Welcome to Reservations – The Show for Restaurant Marketing
Transcript of the Video: Welcome to Reservations – The Show for Restaurant Marketing
Hey, I’m Jeff. I’m Andrew. We’re from Swing Point Media and we’re starting a brand new show. It’s called Reservations. Andrew, tell us what the Reservation shows about. Well, basically we’re going to come to live, a non-sense sometimes, to the hospitality industry, pretty much talking about how you can get more bums on seats. I’d like to say bums on seats, but how do you get more people into your restaurant or your hospitality business? I’ve been involved with the hospitality business for 17 years straight. For the last 10 years, I have been involved with marketing and specifically hospitality. So I’ve been around the block a little bit and understand how and what are the pressures of a hospitality manager these days are an owner.
So, that’s what we wanted to do is share information about how do you get those people because we’re all fighting. We’re all fighting for the common bottom if you’re like on the seat. And uh, it’s a matter of how do you get that person in there without spending your entire profit to do it, right? So there are lots of ways to do it and this is what the show is about. We’re going to give you some different ways to do that and show you how you can get some people into your restaurant or your establishment without having to write the bank.
How to Build Your Business
Of course, the cool part about this is if you’re seeing this live or you see it later, this is not a show that we’re selling our product. This is absolutely what we’re talking about today of how to build your business and make you the authority or the favorite place in your marketplace. I just have to share a real quick story. My wife is a major foodie and this week in the desert is Restaurant Week. So she’s looking through, kind of get an idea, where we’re going to go eat? She’s looking at restaurants. She says, I’ve never heard of these restaurants and she finds out they’ve been in existence for a year, year and a half. Yet here’s somebody who eats, no every pun intended, eats, lives and breathes food and restaurants and she doesn’t know about this restaurant. Shame on that restaurant.
Now, Andrew, today we’re going to talk about something I think that we here probably, I don’t want to say often, but we do and it’s like saying, hey, we’d love to advertise. We’d love to do this. First of all, we don’t know what to do. And the second is, I just don’t have the budget for it. So today, let’s address that whole thing of. First of all, what do we do? What can we do as a restaurant owner?
Make Sure to Deliver Content
Well, that’s a good question. Obviously, every person is trying to grab your dollar, your advertising dollar, whether it’s TV, radio. There are all sorts of magazines out there. There are people wanted you to spend your money on this and that. The truth is there are ways to do it without having to spend any money. Now it might take a little bit of creativity and it doesn’t have to be over in a consuming or too time-consuming. But one of the things that you can do, especially if you’ve got a website and I highly recommend you do have a website because people want to check you out. If you’ve got a website, you want to make sure that you are delivering content, right?
What’s content does that mean? What is content? Jeff? Content is not your menu. Okay? What is content, does it mean my menu? I was going to ask you. What is content, Jeff? Content is not your menu. Not your standard stuff like your hours of operation or your menu. Content, like what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about delivering value to our ideal customer. So as an example, content, Andrew could be as simple as, the way your bartender creates particular cocktails that are favorites. The best or the most favorite entrees or appetizers, or maybe you’re talking about, you know, having a group there and this is this setting they would have. That’s all content and you’re not selling anything, you’re just educating. And it’s one of those things is education, entertainment, and engaging. So, if you can get those three things going, that’s really good content.
How does it work?
I want to step back a little bit because people are probably sitting there are going, well I make this content, it’s out there, but what, how does it work? How do actually people see it? Like where do I put it, right? So let me give a quick history lesson of Google and this is why this is important because we all do searches on Google. Do you use any other search engine? No. There is another search engine, there are actually a bunch of them, but most people use Google, right? All of the search engines work the same. So what happens is when you create content on your website, you create a new page, okay? And it is a, it’s a page that the little Google spiders in the robots go in the index, which means they’d go and crawl it, they look for information.
So when somebody does a search on Google and if you’ve written an article about the best Martini in the world that your establishment makes or the best Soufflé or whatever it may be. And you’ve got an article about how you make it, how you prepare it, and what goes into the preparation of it, all that sort of stuff. That might be an article about making the best Soufflé. Now, if somebody types in Google, how do I make the best Soufflé? Google looks at your article that you’ve created on your website and says, wow, this is a match. This article is all about the best Soufflé in the world. Now we think that that could be a good result to serve up to the person who’s doing that search. So what you’re doing is you’re giving Google information about the best Soufflé in the world.
Content Marketing Works
If people come along and they’d go to that page, they read the article and they spend time on that page, Google says, well, we know how much time people spend on that page. We know how many people went to the page and if they’re spending time on the page from that search result it must be a very relevant search result. So Google will actually give it more credit. So every time someone goes to that page and reads it and they’re there for a long time. This is just one signal, but Google sees that that’s a very relevant page and they’ll keep rising that into the search results. So if you’re not on page one, you’re really not going to get seen. But if you do write a great article, a great content piece about stuff that people are looking for, Google will reward you.
And that Jeff doesn’t cost any money. That’s really talking about zero money. This is why content marketing works so much because you’re putting new stuff about information that you’re good at. Like you may have a restaurant that has a signature dish and you might say, well, I was at a place only just the other day, I think it was, I had Margarita. It was one of the lakes in the mountains. Someone said what’s in this Margarita mix? And the guy behind the bar said I’m sorry, I can’t tell you because that’s our secret signature dish and I can’t really tell you now. That’s fair enough. You don’t want to share those like the 11 herbs and spices from KFC. They’re not going to tell you that, but there is other stuff that you can do around that.
The video is 6x Powerful
Maybe it’s your signature dish, but maybe there are ways to drink your signature dish, which are public. Ways like two or three straws or whatever, but there are ways to do that. There are ways to get around that. You don’t have to share your secrets, but you do share stuff to people you want to know about. Now you talk about writing an article. Yes. We’re going to encourage you also to do something that we’re doing and that’s video. The video is six times more powerful on Facebook than an article. And so here’s the thing, if you do video, what you can do is you can also at the after you’re done with that, Andrew, you can repurpose that.
What I mean by that is you can take this video and once it’s done, we’ll send it into a service for ten cents a minute and they’ll record it and then transcribe it into a written article. So now you get a two for one. Here’s the thing, statistics say we’re lazy. We see an article that may take us three to five minutes to read and we pass by it. But watching a video, especially when there’s action, we’re making a drink or we’re showing how to cook a piece of food, it engages us totally. So we were going to really encourage you to use this platform, which is Facebook in this manner. And then you can share it with other, in other platforms. Now would you just leave it on Facebook or would you also put that on your website?
Repurpose in a Multitude of Ways
You’re doing as many places as you want. This is what we call repurposing. Not only are you taking video. I love video. The reason I love the video, three reasons. One is Jeff said you can transcribe it. So you’ve got, I really thought you’re going to say is because I look so good on video. You’ve got this video, you can get it transcribed. So you’ve got a text, you’ve got the video, but you can also take still pictures from your video, right? So if you have a nice picture that’s a screenshot like that, you can take that off your video and you use it for your article or your website now.
Yes, you can put on your website, you can put your video on YouTube and Vimeo and other video places. You can put your images from the screenshots on your Instagram account. You can put them on your Facebook account or wherever you want to put images. So the great thing about doing a video is that you can repurpose it in a multitude of ways to actually have it all in one spot, which is pretty awesome.
Can You Afford To Advertise If You Have No Budget
So, just to kind of recap here, can you afford to advertise if you have no budget? Absolutely. And what tool would you use? Well, I mean as said, we were using video to do it right? Put it on your website. If you’ve got a website, you should have a website. Content, absolutely. Putting content on there. You know, I don’t want to talk about paid ads because that’s another realm later. This is what something that you guys can get started. Here’s the other thing, the biggest question, people say, I haven’t got time to do it, right? Well, here’s the thing. This video has taken us a couple of minutes to do. Okay, you can eat and we’re doing it on an iPhone.
Okay. We’re not using fancy equipment or anything like that. So you can use your iPhone, you can film interviews with staff. Maybe that’s interesting labor. You’ve got staff member the month, and this is the thing. Most people, most establishments have their staff and over the month it’s an internal reward. No one else cares. Maybe your customers want to know if Jeff was a staff member of the month. Maybe I’m going to ask him a little bit about Jeff. What does he do? What’s his position in the. In the venue, what is his favorite food to eat or drink 20, what’s his favorite staff meal, whatever that may be, but then the customers getting to know who he is as well?
How Often Should We Do This
Yeah, and here’s the thing that’s really kind of cool and they walk in. You may have never met these people but they already kind of know, like, and trust you because they’ve seen you do your videos and before we let you go, I just want to point out a couple of things because this is another question is how often should we do this, Andrew? You know what, that’s a great question, as often as you can. That sounds like a cliché sort of statement. Don’t overwhelm yourself and don’t put yourself under a ridiculous schedule trying to do something every day. If you can’t, if you’re starting out from scratch, just do one a week.
Get one a week now down for the first four weeks and if you can do more than one a week, do it, but that’s a bonus, but then you won’t get disappointed if you only do one a week. If you can, then went after four weeks and if you can do two a week then do two a week. The more the more you do, the better. That’s the simple answer is the more you do the better, but it has to be quality. You can’t just film, you know, the back porch and say, Oh, here’s the back porch from our beer garden. Have a look. Isn’t this nice? No one case after I’ve seen the first one that, okay, so give it some content, give it some interesting stuff that people want to know about and you will find that people start following you on a regular basis. Cool. Cool.
Here’s the coolest part
So, just a real recap. Can you afford to advertise with no budget? Absolutely. What should use? Content. Our most desirable content, video, and then repurpose it. In other words, take it from a video, put it into print, and then distributed through many platforms on your website. The video and the printed, and then share it on Facebook, Linkedin, and all the others social media sites do that. If you have an email address, wow, you should send it to the email address. Take the link off your Facebook video and/or your article that’s at your at your website and send it to your database.
Here’s the coolest part and I want you to remember this for we go. If you do this, you have almost no competition because here’s the thing. If we monitored our city Palm Desert, Lakita, Rancho Mirage, all the desert cities. Andrew, how often do you think we’d actually see any of our clients or any of these people doing this?
That’s the Competition
Real quick, before I do that, this is how many. We have a guy who has the map. They’re all the restaurants, all the restaurants. I think there are about 106 just in this map here. That’s how many is the competition if you’re a restaurant in this valley. I can tell you precisely, zero, do any of this, and zero doing it. If you’re doing it, you’re ahead of hundreds of people already. You almost like a streetcar, aren’t you? Because you’re absolutely stand out. Even though there are 10,000 people on the stands, completely your streak and everybody sees you. So there you go the. There it is. Cool.
So this is show number one of Reservations. If you like this, please make sure you like it below. Share it with other people if you’re seeing it live. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us today. If you’re watching it recorded, make sure to make a comment. If you have any questions that you would like to have topics talked about, then share with us.
We have had a lot of exposure from the clients that we work with are the prospects we talked to of the challenges that they have. So that’s kind of what our basis is going to be on and who knows. If you give us a question we may show up in your restaurant and just interview you and give you an answer and content as well. That’s it. I’m Jeff Harrison. Andrew McCauley. We’re Swing Point Media. We’ll see you again next time. Thank you.
SwingPointMedia is a marketing company focused on using content marketing, such as written articles, video and podcasts, to attract their customers ideal audiences. This approach has proven to attract higher quality customers while simultaneously reducing the sales cycle by as much as 70%.
SwingPointMedia serves local businesses in Southern California and can be reached by calling 760-422-5176.
You are invited to also attend a free weekly presentation, providing you the tools and strategy to roll out your own content marketing program for your company, or see exactly what SwingPointMedia does for its clients to achieve success. It can be viewed live on SwingPointMedia’s YouTube channel, at 11 am pst.