My good friend, Matthew Gallizzi, founder of NotixTech and a mobile wiz recently had an overwhelmingly rewarding experience at a local coffee shop. Watch his video and follow along as he shares how Foursquare check-ins, bragging rights and Mobile all played a part in creating a memorable customer experience which gained a local coffee shop some extra exposure.

Some Important Take-Aways:

• Mobile Check-Ins are not going away, they are growing exponentially with the rate of smart phone growth
• Mobile Check-Ins by customers generate impressions to ones brand, Facebook Page and Website
• Rewarding for check-ins creates brand loyalty
• By the end of 2011, there will be more people with smart phones than with non-smart phones

Have you had any rewarding experiences checking-in at local restaurants or retail spots? Would love to hear about your Mayorships, Rewards and experiences good or bad, please share.

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Houston Neal joined Software Advice in 2007, just shortly after the company was started. He spends most of his day writing for the company blog and getting the word out about Software Advice’s resources. He enjoys researching and reporting trends in software and technology, and has a particular interest in mobile technologies. Software Advice, a website that reviews retail software, recently put together a list of 5 mobile technologies that can help retailers grow their business. It’s a good beginners guide for understanding how mobile technologies can be used by local and national stores. Here is a brief look at 3 technologies listed in their post:

Mobile commerce is driving the next major shift in retail. Cell phones are ubiquitous among consumers and smartphones are soon to follow. Retailers that can learn to harness mobile technologies now stand to gain a competitive advantage, especially when the economy flips. But, with new tech startups emerging on the scene every day, it’s tough to cut through the PR noise to find apps that really help drive marketing initiatives and sales.

Geolocation Apps (e.g. Foursquare, Gowalla) – Geolocation apps help retailers get increased exposure on social media and the web. Every “check in” gets pushed out to a user’s social network, which not only includes other Foursquare users, but Twitter followers and friends on Facebook. This exposure helps build brand awareness and ultimately generate more sales.

ShopAlerts – Developed by Placecast, ShopAlerts will deliver SMS text messages to consumers’ mobile phones when they enter inside the “geo-fence” or virtual boundary of a business. This has potential to be a sales-driving machine for retailers. Couple this technology with existing customer purchase information and ShopAlerts could be used to upsell and cross-promote merchandise. For example, a sporting goods store could send you an alert to pick up an extra pair of socks for the running shoes you just purchased.

Group Buying (e.g. Groupon) – Group buying websites have been hugely successful. Groupon has already won the title of “fastest growing company ever.” Their success can be attributed to adoption by both consumers and retailers. Consumers love it for the deep discounts. Retailers love it for the increased foot traffic – and sales – they’re getting at their stores

To continue reading, visit: 5 Mobile Technologies Retailers Should Be Using Now.

Soon after, I introduced my parents and it was my mom who pointed out that they were on Facebook. Then, I came with friends from SMMOC, who pointed out a discount on Yelp. On another occassion, I woke up and decided to check my Twitter stream and there was DX Peruvian wishing everyone a Happy Peruvian Independance Day and while there was no offer given, it was still enough to get me to recruit my co-workers to have Peruvian with me for lunch that day. This string of events involving social media marketing at DX Peruvian prompted me to ask the owner Rashad to share his experiences marketing his new restaurant. My hope is that his experiences may help some other restaurant owners looking to use social media. Here is my Q&A with Rashad:

Daniela: How many hours do you spend per day/week using social media?
Rashad: not much really, a few minutes here and there daily for FB and twitter, I try to make it part of my routine, when things come up, or come to mind I post them instantly, I also reply to customer comments if needed as I see them. I use an iphone so I do most the updates from there – makes it easy. Also I snap photos & post them instantly as I see interesting things.

Daniela: How do you market your restaurant online? (ie: social sites, website, daily discount coupons, online ads, etc?)
Rashad: We are Off & on online due to budget, We signed up with yelp for a year and that was the biggest mistake and waste of money ever.  We use search advertising with google, and we advertise some on facebook, which I found very effective at targeting a specific demographic. We do some coupons off and on, online and in print, primarily to promote trial and build habit.

Daniela: Have you noticed anything significant as a result of using social media? (increases in business, increase in website traffic, increase in online engagement)
Rashad: Hard to tell, facebook helped early on because it allowed us to reach a niche clientele (Peruvian & south American) quickly, Yelp brings people in for sure, but that has nothing to do with anything we do, it’s customer driven. I can’t say with certain about google, but I do see the clicks so… What I can tell you though is that facebook and twitter allow us to stay top of mind with our core customer base, they also help build brand loyalty. Something that would have been probably impossible to achieve for a small business without them.

Daniela: Have you learned any tips worth sharing with other restaurant owners?
Rashad: Don’t try to be everything to everybody. Find your core customer group and go after them. Social Media, facebook, twitter, and google in particular will allow you to reach them very effectively in way that in the past was probably on available for larger brands with economies of scale.

DX Peruvian Restaurant
3930 S Bristol St
Santa Ana, CA 92704
(714) 424-0014
www.dxperuvianrestaurant.com
www.facebook.com/dxperu
http://twitter.com/DXRestaurant
New to the South Coast Metro area, DX Peruvian Restaurant is an authentic Peruvian eatery with the best Peruvian chefs north of the Amazon.
Our food is our number one priorty — it is flavorful, delicious and unpretentious — guaranteed to bring you back for more! Just about everything we sell is made from scratch. We make our own dough, our own sauces, and our own desserts. We use the best quality ingredients and buy all produce fresh from the local markets — all to provide our customers with an unforgettable dining experience. Come try one bite of our heavenly empanadas, lomo saltado, and alfajores and you will be craving us again and again.

The lesson here is that while all business owners probably want to put blame on the customer it is bad business to do so. Having a level-headed person managing your social media accounts is key. Just like you wouldn’t have your PR or marketing person insulting customers, you should make sure that you social channels are properly cared for as well. Would love to hear you response to this owners way of handling the situation. How would you have handled it?

Transcription Below

Joe Land (Customer): I went to 333 for the first time in May. Obviously I was wearing the wrong clothes and driving the wrong car. The “valet parking attendant” and the lady that seated me had an indifferent attitude to my presence. The waitress was ok, but did lack a genuine happy attitute. The food was good, but a little over priced. This S. California Native will not come back to 333 again.

Jeff Reuter (Owner): Joe, I seriously don’t think that any perceived reaction from the Valet, Hostess or Waitress had ANYTHING to do with what you were wearing or driving – it was most probably 100% YOU that they were reacting to! 333 is a local beach hangout that receives every conceivable type of person, dressed in every possible type of clothing and driving every car made. You admit the food was “good”, but over priced????? What int he hell were you expecting to pay sitting in a 10 million dollar restaurant on the water in Newport Beach; the average price for food is 12 dollars?!?!?!?!?! For a “So. Cal. Native” you are obviously completely out of touch – stick with the drive thru’s…

Steve Rin

Steve shared some insights into working with one of his Orange County restaurant clients, zpizza. zpizza has been a pioneer in the Orange County area in openly embracing social media as an essential part of their business model. As the landscape continues to grow and mature they will be a brand that will benefit from the fan engagements that are created because of their participation and understanding of their social media networks. Here are some helpful tips Steve shared that both small businesses and community managers should find useful:

1) Engaging your customers is more important than throwing promotions at them.
zpizza started to use social media as most restaurants do, by promoting their daily specials to help increase their sales.  It became clear early on that social media would best serve them as a way to engage their fans and build loyalty. It’s great to offer a deal every now and then, but tweeting and posting deals on Facebook constantly made their communications impersonal and didn’t encourage any conversations.  I strongly believe that a successful social media campaign revolves around engaging your customers.  To do this you must get to know who your customers are and why they love your brand. When I post for zpizza I try to do so in a way that gives our customers an inside look at the day to day operations.  We offer customers the chance to get to know our employees and connect with them by sharing staff hobbies, their favorite zpizza AND their favorite non-zpizza dishes.

2) Nobody wants to follow a brand that constantly talks about themselves over and over again.
When you do offer a promotion make it fun, creative and personal to the customers. During the NBA playoffs and more recently the FIFA World Cup we tweeted/Facebook’d game scores, game updates and then tied some of our promotional meal deals based on halftime periods where you could get a buy one and get one free zpizza if you called in during halftime. Also by partnering with local organizations like we did with OCTA for a Halloween “Trick-or-Tweet” tweetup you can increase the amount of people seeing your promotions.

3) Building brand loyalty online doesn’t happen overnight, learn to see things from a customer perspective.
Social media is a tool that many companies want to adopt because it is the trendy thing to do, but with that attitude comes a false perception that overnight twitter or Facebook will land 100+ customers at their doorstep at no cost to them.  The reality is that businesses first need to understand that a social media campaign doesn’t happen overnight and you need to build relationships with the fans that you acquire over time.  Getting to know the fans of your brand will help you better understand how your brand is perceived in their eyes as opposed to having the company tell their fans how they want to be perceived.

4) Use your social networks to your benefit.
The social media networks and monitoring tools out there today can provide many companies with instant feedback on ways to improve their business.  It can help resolve customer service issues by providing companies both small and large the chance to directly respond to a customers concerns, therefore, strengthening the relationship they have with that person and ultimately increasing their brand loyalty. zpizza utilizes Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to spread their conversations through the web.  The trio of these platforms allows us to communicate to a wide variety of fans.  For the quick up to date meal deals we utilize twitter and also monitor our feedback from customer experiences they had at our stores. Facebook allows us to build that long term relationship and further increase our brand loyalty as we encourage fans to write on our Facebook wall and post pictures and links.  Youtube gives us a way to broadcast the lifestyle and culture that is zpizza.  Fans can get a glimpse of the laid back and environmentally conscious atmosphere that surrounds our stores and our employees.  

You can connect with the zpizza nearest you via Facebook or Twitter. Steve manages these accounts for the Tustin and Santa Ana locations:

Tustin
Facebook
Twitter

Santa Ana
Facebook
Twitter

Just recently, a local Orange County restaurant just recently made the same mistake and I am sharing it here because it is the perfect example of how NOT to manage a Facebook page. Upon noticing that 3 Thirty 3 in Newport Beach, which happens to be a local and personal favorite restaurant had put up a page and left it astray I reached out and offered assistance. A couple of weeks later, and after no response, I noticed a customer had left a negative review of the restaurant. This comment has been up a couple of weeks now and no response has been made by the restaurant. This is a perfect example of poor community management.

Hopefully the restaurant will soon address this problem. If they had someone managing this account the problem could have been addressed and the customer would have been contacted and responded to openly on the page for all to see how the restaurant takes care of such incidents. Businesses cannot assume that a page will take care of itself and should have someone monitoring and maintaining these social networks on behalf of the restaurant. Some great examples of restaurants in Orange County that are doing it right are The Alley Restaurant, Sol Cocina, and DX Peruvian. Fast Food Mavin of the OC Register is also a great resource in Orange County to find local deals and restaurants that are marketing correctly online. This post by Sukhraj Beasla further explains the implications for your brand in abandoning your online efforts and lists more failed attempts by restaurants in Orange County.

The advantage for marketers and savvy businesses is that they can offer promotions to foursquare users to encourage them to visit a local business and check-in. There have been reported super-star successes by restaurants holding Foursquare events and promos. In addition it was reported that Foursquare gained over 100k users in one weeks time at SXSW. Even though the amount of users is exploding the amount of businesses making offers has not taken off as of yet, not in Orange County at least. You can encourage your locals retailers and restaurants to join Foursquare for free and direct them to this page to set up a promotion.

Here are the local Orange County retailers and restaurants currently offering promotions on Foursquare:

Cafe West

123 W Amerigie
Fullerton, CA 92832
Offer: Buy any sandwich or panini, and receive any 16 oz. Organic Iced Tea for free when you check in on Foursquare!!

Fatburger

401 Newport Center Dr
Newport Beach, CA 92660
(949) 759-9030

3021 Michelson Dr.
at Jamboree
Irvine, CA 92612
On Twitter: @fatburger
Offer: Pssst. Check in here at this Fatburger on Foursquare to unlock a special menu code!
(I checked with the Mayor of Fatburger Irvine @MoganB, to see what this special menu code was and he said that he didn’t receive any details yet, might be a glitch with the new Foursquare release?)

Geisha House

House of Blues Anaheim

The Alley Restaurant & Bar