What A Local Burger Joint Can Teach Us About Marketing
Posted: December 10, 2012 Filed under: Marketing, Social Media Marketing | Tags: foursquare, marketing, rgb social, rgbsocial, social media, social media marketing, yelp 2 Comments »
Frequently when we look for social media, marketing and advertising inspiration, we look to the big spenders and huge brands in industry publications. There are, however, some small businesses that are doing a pretty amazing job with their marketing, product offerings, and social media marketing that can be just as inspiring.
Meet Burger’s Priest.
Burger’s Priest is a local Toronto burger joint that has two locations. They specialize in simple, traditional, fresh, incredibly tasty burgers. In addition to their fantastic burgers, they do a few things from marketing and social media standpoints that are also quite special.
Consistent Brand Story
From the naming convention for their burgers (the Priest, the Vatican City, Noah’s Arc, to list a few), to visual branding, to their hours of operation (closed Sundays for church), the Burger’s Priest brand story stays consistent across the board.
LESSON: To maximize impact, it is critical that each consumer touch-point contributes to building your brand’s story. Whether you are designing packaging, developing advertising collateral, choosing uniforms, or determining a voice to write with on social media, make sure that you are consistently representing your brand for maximum effect.
Create Value By Providing Exclusive Information
The in-store menu at Burger’s Priest is quite short – maybe 7-10 items max. They also have a ‘secret menu’ available online. While the ‘secret menu’ is not all that secret, it gives those who know about it a sense of exclusivity and that they possess insider information. On numerous occasions while waiting in line waiting to place an order I’ve heard whisperings of the ‘secret menu’ from experienced parishioners to the uninitiated. Also, social networks such as Yelp and Foursquare are overflowing with reviews, tips and commentary about people’s favourite ‘secret menu’ items.
LESSON: People like to have things that other’s don’t. It gives them a sense of being in the know, part of an inside crowd, and general exclusivity. It also gives people something to talk about and share with their friends. Selectively releasing information that your consumers will view as holding value can contribute to creating an environment in which information can be shared, conversations can be had, and a healthy community can thrive.
Focused Product Offerings
Burger’s Priest does one thing, and that one thing really well. You won’t find fancy toppings, exotic meats, or ciabatta buns. They make awesome, no fuss burgers. That’s it.
LESSON: Focus on what you’re good at. If you do, you’re concentrated efforts will allow you to get better at what you already do well, operate with greater efficiency, avoid diluting the aspects of your business that your consumers initially fell in love with, and streamline your marketing efforts because of your focused communications.
Have you ever been inspired by the marketing of a small business? If so, let me know about who inspired you and what they do in the comments, or on Twitter @RGBSocial
Who Are You?: The Importance of a Complete Profile
Posted: September 10, 2012 Filed under: Blogging, Social Media, Social Media Marketing | Tags: advertising, blog, blogger, blogging, facebook, google+, marketing, pinterest, rgb social, rgbsocial, social media, social media marketing, twitter, wordpress, yelp 3 Comments »
I spend a good amount of time looking at digital and social media profiles for individuals, businesses and brands for both my profession, in the advertising industry, and for this blog. Something that never ceases to amaze me is how many incomplete profiles I come across – missing profile pictures, no link to a website, no textual information, no contact details, basic visual elements missing, and so on.
While maintaining an up-to-date and complete profile might seem like a frivolous detail, it is actually critically important. I liken it to walking into a business meeting with your fly down; if you’d remembered to zip up, you’d look exponentially more professional. The same thinking applies to completing your digital or social media profile. It is critical to have a complete and up-to-date profile on all of your digital and social media properties.
Following are 15 of the numerous benefits that can be experienced by having a complete profile:
- Appear more professional
- Convey your competency of having strong attention to detail
- Give a greater sense of credibility
- Evoke greater trust from your consumers and connections
- Provide a better sense of your motives and what you stand for
- Convert digital and social media traffic into real-world foot traffic by providing your location
- Increase the relevance and value of followers and fans by letting them know what to expect from your content
- Sociability will be heightened if people know who you are and what you look like
- Drive traffic to your website
- Generate sales by driving traffic to your e-commerce store
- Cross promote your other social media and digital properties
- Generate leads, sales and connections by providing contact information
- Demonstrate your dedication to creating relationships via digital and social media channels
- Achieve your digital and social media goals and KPI’s
- Demonstrate the value you place on design and aesthetics
With this said, get to it! There is no reason to have incomplete or out-of-date digital or social media profiles.
What other benefits can be experience by having a complete and up-to-date profile?
If you’d like to chat, feel free to contact me in any of these places:
Email: matthew@rgbsocial.com
Twitter: @RGBSocial
Facebook: facebook.com/RGBSocial
10 Ways Yelp Can Boost Your Social Media Marketing
Posted: September 6, 2012 Filed under: Social Media Marketing, Yelp | Tags: advertising, android, content, digital marketing, facebook, iphone, marketing, mobile, photographs, reviews, rgb social, rgbsocial, search rankings, SEO, social media, social media marketing, yelp Leave a comment »
For many businesses, Yelp can be an incredibly useful social media network for driving real and measurable business results.
Following are 10 ways that Yelp can boost your social media marketing efforts:
1. REVIEWS
As has been discussed in a previous post, consumer reviews have huge impact and influence over other’s purchase decisions. With over 30 million user generated reviews of local businesses and counting, reviews are Yelp’s bread and butter.
2. BUSINESS PROFILES
Business profiles on Yelp provide pertinent, factual information about businesses including hours of operation, your location, link to your website, payment options, required attire, price range, and accessibility. This information could be make or break when it comes to consumer purchase decisions.
3. PHOTOGRAPHS
As far as social media content is concerned, photographs drive higher levels of engagement than any other type of content, and Yelp predominantly features user’s photographs as part of every business profile. Photos, particularly user photos, give prospective consumers an unbiased glimpse of your business and offerings from a peer’s perspective.
4. CONSUMER INVOLVEMENT
Yelp’s many user-driven features allow for your consumers to deepen their involvement in your business and/or brand. This involvement can help to strengthen affinity for your business and will increase the probability of consumers endorsing your business amongst their social graphs.
5. SEARCH RANKINGS & VISIBILITY
Business profiles and reviews tend to rank highly in search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo! You can greatly enhance your business’ ability to dominate the first page of search results by ensuring that you have claimed your profile and garnering a significant number of positive reviews.
6. MOBILE
It was recently revealed that roughly 40% of all Yelp searches are conducted on one of their mobile apps (iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry and Palm). Mobile access to all of the benefits Yelp has to offer is a good thing because it empowers consumers while on their purchase journey and when they are closer to the point of purchase.
7. ADVERTISING
If raising awareness of your business is one of your primary digital marketing objectives, Yelp offers a suite of advertising options for independent local businesses, national or regional businesses, and national brands or advertising agencies.
8. FACEBOOK INTEGRATION
Facebook has been integrated on business profile pages allowing consumers to share their affinity for your business with their friends, organize groups of their friends to visit your location, or share reviews.
9. CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
In one of my previous posts about The Positive Effect of Negative Reviews, I discussed how negative reviews can actually support strategies for continuous improvement. While it should not be your focus to collect negative reviews, in the event you should receive them, they can be parlayed into opportunities for improvement and rectifying a consumer’s negative experience.
10. AWARENESS
Yelp gets over 78 MILLION monthly unique visitors, giving you great opportunity to raise awareness and the profile of your business.
Do you have any additional thoughts on how Yelp can help to produce real business results? If so, let me know in the comments.
If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached in any of these places:
Email: matthew@rgbsocial.com
Twitter: @RGBSocial
Facebook: facebook.com/RGBSocial
How to Integrate Mobile With Your Social Strategy to Drive Results
Posted: June 28, 2012 Filed under: Mobile | Tags: advertising, facebook, foursquare, marketing, mobile, small business, social media, twitter, yelp 3 Comments »
Whether you like it or not, your business has a mobile presence. The penetration of smartphones in Canada is now above 45% (source: Comscore) and consumer interaction with social media on their mobile devices is exploding. With proper management, nurturing and influence, you can turn mobile social media engagement into a powerful tool to drive real-world results, including brand affinity and sales.
Following are 3 ideas for how to integrate mobile with your social strategy and marketing plan to generate measurable, real-world results:
1. ENCOURAGE REVIEWS
An increasing number of consumers rely on digital reviews when making purchase decisions. In fact, it has been reported that 70% of consumers trust reviews of others more than any other form of advertising (source: Business Insider). With the explosive growth of review-based mobile sites and apps, such as Yelp, you can not only expect to improve perceptions of your brand or business if your reviews are favourable, but also see increased foot-traffic and sales.
Identify and encourage your valued customers to deepen their engagement with your brand by writing a review that will be seen by others on popular mobile platforms such as Yelp.
2. SPECIALS, REWARDS, PROMOTIONS
Reward your consumers’ social interaction with a special offer. Location-based social media platforms such as Foursquare offer tools to create loyalty programs and in-store specials.
Convert social media interaction into sales.
Additionally, if you operate a brick and mortar business, or have your product carried in physical locations, you can drive your consumers online for exclusive deals that are only extended to your social media communities. What makes this approach effective is that you will not only be driving social community growth by directing consumers to your social properties – such as Facebook or Twitter – but the exclusive deals featured on these properties will drive your online social traffic back to the store for redemption. See the chart to the right for a visual depiction of the cyclical nature of driving from your store to your social properties, and from your social properties back to your store.
3. INCENT SOCIAL INTERACTION
Best suited for small businesses, you can literally trade proof of social interaction for in-store or real-world rewards, discounts, value-adds or offers. Have a customer show you that they’ve ‘liked’ you Facebook page on their mobile device, give them a free appetizer. If they’ve sent a tweet recommending the service you’ve just provided, give them 15% off. Just be sure to balance what you are asking of your customers with a reward that has a value sufficient enough to make their interaction feel worthwhile.
Question for consumers: How do you engage with businesses or brands on your mobile devices?
Question for brands: How to you integrate mobile into your communication plans, social media strategies, and advertising campaigns?
Question for small businesses: What benefits have you experienced using mobile and how did you achieve those benefits?
It would be great to read your answers in the comments, on Twitter @RGBSocial, on Facebook, or by email at matthew@rgbsocial.com
If you have any questions, or would like to chat about anything social media, marketing, advertising, branding, business, etc. please feel free to get in touch through any of the methods listed above.
Original header photo source: Unknown
