starting to use “Like” buttons and an online ordering system within Facebook. (See instructions for implementing Livebookings’ booking tool in Facebook.)

Having a Facebook Page, with or without online ordering, won’t help your business much if it isn’t found though. Check out this quick guide from Clickz about “Facebook Search Engine Optimisation” and making sure you don’t forget any important details in your setup.

To help you understand what engages your Facebook Page visitors, Facebook provides the Insight tool with statistics on visits, comments, likes and so on. Recently they moved this valuable information on to the actual Facebook Page itself, so if you are an administrator of a page you get the stats inline with the status updates and comments. This overview helps you understand how to use the Insights to make your page more engaging and useful.

Moving away from Facebook, you still need a website of your own to get your message out there in a way you control and own. Last week Econsultancy published a post with very helpful advice: 10 ways restaurants can improve their websites.

Keeping your restaurant website accurate and up to date can’t be emphasised enough. Sounds like a given, yet as exemplified here by blogger @bef_ small mistakes are easily made, which can easily put customers off: check your opening times and menu details regularly.

Despite today’s intro, still interested in location based marketing for restaurants? Don’t miss this free and easily digestible e-book by Joe Sorge, owner of AJ Bombers, a restaurant where Foursquare has been used very successfully to drive business: #FoursquareWorks

Social media reporting tends to be almost exclusively about Facebook and Twitter, we are certainly guilty of that on this blog, but here is an article on how the web browser company Opera used the social news sharing site Reddit for a recent promotion. Great example of how a well prepared, well staffed social media campaign based on knowing the people you want to talk to can give real results.

The blogging collective behind Chef Hermes keep publishing great posts, lately “5 Questions with Tim Hayward” caught my eye as Mr Hayward definitely is a voice to listen to when it comes to food writing, publishing and online trends in our industry.

For fun:

I thought the very successful restaurant guide site Afternoontea.co.uk was niche, but how about this: Directory of Dog Friendly Restaurants.

The “Eat and run thief” has been busted and sentenced. Not sure which fascinates me most in this case, the amount of money the thief managed to run from or the clear statement from the judge where fine dining resides in London: “Banning Nords from London postcodes W1, WC1, WC2, SW1, SW3 and NW1 for the next twelve months, Judge Wickham said: They are the places that have all the expensive restaurants.”

Finally, the Twitterverse was up in arms last week over the fact that TfL is trying to make the underground restaurant “The Underground Restaurant” change name or face legal action. The simple fact that using the word “underground” to describe things that are sort of, you know… underground and slightly subversive, doesn’t seem to matter. Then again, can Facebook trademark the word “face” I guess anything is possible in the world of IP.

That’s it for this week. Come back Monday next week for a new set of news in restaurant online marketing you shouldn’t miss out on. If you want to get updates of links and comments throughout the week, follow @manne on Twitter (news and blog links mixed with random chit chat ranging from the perfect bacon sarnie, this ultimate hangover cure, to current events) or on Google Buzz (news links only).

By Magnus Hultberg in Blog, Off the Pass: Week in online marketing