Eateries Marketing Effectively

Fayetteville restaurant owner Allen Brumett opened Sassy’s Red House in June 2009.

Even in that short time, experience tells him he holds the key to successfully marketing his brand in the palm of his hand — literally.

Brumett, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Shawna, needs only to peck away at his smartphone for a few minutes each morning to execute his approach to promotion.

Through HootSuite — a mobile application that serves as a one-stop shop for publishing instant messages to multiple social media platforms — Brumett schedules updates to the restaurant’s Twitter account and Facebook page.

Facebook users who have “liked” the restaurant’s Facebook page will then see the updates appear in their news feed. Likewise, Twitter users who have signed up to “follow” the restaurant receive the same messages, either with a notification through their smartphone, or by checking their own account at twitter.com.

“The two are linked together, so when you update one, you update both,” Brumett said. “I type in what I want to say, a time for it to go off and it appears.

“For an owner or manager who says they don’t have time, that takes me about 10 minutes. I schedule one to go off at 11:15 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. I don’t ever have to look at it again.”

With more than 3,000 Facebook users who have “liked” the restaurant’s page and close to 700 “followers” of its Twitter account, Brumett has plenty of people who are paying attention to the goings-on at Sassy’s.

Likewise, those are people — customers — who he has the ability to disseminate information to, whether that’s directly related to Sassy’s cuisine or commentary about Razorback happenings or other local events.

Brumett isn’t alone. The explosive growth of social networking has provided restaurant owners an entirely different way to communicate with patrons.

“We don’t do hardly any advertising anymore because I can get all the advertising I need with Facebook,” said Sherry Mendenhall.

She and her husband, Kip, own Fred’s Hickory Inn in Bentonville, one of the area’s most recognized restaurants, which opened in 1970.

“The first weekend it was up I was blown away how fast we heard feedback about it from our customers,” Sherry Mendenhall said.

Instant Review

According to a recent study by the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, 75 percent of all small businesses had a business page on a social media platform and 69 percent of them kept in touch with current and potential customers through status updates on Facebook and Twitter.

That kind of reach is difficult to ignore, and many locally owned restaurants in Northwest Arkansas — new and established — are making it their primary advertising tool. Most appealing is the opportunity for faster “word-of-mouth” advertising.

Fifteen years ago, a customer who had a rude waiter, received an over-cooked steak or a watered-down drink might eventually tell their friends those ugly truths when asked about a particular dining experience. And the owner might never know of the shortcomings.

Social media platforms have now given patrons an instant and more potent avenue to relay their dining experiences —both good and bad.

“No longer do companies, and this is where restaurants are especially susceptible, have to simply impress their critics and ‘secret shoppers’,” said Juli Clay, an assistant professor of mass communications at Brenau University in Gainesville, Ga., who is currently writing her dissertation on the effects of social media on small businesses. “Everyone is a published critic.

“A bad experience no longer is a personal issue, but it quickly becomes a public, viral situation — fantastic when a customer has had a good experience, but crippling when an experience has been negative.”

Clay adds the immediacy and broad-reaching impact of social media are the two biggest keys that have an influence on the restaurant industry more heavily than others.

One Shot

When Brumett jumped into the social media world with Sassy’s, he created the Facebook fan page himself.

“Anytime you see something that goes on the website, I put it there,” he said.

The same is true for Fred’s. Mendenhall said general manager Patrick Hall and assistant manager Terri Niccum are admittedly “a lot more Facebooky than I am,” and are responsible for maintaining the restaurant’s fan page, which was launched six months ago.

Some argue, however, the cost-saving approach to social media advertising could, in fact, be costly. Count Arlina Allen among them.

“An owner is better working on their business, not in their business,” she said. “Owners always ask me if they can do it for themselves, why would they hire me? That’s the same as me saying I can eat at home for free. Why would I go to your restaurant and eat?”

Allen is the owner of Social Media Restaurant Marketing, a Silicon Valley social media marketing company, and author of the book “Twitter for Restaurants.”

Her belief that social media marketing should be left up to social media experts is based upon what’s best for the restaurant owner.

Many restaurants are so excited to have a presence on Facebook or Twitter that they jump in without a plan. That can lead to a poor experience for their followers.

Having a presence on the Internet is not nearly as vital as managing it correctly. Additionally, restaurants that start fast from the gate with a bombardment of content, only to slow down or never return again, run the risk of looking outdated or out of touch to patrons.

“You don’t want to take a chance with your livelihood,” Allen said. “By not hiring a professional at the front end, I have seen people go out and be obnoxious right away and lose business. It’s been my experience, and you can take it with a grain of salt because I do get paid, that you don’t want to take that chance.

“You get one shot. If you blow it with an obnoxious promotion or you start annoying people and they drift away, you’ve blown it.”

Contrived or Convincing?

Hall believes the most effective way to use social networking for Fred’s is to make the content feel like it isn’t contrived.

“If it’s contrived, it can be perceived as a marketing tool and we don’t want it to feel like that,” he said.

Of course it can be a cost-saving measure for restaurants to keep their social media advertising an in-house operation.

But others see the value of outsourcing the job to professionals.

MySocialDr is a Fayetteville-based marketing firm that specializes in customizing a social media presence for businesses and restaurants. Some of the company’s clients include JJ’s Grill and Chill in Rogers and Fayetteville, MarketPlace Grill in Springdale, Powerhouse Seafood and Grill in Fayetteville and Wasabi in Fayetteville.

Pricing for the firm’s services is usually customized for each client and standard pricing sheets are kept confidential. Custom fan page packages are offered with a set-up fee as low as $249.

Rick Harris, the owner of Eddie Haskell’s Patio & Grill in Rogers, has been a client since mid-February. The restaurant maintained a Facebook fan page before that, but Harris says the number of followers since contracting with MySocialDr has increased by 60 percent.

“If you see a post on Eddie Haskell’s page, I wrote it,” Harris said. “I just outsourced the design of the page to MySocialDr. And let’s just say this: it is extremely cost-effective.

“I could very easily spend the exact same amount of money that I’m paying them on a single ad for eight to 10 radio spots that reach only a few people.

“I’m a big believer in this type of promotion. And I’m not very computer-literate. Every 13-year-old girl in Northwest Arkansas is going to be better on Facebook than I am, but I have really taken to it and have tried to build a rapport with our guests and our regulars and just about anybody with a pulse. I can certainly tell you the reach is absolutely more than noticeable.”