There once was a little carpet store in Richmond, BC (Canada) that hired a family member, (let’s call him John, name is changed to protect the awesome!) to come in and try to help with the carpet store’s sagging sales.
The carpet store was one of the smallest in a larger carpet store franchise, and things just weren’t going well for it. A much larger sister carpet store in the same franchise kept bringing in the big sales numbers, but his poor little carpet store just kept plodding along with very little sales growth, or improvement in profits.
Now, John joined the carpet store to help out, and he had extensive sales experience. The rumour was that he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. (Canadian joke eh!)
For months and months John tried and tried, but just couldn’t change the carpet store’s pitiful sales numbers.
He had a friend named Dennis who owned a small business consulting company, that offered to provide John with a “secret weapon” to turn sales growth ON and increase profitability FAST!
During the conversation, Dennis told John that he could save him time in the sales process during his day as well.
Low on belief, but trusting of Dennis, John agreed to learn more. He didn’t tell his family he was doing this, just in case the “secret weapon” didn’t work.
So what was the secret weapon he was offered? Sorry, not so fast! Let me start by telling you about the magic that happened to sales as a result of this “secret weapon”!
The carpet store franchise is quite organized as far as giving recognition for both the stores, and to their salespeople for being outstanding.
John went from nearly a year of obscurity in the carpet store franchise sales rankings, never once making the top of anything, working in a carpet store in the smallest category that also never made it to any of the top performer lists, even against the carpet stores of the same small category, to accomplish some truly amazing things.
John became the top selling sales rep in all the top level carpet stores, and the other salesperson in the carpet store who also secretly used the ‘secret weapon’ became 2nd! This was within 60 days of employing it on the retail floor of their carpet store!
The store became one of the TOP 3 performing carpet stores in the chain! NOT just in their weight group!
How?
What was this secret weapon?
It’s much simpler than you might think.
It comes from thinking outside the box, and doing something that many would say is NOT recommended as a carpet store sales strategy!
The “secret weapon” was Small Business Dream, a mobile and web app. Not just any old mobile or web app, but a mobile app and a web app. Quite a simple yet comprehensive sales and marketing automation and mobile CRM software suite.
John set about to secretly increase the carpet store’s sales using Small Business Dream. He spent a few days tweaking and playing to establish a good sales method, funnel, flow, and follow up that included comfortably getting carpet store customers to take a short survey and agree to give their email address to get more information and stay in touch with John and the carpet store.
He had configured a number of email auto-responder follow up series to follow up with people interested in particular items like Carpet, or Hardwood Flooring, or Linoleum etc.
A week later, John had about 35 contacts who had gone through his simple survey. He had automated emails based on their chosen flooring interests that were triggered based on what they indicated their interest was in the survey questions.
John did NOT give his mobile phone to the prospect, he filled in the Survey for them to keep it frictionless. When the carpet store was too busy, he had them fill in a small 1/8 size piece of paper asking the same things and collecting their data to enter into the mobile CRM later.
The following week he had made 3 sales he knew he never would have chased or followed up with without the sales automation due to the small order size or feeling the person wasn’t serious about purchasing. (This is a critical error of any salesperson, never prejudge, we ALL know it as sales professionals, but we all still do it!)
More exciting, was that suddenly a lot of communication had opened up by email vs. needing to try to contact each other on the phone. Quick AND efficient.
He started to use Small Business Dream to follow up on in store visits, measures, installations, and the whole 9 yards of the carpet business. Suddenly John was the “Go To” guy in the carpet store for anything, as the carpet store’s paper based systems were so impossible to use, and finding quotes or previous paperwork was close to impossible.
Due to the Small Business Dream mini CRM that John was using, all of that info was at his fingertips, in real time. He even got calls on his days off to answer carpet store questions as only he could get the answer quickly in his mobile app!
His carpet store sales were up year on year and month on month, from the very first month that the app was secretly employed. The carpet store owner couldn’t figure it out.
Fun things started to happen!
A guy walked into the carpet store on John’s day off and says to the other rep on the floor that day…”I don’t remember who I talked to over a month ago when I got a quote for $2900 worth of flooring from your store, but he has followed up with me by email constantly to see where I am at. Please sell me that flooring!!” So cha ching… John on his day off closes a $2900 deal at 9% for an unexpected extra commission of $261 and decides to have steak and lobster for dinner!
As things progressed, John kept talking to Dennis, and Dennis suggested John push the email follow ups further than the few weeks that John had done so far. Dennis suggested a 3 month and a 6 month follow up email to be sent on each category.
John wasn’t sure, and put up some resistance, saying nobody in Carpet or Flooring waits 3 or 6 months to buy, so it’s a waste of time. Dennis suggested to add a few emails which would only take 20 minutes to write and upload, so what did John have to lose?
Dennis also knew that in Vancouver, a building permit could take 4 to 6 months in some cases, so if the renovation that needed the carpet or flooring was delayed due to the permit process, it was logical that a 6 month later follow up could possibly yield results. And guess what?
IT DID!
Within a week of adding the 3 and 6 month automated follow up emails to the series, a customer came into the store asking where the guy that kept emailing him was. John felt like hiding, the guy seemed angry. The other sales rep, not wanting to be mistakenly singled out immediately pointed at John and said, it must have been John!
The guy walked up to John, re-introduced himself, and said he was ready to go, that the permits had finally come in on that $14000 carpet job. Almost ½ of John’s monthly quota for the very slow month that the sale came in! $14,000 x 9% = $1260!
He then also said very clearly that John was not the cheapest carpet store he got a quote from, but he was the only salesperson still following up, and he felt if the service before the sale was so great, the service after must be excellent.
So, John simply took a little time to get prospect and customer data and put it into a mobile CRM, by actually taking the customer’s time to do it right in front of them. Many say you shouldn’t do that.
John’s experience? Customers loved the follow up, they loved that they got emails from John which reminded them of questions they had to ask, and could easily ask vs. having to phone John.
They had a “Truckload Sale” on area carpets, imagine the family’s surprise when by they time they got in, the truck was empty as John had sold every single one by sending out a simple email blast to the 620 or so previous customers, and existing prospects with a time limited sale offer for that truckload of area rugs.
Now John’s carpet store is rabidly awaiting the Small Business Dream add on app called my Carpet Store to allow their customers and prospects to connect directly to them, and receive updates, specials, and follow up directly to their mobile device by push notification in addition to email!
DATA = POWER
DATA in a usable format, and the creativity on how to use it = Sales and PROFIT GROWTH. What do you have to lose?
Furniture Stores, Industrial Supply, Electronics stores, Shoe Stores, Hair Salons, Spa’s, Financial Planners, Real Estate agents, and the list goes on and on who could benefit with similar simple strategies and the app called Small Business Dream.
How An Obscure Restaurant Became A Massively PROFITABLE Downtown Vancouver Sensation How An Obscure Restaurant Became A Massively PROFITABLE
It all started in Vancouver a few years ago. A restaurant owner opened a Japanese Style Korean barbecue franchise from Japan location in Vancouver.
The small business restaurant owner selected the location, a space that was way too big in the eyes of all the restaurant owners and professionals in Vancouver, and a place where time after time, restaurants had failed to succeed in the very same space.
You see, the space was much too big for such an obscure chain restaurant doing food and drinks that “normal” Vancouver people may not be able to relate to. Or so the “experts” said. The location was bad, impossible to see, and too far back from the road, almost subterranean. Parking all around the area was also very expensive.
You see, it just couldn’t work. Unless the small business owner had some kind of a secret weapon. You could almost hear the little train saying, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can”. Now a secret weapon the small business owner surely did have! So secret that they could hide it right in plain sight and have no other restaurant owners copy them.
It was so simple that most restaurant owners would actually argue that is not only unnecessary, but possibly even not to be tolerated by restaurant patrons.
Genius, yes. But … frowned upon? Maybe?
The secret weapon was not really a hard thing to do, but it would take some time, some training, some effort, and a possibly even have a small cost.
You see, it would be hard according to most restaurant owners, as someone would have to be made responsible to do it right. One of your already overworked restaurant staff, who has no time at all when it is busy, may have to add a step to their job.
Of course as a restaurant or small business owner, this is always difficult, as you wouldn’t want to put your staff out with a work task they might not like or feel comfortable with. Or worse yet, pay some money to outsource it. You see it just won’t work, so most restaurants never even bother.
Let’s also not forget the fact that almost nobody in the restaurant industry uses this very simple secret weapon, so it must be a bad idea. You as a entrepreneur, restaurant and small business owner should probably stop reason as the Secret Weapon is something really simple and silly and you likely won’t’ like it or believe it.
So just what is the Secret Weapon?
Sorry, not so fast.
This obscure restaurant, did the hard work of setting up this Secret Weapon for only about the first 3 months of their existence.
Then they reaped the rewards of its awesome power for YEARS to come…
They were busy, well, actually lined up almost constantly for the following two years and even to this day, just by utilizing OVER and OVER this very simple secret weapon they took the time and care to set up.
It likely cost them less than $350 to set up. It likely costs them under $100 a month to maintain.
They have now opened another location in Vancouver, and they implemented the same secret weapon they started building in location 1 for location 2. Now the 2nd location has been packed since opening day.
Ok, enough of the suspense. What is the Secret Weapon this restaurant has so successfully employed?
DATA! Yep, simple data.
Well, I guess it’s not just data, it is data that they collected, and now utilize almost once a week. So let’s take a look at how they implemented and utilized this secret weapon called “data”.
They collected their data in an old school fashion, and we suggest this is always at least one of your data collection components to all of our clients.
Yes we know there are iPads, and Surfaces, and tablets, and iPhones and Android devices and all this smart technology, but sometimes OLD SCHOOL is better for many of your restaurant guests.
YES you should have a QR code that sits on a tent card on the table and offers people to join your mailing list by filling in a simple survey from their smart phone, and some will. You could also do Coasters! Coasters are just like business cards that can be pondered at the table and even taken home.
YES you should have a very short url to redirect to your same survey/data collection landing page for those who prefer this way.
YES you could suggest they just give their twitter name, name and email address by twitter.
YES you should ask them to follow you on Facebook.
BUT…
This company didn’t do ANY of those things for the first 3 months.
They simply gave out a small 1/8 of a page mini survey/feedback paper to each person at the table with the bill.
They offered that all who joined the newsletter would be in a monthly draw for a $100 gift certificate. They started with just a random pen left at the table to fill in this overly photocopied UGLY piece of paper, that wasn’t even cut straight (darn hard to get good help in a restaurant!).
Then they ‘upped their game’ and gave out a golf pencil that was branded with the restaurant name. Customers were even encouraged to take it home if they liked.
Then the magic happened. They actually did something with the information!
Someone was responsible to actually entered a into a CRM type sales automation system like Small Business Dream.
They likely used the simplest one around, or who knows, maybe they simply used Outlook. All that matters is, they took action. They made it someone’s job to enter this data nightly, or who knows, maybe the paid a subcontractor to do it. And yep, I’m sure many of the surveys had hard to read email addresses, and I’d bet the bounce rate was out of this world. By the third month, I bet ½ or more were duplicates so they were wasting time. But they kept entering.
Right from the first week of collecting this data, they sent out the first email. Showing off specials during certain times of day, or that Monday was all day Happy Hour with $9.99 pitchers of beer at the time, ALL day Monday. Within weeks Mondays were packed and pretty soon, every day was full to capacity.
They didn’t sweat that many of the emails couldn’t be used because they were illegible. They didn’t worry that their survey paper looked awful. They didn’t worry that their staff didn’t feel comfortable handing out the survey. They didn’t worry that their pencils were taken home more often than not. They just continued to TWEAK their secret weapon! They continued to use their secret weapon and they continued to be full to capacity, night after night.
They opened another location, rinse and repeat. Imagine if they had an even more robust secret weapon. One that would have taken away some of the cost and time by giving patrons options like mentioned above:
- An iPad at the bar or front desk to have people join the mailing list while they waited for a table.
- Taking the survey by QR code
- Taking the survey by simple URL
- Taking the survey by submitting a direct message on Twitter, or a mention on twitter.
They continue to be a booming success, month after month, year after year, while restaurants in better locations, with better themes and menus with better parking, continued to fail. Not one of the failures employed the ‘secret weapon’.
Now the story gets better! This great Korean Barbecue Japanese restaurant went a step further.
They started a loyalty program with an actual member card. Customers got points for eating there, and they could then redeem the points to get $25 OFF their meals once they had enough points.
Again, back in the day, the waiter/waitress had to take your card, disappear into the back, likely login to some system that allowed them to track your purchase, and how many points you had, and notify you manually when you had enough.
They continued to evolve, they continued to add power to their secret weapon. The loyalty program became connected up to their POS (point of sale terminal). The customer receipt now told you where you were at for your point balance each visit. The customer could email in a picture of their receipt if they forgot their card, and it was someone’s job to match it up and credit the customer. Goodness me, what a terrible thing to make a staff member do when they are so busy!
By now I think you are starting to see that this company had a bigger secret weapon than just their data, they had the determination to make it happen instead of making excuses for why it may be too hard, or that the staff may not like it.
Then they upgraded their secret weapon again! They invested in a simple mobile app. This now allowed people to join them for the purpose of getting updates as an app, and of course we all know a mobile app sends out push notifications instantly vs. the email mailing list that can take some time to send once it gets large. This allowed their message to be received in real time, and not end up in a spam folder, or ignored by a millennial who only looks at their email once a week, if that.
Then they upgraded the weapon again. The entire loyalty program was now contained in the mobile application! You could literally redeem your points for something free in front of the waitress and it was brought to you. Now instead of waiting till you had $25 built up, you could redeem for even a $5 item. The patrons responded, and continue to respond, packed full night after night, and even have a very healthy lunch crowd.
The restaurant or bar Happy Hour, Tappy Hour, Appy Hour, regardless of your restaurant or bar type, whether you serve Alcohol or not, you may benefit from implementing a Happy Hour. It is a common fear of restaurant and bar owners worldwide that Happy Hour will reduce their revenue by taking their regular customers and having them eat or drink at a discount during restaurant happy hour periods.
As common as this thinking is, in most cases it’s simply not true. The occasion where it can be true and you must be careful, is in the case of a restaurant that never runs at capacity, even on its busiest days, in other words an unsuccessful restaurant just barely getting by, or even losing money.
If you are in this situation, it might hurt your restaurant a little bit in the short term, but it can also be the thing that sparks your restaurant to being busier and growing your restaurant’s customer list. You need to know WHY your restaurant is not busy. If your food or service is bad, Happy Hour strategies will NOT help you.
There are essentially three ways to increase sales in a restaurant, bar, or pretty much any business; Happy Hour for Your Restaurant, Pub, or Bar, a disaster waiting to happen? It is a common fear of restaurant and bar owners worldwide that Happy Hour will reduce their revenue by taking their regular customers and having them eat or drink at a discount during restaurant happy hour periods. Happy Hour done right in a restaurant or bar can actually help you with all three.
1. Get More Customers
By having and promoting a restaurant happy hour, your existing customers are much more likely to bring people they know to your establishment. Treat them right at your restaurant or bar’s happy hour and you can retain a new customer. Want maximum bang for your happy hour bucks, make sure you are using a mini CRM tool like Small Business Dream to collect all your customers’ data, and the myRestaurant mobile app to allow direct push notification communication with your new restaurant customers.
2. Increase average restaurant customer purchase
By putting your higher margin items at a discount like special drinks, or premium beer, or new appetizer items, you’re getting people to step out of their regular restaurant or bar purchasing patterns to try some of your premium items. This can lead to higher average checks when they return to your restaurant outside of happy hour.
3. Sell more often to each customer
Again by having new restaurant customers come to check you out at a discount, if you have a CRM type tool in place, helping you with your sales and marketing automation tasks like letting them join your newsletter, or specials updates letter, you will have the ability to have them come back to your restaurant or bar due to your direct invitation with an offer that is NOT happy hour.
Done right, with the purpose of building your restaurant customer list to re-market to, Happy Hour can hardly ever get your restaurant or bar in trouble.
Interestingly enough, the busier your restaurant or pub is during your peak hours, the more you can increase ONGOING restaurant sales by having a happy hour! Think of it as bribing people to get their data to remarket to them.
If you can move 10% of your customers to come before 6 pm, having them out by 7:30 pm or 8 pm in the case of a restaurant, it allows you to pick up a few more reservations or walk-ins that you may have turned away due to being full.
This is a massive boost to your bottom line if your restaurant can benefit from this. There is also a savings to your labour costs, and a benefit to your staff.
As many restaurants employ part time staff, whether you schedule them 5 hours or 6 or 7 makes little difference to the staff member, other than the positive of they get more hours and possibly don’t need to work 2 part time jobs.
Do your job right, and in a tipping economy, you can even earn more in the tip pool.
There are a number of things you can do to really multiply the advantage of your restaurant or bar’s Happy Hour:
1. Collect restaurant customer data with a tent card on the table offering them to join your newsletter for special offers, like you on Facebook, follow you on twitter, follow you on Instagram etc.
2. A QR code can be fun and easy printed on your tent card, make sure you have a super simple URL using a URL shortener so customers can easily enter the URL to be taken to your newsletter signup page.
3. Have a draw for a $100 gift certificate for any new people who subscribe to your newsletter.
4. Offer a very simple and inexpensive appetizer (nuts, edamame, chips) for any who like your Facebook page, and check in.
Once you have built your restaurant customer list safely in your sales and marketing automation software, you can really start to reap the rewards of your Happy Hour endeavor by filling your restaurant at will on a slow day, by simply emailing out a special offer for those who come on the slow day at the slow time!
Don’t forget you MUST AMPLIFY the results of your restaurant, bar, or pub happy hour by employing a mini mobile CRM sales and marketing automation tool and mobile app for YOUR customers like Small Business Dream.
This blog post will share details more specifically on how to growth hack (grow rapidly) your small business restaurant sales. Click here to read the little restaurant that could blog post which tells the actual story of how this all worked in a restaurant in Vancouver ALL the experts thought would fail. So, as a small business restaurant owner, do you have your small business customers data? Do you know why you SHOULD have your restaurant customer data?
The reason you want to collect this data and build a mailing list is to eliminate sales vacancy. What is sales Vacancy? An empty table when you have staff to cover it is sales vacancy, and sales vacancy is almost pure profit if you are at least breaking even on your current sales volume.
Once you have this data collected, you can literally fill your restaurant on a slow day with the click of a few buttons. Let’s say you know Monday nights are often slow, you could send an email to your list offering 2 for 1 appetizers during the slowest period to bring people in. This is m uch more effective than a sign out front, as it would be seen by all your customers, not just the ones that walk by. Restaurant Owners customer data worth a minimum $26.65/year in sales! This story will share details more specifically on how to growth hack (grow rapidly) your small business restaurant sales
You could offer drink specials or have a happy hour you announce with a mail blast (read our article on why this can work by clicking here).
Want to really ramp up sales? Send out any specials you have new this week in your weekly newsletter, and most importantly, a few you will take off the menu AFTER this week. The funny part about this technique is it creates urgency and scarcity at the same time, making it much more likely someone will book to come and see you THIS week, vs later or when they get around to it.
This leads to increased sales frequency which is a fantastic sales growth hack. What if you could get each customer to come back to your restaurant an extra 2 or 3 times per year. Make them come every 3 weeks’ vs the natural ever 4 or 5 or 6 they normally come. May that increase your profits?
Small Business Dream allows you to collect data in the way the little restaurant that could did (in this post) to utilize with sales automation and marketing automation with a simple survey on paper, or as we explain later in this article with a few other creative and more automated methods. We recommend doing all these things at once for maximum sales hacking growth.
A paper survey is a simple 1/8 piece of paper given out with the bill to each person at the table by your wait staff. Include as many golf pencils (can buy at any office supply shop for a few cents each, or better yet order them with your restaurant name on them and let people “steal” them) as you give surveys to keep the process easy.
Ask for their name and email address, and how they liked you on a scale of 1 to 10. Food, service, ambiance. Ask them if they want to be on your mailing list, and offer something for them to give up that data and be on your mailing list. Mailing list lets us send you great offers and update you on menu changes etc., a n d ‘bribe’ them by saying they will be in draw to win a $100 gift certificate each month drawn from all new newsletter subscribers. You have the option to do the data entry from the paper yourself, or you can use our automated transcription service to do it for you.
Let’s do some simple math on what this data is worth to your annual sales in your small business restaurant as a restaurant owner.
If you have customers that come an average of 1 time per month, and these techniques we are describing can get them to change that to once every 3 weeks as your restaurant is now top of mind, AND they get wonderful updates from you with specials, or notification of things going OFF the menu, or time limited specials going onto the menu, watch what happens.
Let’s say you have only 1350 people in your data base. A restaurant as small as 25 seats should easily have this within 3 months of collecting data.
If you have 25 seats at 60% occupancy on average and say 40% are new customer’s vs repeat after month one. The math goes like this.
25 seats x 30 days in a month = 750 people in 1 month on your mailing list.
In month 2, 750 x 40% = 300 new people on your mailing list and each month thereafter. In 3 months, you would have 1350 people on your mailing list.
Let’s say only 60% were repeat type customers that come on average 1 time per month. That gives us 810 people. Let’s say your average bill is only $25.
Your annual sales from this would be 810 x $25 x 12 (months in year) = $243,000/year.
If you now had them come back an average of once every 3 weeks what happens? 810 x $25 x 17.33 (52 weeks in a year divided by 3 weeks’ average visit to get how many times per year they come) = $350,932.50!!!!! That is a 44% increase in sales. at little or no cost to you! As you know, one of your biggest expenses is getting a NEW customer!
Still not convinced on the value of having your customer data?
If we look at the sales increase, divided by how many pieces of data you have, it will surprise you.
In one year, you would have collected 750 + (300 x 11) = 4050 pieces of data. Your sales increase was $350,932.50 – $243,000 = $107,932.50 If you want to consider that you only have 1350 pieces of data, that means each customer email was worth $79.95 to you. If you want to consider you had the 4050 pieces of data, each customer email was worth $26.65!
So is it worth a bit of effort if the worst case scenario is each piece of data you collect is worth a minimum of $26.65 to you?
So now you’ve seen the importance of collecting your customer data, let’s look at additional ways you collect it to even further grow your sales!
You have the option to do the data entry from the paper yourself, OR you can use our automated transcription service to do it for you.
One thing the little restaurant did NOT do, but you may want to consider in addition to the paper survey, is a fish bowl draw. Simply put a glass fish bowl at your front counter with a sign saying drop in your business card for the chance to win a $100 gift certificate each month, or a free lunch or whatever offer you feel you can afford to give to new subscribers to your list. Make sure you have some survey forms beside the fishbowl for anyone who missed them at the table and wants to fill one out.
Make sure you say on your sign that they will be added to your mailing list. Again you can transcribe the cards yourself, or use our built in human transcription service to do it for you.
Get a tent card made for each of your tables that displays a QR code and a Short URL leading to a mailing list subscription page, or even a survey if you want to learn more about your customers. (this is another tool included in the Small Business Dream suite)
Get Coasters printed with the information if you don’t want the cleaning maintenance of a tent card.
Collect newsletter subscribers from your website if you have one, and if you do not have one, get one! It does not need to be super fancy, but you do need at least a basic website!
It is simply amazing how many restaurants do not have their own website, but just rely on the YELPS of the world to do it for them. This is bad for your restaurant business. You should have your own website so these other sites can link to it, this allows you to control the narrative a bit more as your message how you want it to be seen is available to the public to offset any negative reviews you get. It simply allows people to decide if the negative news is justified or not. Without your own website, they have no choice but to form all opinions from the other sites that are collecting data and comments on your restaurant business.
Small Business Dream can be your simple website if you do not have one. No additional costs, its just one of the integrated tools in our Sales Growth Hacking Suite.
From your current website, or the one you set up in Small Business Dream you can direct people straight to your newsletter signup page (also a tool in the Small Business Dreamsuite), amplifying your in-store efforts by building a list of those who have not yet visited you, or saving data entry time/cost of those who join your list on their own.
Now you know the value of one piece of data is $26.65, you can see that you have no excuse to n o t get going on this asap as the payback is fast and huge.
Depending on your type of restaurant, and if you take reservations or not, there are a lot more tools in Small Business Dream that can benefit you. Should you be a restaurant that takes reservations, imagine the power of having this data, including a phone number you take when the reservation is placed.
You can now track customer preferences, like for example, what wine they ordered last time, or what their food preferences or allergies are. Does it take a bit of work to collect this data? Of course! With $26.65 being the lowest return on each piece of data, it would just get better and better as you learn more and more about your customers!
A full mini CRM and mobile CRM is also included in Small Business Dream, which includes a very powerful contact manager that you can use for collecting and recalling this data.
Finally, the big elephant in the room; Social Media! The restaurant that could, had a very cool strategy to build its Facebook followers. They offered a small appetizer that was super easy to prepare, low labour cost, and able to be done in advance. In their case they used Japanese Edamame, or soy beans. They made literally a micro portion, about ¼ of the size of the portion you got if you ordered it from the menu, served it in a funky container which made it seem special and not so smart, and offered it free if you checked in and liked their Facebook page.
We would recommend you also do this for Twitter, as Facebook has made it very hard to communicate with your fans without paying. Only about 2% of your page likes ever see your posts organically in Facebook now. That said, it can be very cost effective to do an advertising campaign only to your fans with Facebook.
The advantage of twitter is that it can still go viral. Small Business Dream has a great Twitter and other Social Media tools built in to it’s suite to help you manage these lists and posts.
Your social media campaign is most effective if it always pushes people to join your mailing list. We know it sounds old fashioned but a good email list is still worth a fortune to your business. Keeping up with social media can make you seem more relevant and cool, so doing both with the purpose of ultimately building your list is an very effective strategy.
