According to this source, in July 2015 there were over 1.6 million Android apps and 1.5 million Apple apps available to download, with the largest percentage (22%) being games and those for food and drink, such as restaurants, coming in at 2.72%. It seems that these days every business has its own app, but do the benefits outweigh the costs when it comes to developing one for an independent restaurant?
What are the benefits to having an app?
Having your own mobile app would give a huge presence on a person’s phone, always sitting there rather than the customer needing to open a browser to access a website. This means that the business will always be in the mind of the phone user, leading to them opening the app (even by accident) which is unlikely to happen with a website alone, and can provide a much better user experience. Through an app, a business can provide better customer engagement: allowing a customer to book a table or view a menu in a few clicks rather than making a phone call (see chart below), improve customer loyalty: making a sincere connection with your customers and tracking their spending through rewards, and make themselves stand out from the competition: be the first to offer a mobile app. Another key point would be that an app can have extra content like a game, reward system or push notifications that a website simply cannot offer. Greenberg and Kates (2014) warn us that incorrect marketing in the area of apps can actually damage a brand rather than build it. With so many apps available to download, users are going to want to pick their favourites and will often delete those that they perceive to be useless, so it is important to ensure that the app will hold some value to the user before deciding to take the idea forward. What will make the user download your app? How will it benefit the user?
How much will it cost?
Since the app will be free to download, to encourage the widest possible reach, the costs will not be recuperated through downloads as with many games offering in-app purchases. To develop the app for all 3 major platforms, the costs will almost be tripled, with this source suggesting that it will cost around £15,000 to develop and deploy a brand-worthy app, not considering maintenance costs. Something else to consider would be how to make customers, and potential customers, aware of the apps existence, leading to further publicity costs. When it comes to return on investment, it is estimated that per $1 an app will reach 599 people when created for all 3 major platforms, but a mobile website will reach 2839.
Would a mobile friendly website be a better option?
Optimising an existing website for mobile is incredibly simple, and applications such as Weebly allow a business to create, manage and post content, and measure traffic simply starting at just £5 a month. Some website hosts, such as WordPress allow the website to be automatically converted to a mobile version when accessed from a mobile device, which would be even better value for money. Allowing mobile friendly access to a small business website will encourage customers to check back on it and will allow people browsing to spend more time clicking through pages to access more content, as this will be easy for them to do, meaning this would be a worthwhile small investment for an independent restaurant. Another key point, discussed in this article is that mobile websites will work on any device, whereas an app will be specific to individual platforms, further increasing development costs.
Overall, it seems that developing a mobile app can be incredibly expensive so it would be important to think about whether the app holds any real value to the customer. Greenberg and Kates (2014) tell us that customers are more likely to make a purchase if it is easy to do so on a mobile device – and this can relate to restaurants through allowing easy access to booking a table or viewing a menu. It seems that it may simply be too expensive with very little return to create and maintain an app for an independent restaurant, unless there are creative and useful ideas for content.
Interested? Have a look at the following posts for more information:
http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/10-great-mobile-app-development-tips-small-businesses-01362354#sc7mOMicAUjdu042.97
http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/mobile-app-dev-cost/#1ITOql5M1Pqq
http://www.forbes.com/sites/allbusiness/2014/11/17/heres-why-your-business-needs-its-own-mobile-app/#731e388c5c76
https://clutch.co/app-development/resources/mobile-apps-2015-small-business-survey
References:
Greenberg, E. and Kates, A. (2014) ‘Strategic digital marketing: top digital experts share the formula for tangible returns on your marketing investment’. [Online] < http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/Open.aspx?id=521998 > [Accessed 30/1/16]
In today’s marketing world where everything is becoming increasingly dominated by social media it can be easy to lose sight of one of the most valuable methods of creating and maintaining customer loyalty: email marketing.
So what are the benefits of using this method of marketing for an independent restaurant?
According to this source, small businesses are spending 15% of their marketing budgets on email marketing, meaning that it is still coming in over face to face and social media marketing expenditure. The reasons for this are likely some of the following:
- Time saving
Once the business has invested the initial effort into developing a nice template for email communications, or even found one online and adapted it, all that is involved is changing some wording and replacing graphics for each communication sent out. This means that the potential work of printing and handing out leaflets to potential customers in person, or investing in advertising to be put into magazines or newspapers (two other common methods of advertising for small restaurants), can be done by one employee in just a couple of hours, allowing more time to be invested into other marketing and business activities. This leads to the second reason…
- Frequency of communication
Because it doesn’t take long to compose a good email to customers, a restaurant would be able to send communications out more frequently enabling them to send out news and offers as often as they want – although this shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to bombard customers, nobody likes receiving tonnes of spam! This means that customers will always be up to date, and can be given new incentives and reasons to visit on a more frequent basis, something that is particularly important when it comes to encouraging people to come back to a restaurant. ‘Nudging’ customers in this way is often seen as one of the most effective ways of marketing – read more about this method here.
- Reduced cost
Email marketing can be done well at a very low cost to the business. Very few employees are needed to work on the email, there are no costs for phone lines, printing or postage and you don’t even need a designer. There a huge amount of services out there that will host email marketing and allow a small business to edit a host of pre-designed templates that can be altered and sent out as desired, available for very reasonable prices. There are few other marketing channels where a business can spend less and get such a large return!
- Measuring success
Using platforms and tracking software when sending out marketing emails will allow a great deal of tracking, from measuring the percentage of customers who open the email to measuring how many click links and even how many people go on to redeem an offer. These metrics are often very clear and easy to understand for someone with little marketing knowledge, and can allow the business to get a feel for what kinds of emails are most effective to improve in the future. Bananatag offer a free account that works with Gmail to track up to 5 emails a day, so you can get a feel for the kind of service offered before buying.
- Easy to target
It’s very simple to start collecting email addresses from current customers, or encouraging new customers to sign up in order to get special offers, and you can even allow people to ‘share’ the emails that’s sent out to others which will further widen the reach! This is referred to as ‘earned media’ according to Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2012) and refers to publicity generated by increased awareness of a brand. Emails can be personalised and sent out to people by name helping the restaurant to build relationships with consumers, and can help to collect more information to allow even more targeted emails to specific groups in the future.
Overall, there is very little to lose and lots to gain through having a strong and frequent email marketing strategy, and for a small business such as a restaurant, it is a key method of gaining feedback from customers by tracking the effectiveness of different kinds of communications. According to this source, in the UK businesses gained a return of £38 for every £1 spent on email marketing in 2014, so it is important to make sure that this is not an area being neglected! According to Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick (2012) however, it is important to ensure that digital marketing is still used with traditional marketing methods such as print media to form a strong, multi-channel communication plan.
To learn more, I would recommend reading the following posts about email marketing:
http://restaurantengine.com/restaurant-email-marketing/
http://www.musthavemenus.com/guide/restaurant-email-marketing/why-email-marketing.html
http://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-ebook/email-marketing-benefits.aspx
http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list
http://www.shinealightmedia.com/small-business/10-benefits-of-using-email-marketing-for-small-businesses/
References:
Chaffey, D. and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012) ‘Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practise’. [Online] < http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/Open.aspx?id=399626 > [Accessed 30/1/16]