Food marketing depends on visual quality. That’s why many restaurants are now switching their strategies from older outboard advertising to video marketing. Videos save customers time: a 30-second video can communicate the same amount of information as a 10- to 15-minute article.
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Created by three PayPal employees in February 2005, YouTube has risen from just a few short clips to over 300 hours of video streamed every minute.
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Food marketing depends on visual quality. That’s why many restaurants are now switching their strategies from older outboard advertising to video marketing. Videos save customers time: a 30-second video can communicate the same amount of information as a 10- to 15-minute article.
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With 93% of Pinners shopping online in the past six months, marketers plan to increase efforts on Pinterest this year. Restaurants in particular, need to jump on this train. People “eat with there eyes,” which is why food is the most searched and most pinned category.
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Your restaurant is hot. Real hot. Your next step, you reason, is to create a website. But if you’re not experienced, your website could be like a bad sequel to a good movie. Inconsistent, dry, and boring, your website could turn customers away from your restaurant. Luckily, we’ve got 6 tips to help make sure your website is as hot as your food.
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Though they may not reveal all their tricks, with a working blog, restaurant cooks can teach novices the craft of cutlery and the skill of cooking. In fact, in today’s digital world, blogging is the most powerful form of marketing for any restaurant.
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It occupies the time of 71% of online adults and influences the purchase of more than 47% of Americans. It is, of course, Facebook. Like most marketing mediums, restaurants can use Facebook skillfully, or they can use it clumsily. Are you making these 8 Facebook mistakes?
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Though most of the world has moved forward in the digital era, many local businesses still market like it’s the 90s. They use traditional marketing tactics, such as …
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Building a restaurant’s brand is like perfecting a signature dish: you not only want it to look, taste, and smell perfect once, but you also want perfection for every dish. You want your brand, like your dish, to be consistently good. But building your restaurant’s brand in the 21st century can be tough.
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If you’ve worked in a restaurant before, you know the value of a good general manager. From handling revenues and costs, to staffing your restaurant, to organizing the daily operations, a good general manager will make any restaurant run smoothly.
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With more and more people using smartphones for computing and online activities, franchises are evolving to mobile applications.
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Just look around you. Whether you’re in a restaurant, airport or park everyone’s using it. Adults, kids, teenagers – nobody lacks access to one of the largest (and smallest) shape-shifting cultural devices in the history of humanity – the smartphone.
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Ah, summer. Warm weather, sunscreen, hot dogs on the grill, fireworks, Fourth of July parades. It’s a time when students and teachers relax, get outdoors, swim and spend money. Lots of money.
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It’s an ideal, but one worth striving for: to create a stronger brand, you must brand your employees.
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If you’re a local business, if you want to grow your local presence, we have some advice. You must have a website, and you must have it optimized. And with these 5 tips, it will be optimized.
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Lazy, late, bad attitude and just downright awful. Does that describe your newest employee? Hiring good employees is one of the biggest challenges facing business owners and managers. While great employees make great companies, hiring the wrong person in a position can cost you customers and money.
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In their quest to remain the #1 search engine on Earth and provide visitors with the most relevant search results, Google has finally announced they’ll be making some big changes on April 21 – expanding their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. Google is in the game of giving its customers what it wants,[…]
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They wanted to be cool. They wanted to be relevant. They wanted to be up-to-date and different. They wanted to be J.C. Penney, sure, but with their 2010 annual sales falling, they wanted to remake their 110-year-old brand into a department store fit for the 21st century. So they hired CEO and former Apple retailer,[…]
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With 1,845 bakery-cafes in 45 states and Ontario, Canada, and with plenty of following to open another 1,000, Panera Bread is one of the rare franchises that blends artisan sandwiches with an ambient atmosphere reminiscent of European cafes
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In Greek, “Zoe,” ζωή, means “life,” and, indeed, the Mediterranean styled franchise, Zoe’s Kitchen, is full of life. With made-from-scratch recipes, with a cool Mediterranean-colored milieu, Zoe’s Kitchen has quickly expanded its franchise from Pennsylvania to Arizona.
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Since art has been around longer than shelter, franchises do well to take note of cultural movements. What do I mean by cultural movements? Cultural movements people—whether they be artists, writers, scientists, engineers, marketers, or poets—centered around the intellectual achievements of a select few. Those involved in cultural movements want to imitate these achievements, thus[…]
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For a franchise, your “about me” page is extremely important. This is your chance to share the story of your creation, how you rose from the ashes, how you went from one or two stores to fifty-three, how you built your industry, against all odds, against all Recessions, against all economic downturns and ten-eyed monsters.[…]
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Bertagna checked Google, and, sure enough, the customer was right. Bertagna tried to reverse the damage, but by that time, it was too late. Serbian Crowns closed in April 2014, and Bertagna is trying to sue Google over Serbian’s erroneous hours.
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A film tells a story, a commercial sells you a product. Though, yes, a film could compel you to purchase the product. But it’s focus is always the story.
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Website efficiency for brands depends on criteria that involves positive interface with users. Swim brand Speedo serves as a good example.
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As I scrolled through this list, I noticed something: all of the top brands originated in the United States.
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Which franchise industries are growing, where are they growing, and what should we expect from them in the future?
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Franchisees are tasked with finding newer and better ways to appeal to an ever-growing number of mobile device users. Here are three ways they can do this.
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With the advent of online hiring, digital advertising, and mobile marketing, franchises have had to rethink their identities in a rapidly expanding digital landscape.
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Year after year, businesses are faced with the nightmare of high employee turnover. Sure, some employees may go. But you can decrease employee turnover with this rule: show your benefits, be empathetic.
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Eventually, you will receive low-rating Yelp reviews. Maybe your waiter dropped hot, saucy spaghetti on a customer’s egg white Polo shirt. Or perhaps your cashier temporarily forgot how to open the cash drawer, backing the line, causing frustration and resentment.
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If you’ve been in the franchise business, you know the franchisor-franchisee relationship is more complicated than commonly thought.
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When you want to request reviews, don’t ask directly. How can you create organic reviews? Here’s ten practical tips for you to try.
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Though I am no psychiatrist, here’s a few things to keep in mind when your dealing with a franchisee/franchisor conflict.

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As a recent college graduate, I’d say I’m pretty close to the collegiate spirit of our era. So if I was a local business, how would I market to this group?
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With the release of Amazon Fire, many are suspicious of Amazon. Are they trying to close small businesses? Are they that audacious? Maybe. But to be fair Amazon does have a local side, Amazon Local. And it’s actually pretty cool.
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Find what locals are talking about with these eight Twitter mapping tools. If these tools are new to you, don’t worry. I’m a pretty tech-savvy twenty-year old, and I had no idea these existed.
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In the last decade, “ecosystem” has become a catchword for marketers, advertisers, and businesses. But what do we mean by this term? And how can a “digital ecosystem” save franchise managers time and money?
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For 40 years, the restaurant Serbian Crowns had been successful. But in 2012, weekend sales dropped by 75%. Why? Something strange, something digital, something hidden is going on here…
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While not Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, Meetey.com is a new social media platform with more emphasis on social than media. Local businesses do well to start using Meetey.com with these six ways.
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4th of July spending, particularly for food, travel, and fireworks, has heightened in the last four years. So we created this infograph to track the change.
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Without appropriate challenges, businesses won’t grow. So here are seven social media challenges franchises should expect.
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Yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos opened Pandora’s box, and a smartphone emerged: the Amazon Fire. If you’re a mom and pop store, a retailer, or a small business, Amazon Fire may appear as a threat. But I don’t think it should be feared. And I got six reasons to think so.
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You want your franchisees to use Facebook for their businesses. Furthermore, you want conversations on those Facebook pages, that is, you want the franchisee to communicate with customers and customers to communicate back. But you fear abusive language: the nasty comments, the bad reviews, the hate mail, the spammers, the hackers, the haters. What do you do?
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Something has gone wrong: the method of SEO has undermined its life. But does OC/DC revitalize SEO? Has the content king returned?
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Meetey.com is a virtual neighborhood. If LinkedIn is for professionals, and if Facebook is for personal profiles, Meetey is for communities and neighbors.
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While not a guaranteed safeguard from closure, content can, indeed, exhibit franchises on the web. By exhibition, franchises build an audience. With an audience, franchises preserve themselves.
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Content can preserve a franchise. Don’t believe me? Good. Skeptics learn faster than conformists. But I have many reasons for believing so. And, once convinced, I have a plan for implementing a content marketing strategy that preserves your presence on the internet.
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Unused franchisee Facebook pages are pages your franchisees create and then abandon. Usually, this happens when franchisees change ownership or management. What do you do?
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Do franchisees need Facebook? The Pros: a franchisee Facebook localizes the business, organizes pertinent information and creates a database of customers. The Cons: a franchisee Facebook is hard to maintain, flawed from the get-go, and requires to much content. Do the pros outweigh the cost? Read to find out…
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In short, authentic courage involves empowering employees to face problems and difficulties with a real shared vision. In turn, you transform your employees. By sharing your vision, your employees feel a part of something bigger.
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Need some creative tips on how to use your business’s Facebook? We got 15 right here.
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An ABC website does four things: (1) treats customers right, (2) tells your business’s story, (3) presents itself in a clear and clean way, and (4) involves the customers.
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As a company that values social media, we want to add to the ongoing discussion of Facebook addiction. We’ve already shown the value of social media in creating social action. Now we want to step back and examine some pitfalls.
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Whether you are a multi-unit franchise or not, putting your name on Amazon Local is smart. For, you get brand awareness, new customers, and a challenge.
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Storytelling is a powerful way to comunicate truth. You can disagree, but narrative has a way of capturing meaning that logic cannot. In fact, we live by narrative. As the Spanish writer, Jose Ortega y Gasset once quipped, “Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.”
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My goal is simple: to empower recruiters to make better hiring decisions through multiple intelligences. In this last set of recruitment tips, we explore (3) personalizing your applicant and (4) conducting creative interviews.
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My goal is simple: to empower recruiters to make better hiring decisions through multiple intelligences. In this part of two, we explore (1) narrowing applicants and (2) recruiting the strongest candidate.
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There were people in ditches, without food, medicine, water, or medication. Without cell phones, beepers, pagers, or chargers. Without help, warmth, or gas. But they were found. They were saved. They were fed, clothed and rescued within hours of their castaway. How? Facebook.
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In light of this theory, we’re offering a new approach to hiring, one based on how an applicant learns in addition to how well he or she performs. In sum, we propose this: knowing how you learn, and knowing how your candidates learn can help you know who to hire.
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How much research do you do before you run an ad? Before you post on Facebook? Before you plan your biggest fundraising event of the year?
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You can build your inbound marketing program by using these tactics.
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Do nothing less than serve. Be nothing less than a servant leader. Serve your customers before you sell to them; then, sell as you serve.
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An ABC website does four things: (1) treats customers right, (2) tells your business’s story, (3) presents itself in a clear and clean way, and (4) involves the customers.

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Ever wondered how some small businesses get all the breaks? They get invited to be highlighted in local magazines and newspapers, give interviews on radio stations, and even make appearances on morning television shows.
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Local marketing is not an option. It’s a necessity. Don’t buy into the franchising myth: “Franchises are stable. You don’t need to market locally!” Counter this and three other attitudes with these tips.
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The only constant in life is change, says the ancient adage. The 21st century, however, has one slight difference: change is not constant. It’s exponential.

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No matter what your local small business focuses on, there is opportunity to enhance your website and local marketing with video. Here’s four ways you can use video in your local marketing strategy.
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Your franchise may benefit from its brand, but unless you create meaningful encounters, your franchise will suffer.
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Google Plus is the second largest social media site. Since it’s linked to Google’s search spiders, Google Plus can be a valuable internet marketing tool. But, most important for local businesses, Google Plus’s features—circles, profiles, authority, “+1’s,” and hangouts—can replace old local marketing strategies.
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Do your franchisees have websites they can’t handle? Are they misrepresenting your brand? Here are some bad website qualities to look out for, and some ways to improve them.
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