Tag Archives: business

March 1, 2013 · 11:53 am

Mobile meals

I’m delinquent in sharing today’s bit of Foodie Friday Fun since it revolves around a study done in January.  The IAB  and Viddle looked into how people are using their mobile devices to order food and the results are instructive for most businesses, not just restaurants.

English: This is actually Tom's Restaurant, NY...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the “Mealtime Goes Mobile” survey, 60% of us order takeout food or delivery once a week (yes, even those of us who love to cook sometimes can’t make the time!).  In fact, 2% identify themselves as doing so every day, although I’m sure I good portion of that involves lunch.  As one might expect, pizza, chinese food, and sandwiches and burgers head the list of the types of food ordered most often.

This is where it gets instructive   44% of people use mobile devices to check phone numbers (“mobile devices” includes tablets and we know most tablet use is in the home).  Significant numbers also use them to find locations, check menus, and to find coupons.  Obviously, incentives such as coupons are a big driver of business, but so is ease of use.  In fact, over a third expressed an interest in an app that remembered past orders.

What’s instructive is this – any restaurant that hasn’t done a few things is clearly missing out on a huge potential market.  A website not optimized for mobile is a big problem.  Since half of consumers have installed at least one restaurant app and 15% have three or more installed, investing in app development is another factor that restaurants should be planning as part of their marketing budgets.  The same points probably apply to your business, but unless you’ve taken the time to check your analytics, how would you know?  Using the segmentation ability to check bounce rates and user habits within the mobile segment and comparing it to the web segment makes sense.  Integrating non-digital behaviors with those report is possible, although harder (and a much longer explanation than you or I would like on a Friday!).

As we all know, consumer behaviors are changing a lot.  Are we changing our businesses along with them?

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February 26, 2013 · 10:20 am

Blame The Producers

Every once in a while I get up from my computer screen and take a break.  Sometimes it’s to make phone calls.  Sometimes it’s just to spend a few minutes watching the news.  Anything to step away, clear my head, and refocus.  You should try it!  Lately, however, I find myself not watching the news networks while they have multiple people engaged in conversations.  You know the format – a couple of talking heads representing opposing points of view batting an issue back and forth.  Except lately there’s far less dialog and a lot more overlapping screaming.

I can’t take it.  One person begins to make a point and the other one starts yelling “you’re wrong.”  The “moderator” from the network rarely intervenes – I’m sure they’re thinking this is great TV.  It’s not.  One guest talks over another until it’s time for commercial.  It makes my head hurt.  It demeans everyone involved. It’s wrong in so many ways and it makes a great business point.

I blame the producers.  They could be telling the audio guy to cut off a mike.  If I was in the booth, the reporter would hear “tell so and so that if they won’t let the other guest speak I’m cutting off their mike until it’s their turn to talk.”  You know – kind of how you’d treat a child, which is how they’re behaving.  Former elected officials do it.  Party officials do it.  Rarely, however, do people serving in office do it – they have something to lose – the next election!

It would be a disaster if you ran your business this way yet many people do.  They talk over customers or are so focused on making their point that they ignore what the other people are saying.  One thing digital has done to us all, in my opinion, is curtail our attention spans.  We’re used to responding immediately to things and we’ve all become a lot more self-centered.  Don’t believe me?  Look around the next time you go out to eat – how many people are checking their phones instead of engaging their dining companion?   We can’t do that if we’re to be successful businesspeople.  We need to cut off our own mikes and listen.  We need to moderate the customer feedback portions of our digital efforts.  Not to curtail opinion but to enforce grown-up behavior.  People want to express their opinions and we should welcome that.  We can insist on them doing so respectfully.

One of the points in The Cluetrain Manifesto (surely you’ve read it by NOW!) is that in both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.  Your business needs someone to keep them “speaking” and not shouting over one another.  How are you doing with that?

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February 22, 2013 · 10:06 am

Immersion Blenders

Do you own an immersion blender? They’re the Foodie Friday Fun topic this week.

This is a wand blender (also known as a stick ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe you call it a wand blender or a stick blender or maybe you call it the “boat motor” as do a few TV chefs. Whatever you call it, the tool is a sharp blade at the end of a stick that a cook uses to blend food in a pot or bowl. Soups, whipped cream, mayonnaise, and pesto are all things for which I’ve used mine.  Restaurants use much larger versions in their kitchens and they’re really useful to have in the home kitchen.

There was an article on them called “Bandages Not Included” in the NY Times two months ago.  One thing that happens fairly often in the home kitchen is that cooks try to clean food off of them while they’re still plugged in.  The blade is very sharp.  The on/off switch is under your thumb by design.  What could possibly go wrong?   While I’ve been fortunate never to have pureed a finger into a stew I was thickening, the article got me thinking about business.

A lot of firms use the business equivalent of an immersion blender: social media.  Like the stick blender, the tool seems very simple and is easy to use.  A business can also cut off a finger pretty easily.  In the last year, KitchenAid, McDonalds, StubHub and others have been in the spotlight for doing exactly that.  Personal tweets sent from a company account, commercial messages tied to trending topics without understanding why they were trending, and “set and forget” use of automated tools have caused brands massive headaches and public black eyes.

Companies perform the  social equivalent of cleaning off the blender blade without unplugging it first every day.  Simple tools often lull us into a sense of complacency and that’s dangerous whether we’re in the kitchen or on the Internet.  That’s why your business’ social media activity needs to be managed just as professionally as the rest of your business and not by an unsupervised intern or someone unfamiliar with each medium’s particular potential pitfalls.  These tools are dangerous even though they’re incredibly useful.  Like the immersion blender they can be the best way to accomplish a branding task.  Provided, of course, you do so and hang on to all your fingers.

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