Is Your Restaurant Still Using A Rotary Phone?
Situation: Thursday around 3:30pm at the office
Your friends begin talking at the office. Forwarding emails, sending texts, and g-chatting. You guys decide to hit up $5 buckets…bonus!
6pm rolls around and happy hour ends. The last thing you remember eating was a bag of Doritos from the vending machine. That was 5 hours ago. What do you do?
A couple of your friends are ready to rock. It’s Thursday night, and we all know Fridays are pseudo work days anyways. One problem: Where should you go? Do you know of anything going on? Welcome to mobile advertising my friends!
The iPhone changed the game…
On July 29, 2007 Apple released their first version of the iPhone. Before this release, smart phones were for checking email and Microsoft Office. Web browsing was primitive before MobileSafari. The old Blackberry and Razr are jokes compared to the iPhone release.
Mobile users now search the web anywhere. They download content, stream live media, and search for restaurants while completely mobile. This technology has been available to us for only 3 years (give or take). That’s it!
What does this mean as a restaurant owner?
If 89% of consumers research a restaurant online, think of the mobile capabilities in the future. Someone in that happy hour group will have an iPhone, and they will search online for something to do. It will be on the fly, and totally spontaneous. It might be on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, UrbanBacon, etc…but mark my word, they will be looking online.
It’s ALREADY happening!
What do you notice when people are out and about? They are constantly staring at their iPhones either texting, surfing, or chatting. Never before have we been this connected.
The Kelsey Group projects some AWESOME numbers to prove this theory. They predict local mobile search advertising revenues to increase from $20 million to $1.3 billion by 2013. That is a HUGE increase in advertising dollars!
Advertising dollars shift to where people are looking. If people are searching for local places on their iPhones, than that’s where the dollars will go. This prediction alone tells you that people will be searching for your restaurant from their phones. These people are on-the-go and highly spontaneous to trying new places.
Put your restaurant in a winning position
You must get on social networking platforms. You must start a blog. Your website needs to be simple to navigate for mobile users. It must be up to date. It must promote your menu. Ditch the flash sites, smart phones do not support them (yet).
People will be on-the-go and actively looking for specials or promotions. As a restaurant owner, the cost of entry is way too cheap to neglect. You need to be on every local platform possible. All it takes is time…now get out there and crush it!
What do you guys think? Have you noticed anyone coming into your restaurant because they found you on their smart phone?
Tags: food, happy hour, iphone, restaurants, smartphone, technology
Bingo. Simple websites for smartphones. I was going to say that and you hit it.
You really know what the deuce you’re talking about, bro.
Thank you Nik! It AMAZES me to see how many restaurants STILL use Flash sites. They over pay for them, and they are not user friendly.
I would rather see a simple blog vs flash…at least that encourages interaction.
[...] takes you to the mobile business page of that establishment (another reason to get rid of your rotary phone). The page contains reviews, contact info, and special promotions regarding that establishment. [...]