Twitter/Real-time Messaging for Restaurants: The New Specials Board?

Topline Ideas and Fun Facts in this post:

• Twitter has the potential to be game-changing for restaurant marketing. Some restaurants are reporting that 20% of their business is being driven by twitter!
  
• Restaurants are getting on the bandwagon slowly, 10% of restaurants in San Francisco have a twitter account.
• 78% of restaurant twitter accounts are active(have posted in the last 30 days)
• The average restaurant follower count is around 900.

Twitter, and real-time messaging as a whole, is emerging as an extremely powerful outlet for restaurants to reach out to potential customers and drive more people in their doors. Twitter, especially, has created new opportunities for small businesses to be more nimble and aggressive. As much attention as daily deals sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, real-time marketing has characteristics that can truly change life for restaurants. Whereas daily deal sites, allow restaurants to get cash upfront for future exchanges, real-time marketing has the potential to bring in customers immediately. Two reasons why this channel has revolutionary potential are:

1. Free Direct Line to Customer- For the first time, they have an opportunity to directly reach out to customers at scale, for free and in a relatively easy fashion. In a way, real-time marketing has potential to become the digital version of the chalkboard specials board that restaurants often dutifully update and set at their doorsteps. However, instead of only being apparent to passerbys, their specials now can be apparent to people on their computers or phones.

2. Versatility and Ability to Adapt- Restaurants also are able to adapt to situations and invent promotions or content that drives user in at the drop of a hat. Real-time marketing is the answer to the question, “What could I do to get people into my store today?”

There are Real Winners Here
Countless articles have been written about success stories of small and crafty restaurants and food entrepreneurs riding on waves of success via twitter. Some of these stories are about using real-time to emphasize the freshness or quality of products, others are about using them as a coupon distribution system and still others are using them in the form of contests and such. Here are a few of these stories we've found from around the web, for your reading pleasure:

• Kogi Korean Taco Truck, L.A. 78K followers- Newsweek Article
• Naked Pizza, New Olreans, 10K followers- AdAge Article
• Humphrey Slocombe, San Francisco, 301K followers, SF Weekly
• Creme Brulee Cart, San Francisco, 15K followers, NY Times

What The Numbers Say
It becomes very clear why these and other smart enterprising businesses are going mad for real-time, when you take a look at the interested user bases these restaurants are able to attract vs. the cost of buying access to a similar base of users and how it’s affecting real-life sales.

So that we don't take massively successful outlier stories, let's take a look at the follower counts of the average active restaurant account in San Francisco (active=tweeted in the past 30 days). Without the amazingly impressive account of HumphreySlocombe, with it’s staggering 302K followers, the average active restaurant twitter account has roughly 900 Followers and has tweeted 21 times in the last 30 days! That’s potentially 18,900 messages shown per restaurant for the simple effort of tweeting. Buying an opt-in list of a similar number of users would cost several hundred dollars and not likely be as interested as a twitter follower.

Real-Time Growing Fast but In It's Infancy
Truth be told, the promise of real-time has immense potential for the independent restaurant, but the adoption of this channel is still nascent. At Freshendo, we've been aggregating twitter accounts of San Francisco restaurants. We have what appears to be one of the most extensive lists and our count is at about 400 restaurants in SF that are tweeting. Compare this to Yelp's 4,500 restaurants and we see that about 10% of restaurants have created accounts for starters. Of these, 78% are active, meaning that they've tweeted in the past 30 days.

In sum, the story of what real-time means restaurants and local buisiness as a whole, is just being written. There is still a fundamental need for better understanding of best practices, proper analytics and the types of platforms that will really foster growth by bringing together customers and restaurants in real-time.

Freshendo is extremely excited to be here at a time, when these issues are being hashed out and we look forward to contributing our part. At Freshendo, we believe in a future where restaurants and their customers can come together in real-time and we're trying to make this a reality. Check out our first project, The Real-Time Restaurant Guide.

Best Twitter Practices for Restaurants

We've seen a lot of restaurant tweets, some great and some…with a ways to improve. As we've seen in previous posts, restaurants that have successfully found their rhythm in tweeting have reaped the bounties. These restaurants get more followers; their messages get more retweets and when they’ve tracked their campaigns they’ve seen very substantial improvements in sales.

Though best practices in real-time marketing are still evolving, we’ve compiled this list of basics for restaurants to adhere to. Following these basics will not only help gain more users but when users see that you are tweeting great content, they’ll pay more attention to your tweets, which is just as important as a large follower base.

Here are 5 basic strategies to follow:

1. Tweet your Existing Promotions/Coupons

Tweet your coupons and promotions that you might have running in other places. If you have a Groupon or other offer running, then let your twitter base know! This not only helps expand the reach of your marketing efforts, it also lets the market know that you have great and engaging offers out there, which gives them incentive to continue to check-in to what you're up to.

2. Tweet your daily specials

You've likely got happy hours, lunch specials, etc. You should absolutely tell your followers about these. You never know when a user may see your tweet and decide to act up on it, so if you’re looking for good content, look no further than what’s going on at your business today.

3. Make your audience drool...in a good way-

You have a direct line to customers; these people are interested in what you have cooking, so give them what they want. Describe your food in the most tantalizing terms and especially call out when ingredients are top-notch or fresh. This is a great way to draw in customers without having to resort to discounting. Increasing business AND keeping your margin, now that's having your cake and eating it too! (yuk-yuk)

4. Be timely!

Try to think about when your users might be interested in some news from you. If you’re a pizza place, they might like to know what the lunch or dinner specials are before they brave the elements, so tweet to them around these meals. If you’re a high-end restaurant people might want to know if you have tables available. Or, if you have fresh food like bakeries or sushi restaurants, focus on the freshness. Let them know that the cupcakes are out of the oven, or what amazingly fresh fish you just scored from the market. You know how much better your dishes are fresh, so make sure your customers have the opportunity to get it fresh! The point is, tweet at opportune times.

5. Turnover Last-Minute Inventory

Real-time marketing is incredibly nimble and you can tailor your marketing messages at the last minute. If you're bordering on the end of the day and you've got some pizza leftovers, get rid of them by tweeting specials geared to getting them out the door, with a flash deal. Or, if you’re experiencing a slower day as a restaurant or bar, tweet out a last-minute special to fill up your empty seats.

Advanced Tip

6. Track your tweets

If you want a way to see if your tweets are really working, try asking for users to say a password in order to get the promotion. Not only does it make your customers feel more special and in the know, you get proof that the tweets are working. Some businesses have found that when they track these special tweets it increases their business by 15% or more in a day!

7. For FoodTrucks, Geo-Enable!

If you’re a foodtruck and you’re tweeting from your mobile phone, geo-enable your tweets! This is an obvious way to help people find out where you are, without you having to explicitly tell them. There are also guides, like ours that will take that location and put you on a map. This is a no-brainer and if you haven’t yet turned on geo-location, I would do it right after you finish reading this article.

And finally a plea…

Don't tweet personal messages from your business' account

You have a shot at getting someone to see your tweet and find it useful. The relevancy of the tweet affects whether or not your users will be willing pay attention to your next tweets. When you use your restaurant account to tweet personal messages, you're sending a push notification to your entire user base that's not very relevant to them. Would you send a text to all of your friends, that was meant for one person? Probably not. Save your personal tweets for your personal account or use Direct Messages. For more information, see the twitter help page.

That should keep you going for a while. Until next time folks! As always, comment early and comment often.