Inside Hospitality

Branding & Design That Doesn’t Suck. Meet Our New Partner- Crawler Promotions.

Posted on 18. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Inside Hospitality, Marketing

Inside Hospitality, LLC. is excited to officially announce a formal partnership with Chicago based Crawler Promotions. These guys do an incredible job and really understand the market, we look forward to partnering with them on many upcoming projects.

Crawler Promotions is an online and mobile strategist company that enhances a companies brand online while creating an expertise in your field. We handle all online marketing and mobile promotions for companies and organizations, especially in the bar, club and restaurant industry. We specialize in both design and development of social sites, mobile applications development and print promotional work.

We Handle:

Social Media Profile Design and Development
Mobile Application Design and Development
Website Development that includes strategic SEO and social profile integration
Promotional Design Work: Business Cards, Menus, Promo Cards, Event Flyers, & Posters

Visit Crawler Promotions by clicking here!

The Invisible Restaurant Manager – Daily Tip for Monday August 16th.

Posted on 16. Aug, 2010 by Guest Blogger in Daily Tip, Marketing

Post by guest blogger Michael Hartzell

The Invisible Restaurant Manager.

To understand the restaurant business and the success or failure of an operation, we must first look at the invisible restaurant manager. Without doing so, the eye of an owner, investor or supervisor may not fully see the true restaurant success.

Restaurant owner: Do you evaluate your manager(s) based on their personal effort? Or do you instead look to the results? Do you hear from your leader(s)? : “I am the hardest working manager!”

If you see a manager at 120% working every position, working extra hours and skipping breaks; is this a good sign?

If you were able to filter the restaurant manager from your field of vision and consider them invisible, what would you see?

You would then see:

The staff
The cleanliness and sanitation
The safety
The appearance of products
The morale
Guests smiling (or not)
Guests waiting (or not)
… And many more details in the operation.

If you evaluate your leadership by how involved they are with the details BEFORE looking at the overall results then you may have a GREAT employee in charge but not necessarily a leader or manager.

Focus on just the staff for just a moment. Watch how they perform their responsibilities. Is there waste? (Remember, the restaurant manager is invisible to you now.) If there are 20 staff persons on duty, is it possible they are doing their jobs “the hard way”? What is the chance of each one of them increasing their performance by just 10%?

Here are reasons performance might improve by 10%:

Equipment working better
Training
Aces in their places
Team work
Systems improved
Communication
Scheduling
Preparation
Planning
Coaching (Direct supervision)
Eliminate the bottom producers
Removing misc. barriers holding people back.

Now that you are able to see the opportunities to help the individuals improve and know more precisely where the waste is, now look to your restaurant manager. Are they working hard? Or are they a catalyst to improving performance by 10%?

If a manager can create an environment and lead the team in such a way to improve the performance of 20 people by 10%, the math says that is twice what the manager could do personally. (20×10%=200% improvement) There is little chance that a restaurant manager can add to the restaurant operation simply by working harder or longer.

Once each person on the team has improved by 10%, there will be a dramatic improvement in the morale and guest experience as well. Then the old conversation such as: “I don’t have much time to do restaurant marketing, I am working very hard and there just doesn’t seem to be time.” Or “I can’t seem to find the time to follow up with guests after their visit.” will become a thing of the past.

Evaluate the restaurant manager by making them invisible as you review the restaurant operation.

Sure, you can do this with any supervisor.

No, you must not think this means the restaurant manager should make themselves be invisible. They must ensure each on the team is successful. It does mean HOW they work side by side with their team will change.

Yes the principle works with a smaller staff but the managers are more involved and integrated in the operations with lower sales. (I expect this would be a motivation to do more restaurant marketing and improve sales.)

Now you know the secret to improving the results of your restaurant manager by 200%.

It is time to apply the same principles to you, the restaurant owner don’t you think?

Michael Hartzell – Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, restaurant marketing coach. Co-Author of “The Reality of ROI & Social Media Marketing”. Member of the American Marketing Association. Read more at www.michaelhartzell.com/restaurant-marketing

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

How @ihospitality & @37Signals help restaurants deliver a great guest experience.

Posted on 12. Aug, 2010 by Inside Hospitality in Daily Tip, Marketing

Inside Hospitality uses Highrise to help restaurants deliver a better guest experience

Below: Q&A with Gary Tripp, President of Inside Hospitality, about how his team uses Highrise.

What does your company/business do?
Inside Hospitality works with restaurant & hospitality organizations in all 50 states and in 30+ countries helping them deliver a better guest experience through focused mystery shopping, online reputation management, coaching, and other experience measurement solutions.

Why do you need Highrise?
At Inside Hospitality we talk to a lot of restaurant, hotels and bars on a daily basis and have been on a mission (obsession actually) of sorts for the last few years to find the perfect CRM. Every business needs to keep track of contacts, leads, deals, and who said what to whom. The problem is most CRM programs just don’t work. Well, they don’t work in the way we need them to. We have used everything on the market from Salesforce to Goldmine and other fly by night CRM solutions that have popped up on our radar over the years.

Most are over bloated with features that may be useful for Boeing or some other Fortune 500 company, but they are totally over kill for us.

What happened when we used the before mentioned solutions? They simply weren’t used. Complicated applications don’t get used. Simple solutions that just “work” will always be our choice and are embraced by everyone within our company.

We have employees in 6 states and 4 countries. We need something that just “works” the way we need it to. No more, no less.

We found Highrise about 6 months ago and never looked back. Finally, a CRM that just works the way we do and totally fits our needs. It’s like 37Signals tailor designed this application for us. What luck!

How do you use Highrise and why do you like it?
Highrise is our daily life line and keeps everyone in the company on the same page. It lets everyone know instantly what was said last, to whom and what needs to happen next.

We also love how all the company’s information as well as all contacts are all on the same page. Seriously, how could things be easier?

Read entire post on the 37 Signals website by clicking here!

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

What’s A Guest Worth? Really. – Daily Tip for Tuesday August 10th.

Posted on 10. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Daily Tip, Marketing

Today’s Tip: What’s A Guest Worth?

Let’s talk for a second about the value of a happy guest and to outline our discussion I have created the matrix below that shows the effects of positive word-of-mouth as well as how strong your marketing ROI can be when you “get it right”.

What the discussion boils down to is both the value of a happy guest and the value of an unhappy guest because both have equally important values.

Let’s assume you have a $20 per-person-average (PPA) and that for every happy guest they will tell five people within a month of their great experience. Those five people then visit your restaurant and have a great experience and each of them tell five m0re people and so on. It will look something like this:

Happy Guest #1 is worth $240 to you a year if he visits you just once per month at the $20 PPA level. Do you have happy guests who just visit you once a month? Perhaps but most visit you much more.

So by the end of the fifth month, the initial guest has told enough people about his great experience to garner you over $15,000 worth of business – not bad for just getting it right – and after a full year of positive word-of-mouth, the initial guest has helped create over $128,000 worth of business for you simply by communicating to the people in his close community about how great an experience he had at your restaurant.

Now contrast this with the understanding we all have that when you “get it wrong”, people have a tendency to tell more people about the bad experience than the positive one. Then assume the $20 PPA again and multiple these amounts by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4 (whichever you understand to be the case about the flow of conversations about bad experiences) and you can see how much money is potentially lost from the negative word-of-mouth generated by bad experiences.

Now consider the amplification of the bad experience and subsequent communication about it by people engaged with social media and you see a whole bunch of potential for lost sales as well as erosion of your brand reputation.

Finally, add in the lost opportunity cost of getting the marketing wrong or not listening to your guests and understanding their level of dissatisfaction with your experience.

So the lessons of situations like this are what I rant and rave about to restaurant and hospitality operators on a daily basis. Those being:

The reason most operators fail is not for lack of capitalization, it’s from bad marketing.
The reason most operators continue to fail, even when they see how bad things are is because they can’t admit they need help.
No marketing strategy is more effective or powerful than those which work to leverage positive word-of-mouth strategies and tactics.
Failing to implement a serious Voice-of-the-Guest program to measure guest expectations is suicidal.
The potential for success is too great to dilute by using any discounting strategy when what you should be doing is adding value to support and enhance each guest experience.
Social Media can serve to amplify a great experience or a negative one more so than any other and underscores why you have to be listening, engaging and facilitating with those conversations.

What do you think?

Read more: What’s A Guest Worth? | RestaurantWorx™ by Jeffrey Summers, Pres., RestaurantWorx Consulting

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

Study shows guests care about service. Wow, no kidding. – Daily Tip for July 28th.

Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Inside Hospitality in Daily Tip, Marketing

Today’s Tip: Guests Will Pay More for Great Service.

It’s no great secret that consumers these days expect great customer service. Fortunately, they are willing to pay a premium for it, according to the American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, a survey conducted recently in the U.S. and 11 other countries.

A majority of the 1,000 Americans surveyed (61%) agreed that quality customer service is more important to them in today’s economic environment. Those polled added that they would be willing to spend an average of 9 percent more with a firm that provides excellent service.

Ironically, many businesses seem a little clueless about service. About a third of the respondents say they think companies have increased their focus on good service in recent years, but more than half—55 percent—say things have not changed or have actually gotten worse with the economy.

“Customers want and expect superior service,” says Jim Bush, executive v.p. for American Express World Service. “Especially in this tight economic environment, consumers are focused on getting good value for their money….It’s important to see customer service as an investment, not a cost.”

The study also found that, contrary to popular wisdom, customers who have a good experience are more likely to share their experience than those who have a bad one (75% vs. 59%).

Restaurant operators should be especially mindful of one additional finding from the study: Nearly half of the respondents said they use the web to research a company’s customer service reputation, and they put greater weight on the complaints than the kudos (57% vs. 48%, respectively).

“The Internet has made service quality more transparent than ever before,” Bush observes. “Because consumers can broadcast their views so widely online, each and every service interaction a company has with its customers becomes even more crucial.”

Read full post on Restaurant-Hospitality by clicking here!

Restaurant Marketing Wizardry – Daily Tip for Monday July 26th.

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by Guest Blogger in Marketing

Post by guest blogger Michael Hartzell

Restaurant Marketing Wizardry

Today we will combine:

Restaurant Marketing
Dorothy
The Wizard (of OZ)
The Yellow Brick Road
The Curtain
You (A Restaurateur)

First we must think about you. How will others describe you? How do your daily activities highlight your identity?

Do you:

The desire to stand behind a curtain.
Remain out of sight and out of contact behind a curtain.
Pull the levers; push the buttons while watching from a distance with technology.
Want others believe you are very powerful.
Make yourself look bigger than reality.
Secretly manipulate the actions of others with your technology.

IF you or one of your managers can be described with these characteristics, these describe a restaurant marketing wizard.

Yes, we have journeyed to the movie “The Wizard of OZ”.

There are people on a restaurant team in search of answers, fulfillment, success and celebration. They are looking for the yellow brick road (the path to success). There is risk and resistance with every step. Each person has their own baggage and skills to work on. Courage, heart and smarts to name a few.

Without the right kind of support and leadership, those on the teams may wander aimlessly with no direction and focus on their own issues vs. a common purpose. Here may be reasons why:

A restaurant marketing wizard does not talk to people or connect one on one.

A restaurant marketing wizard of oz tries to appear as more than they really are.

A restaurant marketing wizard of oz relies only on data.

A restaurant marketing wizard of oz does not listen to real people who must execute the ideas.

A restaurant marketing wizard of oz will not be transparent.

A restaurant marketing wizard of oz will act more defensively than offensively. (Protecting ideas vs. listening and adapting.)

If you know a restaurant marketing wizard of oz standing behind a curtain and not sharing the vision, the plan, the purpose and they spring “last minute sales ideas”; then I would say there will be frustration, disbelief and a lack of cooperation.

If you think about the temptation to sit in a room, look at data, watch the competition via technology, use the automated push button tools to create advertising campaigns. Someone who is in the advertising / marketing role could literally get it done behind the curtain of the Internet and have not contact with the outside world.

People contact is time consuming.

Interaction to get feedback from the team may be tough since schedules conflict.

Analyzing and comparing the feedback with hard numbers may take longer than 5 minutes.

It is tempting to take the easy route, use data vs. people and hope for the best. It is appealing to make a decision from behind the curtain and use the bells and whistles to make things happen and then pass the expectations off electronically with a click

“How odd! The plan was perfect and yet the results did not pan out. It couldn’t have been the plan that was made from behind the curtain. The managers and staff are at fault.”

Once you decide that being a restaurant marketing wizard of oz is not your style, here is the challenge;

What time is blocked each day to connect with live people? How much time? Who will the key connections be to ensure accuracy and relevance? How will the connection occur? What are the two most important questions to ask?

The Internet acts as a curtain and allows people to appear successful when not being so.

The Internet also allows live connection with people to get real feedback quickly to confirm that “numbers” are accurate.

As the world is now a database, the temptation to lump decisions increases. Fortunately, the opportunity to sort the database and connect with people also improves.

Hopefully, you will not be tempted to become a restaurant marketing wizard of oz and use the new technology to connect.

Michael Hartzell – Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, restaurant marketing coach. Co-Author of “The Reality of ROI & Social Media Marketing”. Member of the American Marketing Association. Read more at www.michaelhartzell.com/restaurant-marketing

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

Restaurant Marketing is Inbound Marketing – Daily Tip for Monday July 19th.

Posted on 19. Jul, 2010 by Guest Blogger in Daily Tip, Inside Hospitality, Marketing, Operations

Post by guest blogger Michael Hartzell

Restaurant Marketing is Inbound Marketing

OR should I say instead: Inbound Marketing is Restaurant Marketing?

To train a restaurant owner or manager how to be the best inbound marketer on the planet, I believe you put a manager in a marginal restaurant with low sales and tell them: “You have $50 a month marketing budget, low staff, bad operations and sales are down. Turn it around yesterday.”

Yes. This is a part of my past. More than once. More than twice. In fact… let me count – - - Too many to remember.

Inbound marketing in my mind starts a bit like this:

Ignasius wakes up in the morning. He is already hungry. It is in fact part of the human condition that he must eat to stay comfortable through the day. You could say that he is … well, addicted to food. In other words, he will not go a day without taking action to reduce his personal craving. Ignasius woke up this very morning and as usual he is already pining for a double tall latte with just a bit of sugar.

Will he have time to make a latte for himself? Is he feeling up to it? Of course he knows that caffeine alone will not be enough and he must also have something called breakfast. Soon after that there will be lunch and how lucky is Ignasius, because he gets to have dinner just a few hours after that!

Food stays at the edge of his mind all day long. It is part of his passion. Eat or die.

Now comes the best part. A restaurant serves food. Restaurant owners have a ready and willing audience. There is already a top of mind passion and need in place. This is what Inbound Marketing is about. Finding a passionate audience already looking to fill their needs and wants.

Ignasius might ask during the day about 15 minutes before lunch, “Hey, do you know any good barbecue restaurants around here?” Someone will refer Ignasius to a location they feel will not only meet his need but also a place they can proudly show off. (They know the best place to go, after all.)

For Inbound Marketing, someone will type their passion or interest into the Google search box online. They already know what they are interested in. The world is a giant database. GoogleFriend (my new name for Google by the way) refers the searcher to the point of interest. (Along with a million options.)

Inbound marketing is about getting found at the right time by the person searching. A website can get found by having links to a website or a referral via email, Facebook or Twitter.

Restaurant marketing is about getting found at the right time by the person who is hungry and has a pang for a specific flavor. A restaurant can get found by having a referral which could also be in the form of a link on Facebook, email or Twitter.

Inbound marketing is about “converting”. The person coming to a website page must be impressed, have trust, find it easy to use, and definitely believe there is value.

Restaurant marketing relies on every aspect of what a visitor sees online and offline. Even the flowers that die, the broken tiles, the dark exterior, the smelly bathrooms, the 20 year old menu can add up to, “We heard good things but let’s go across the street. That restaurant looks better.”

Inbound marketing is about measuring results and eliminating the bad while doing more of what makes people glad. Measuring Inbound Marketing can be done with Hubspot software (I’m Hubspot Certified so I had to mention it) or a variety of other tools such as Google Analytics.

Restaurant marketing is about measuring results and eliminating the bad while doing more of what makes people glad. GuestPulse is not the only tool Inside Hospitality provides. Every business will have its own Point of Sale computer system that breaks down every aspect into measurements. What were people interested in?

When restaurant owners hears about “social media” and the various tools, they should shout with glee. Social media tools are key to Inbound Marketing. If the purpose is to “get found”, “convert” and “measure results” and social media tools help to make this happen more quickly, then why the heck wouldn’t a restaurant owner say, “I am going to Vegas!”

If you could double your marketing speed and reduce the time to test and measure by half, would you take the time to learn how? That is your next move: “Learn how to leverage the social media tools to my best advantage.” (I hear there is a Restaurant & Hospitality Social Media BootCamp in Las Vegas)

Will you think about how to listen better and connect better?

I hope so. Ignasius wants to eat at your restaurant but he does not know where you are or what you serve. The buzz has not yet reached his ears. Don’t worry. There are thousands of other restaurants that will take care of Ignasius. You keep working hard and maybe he will find you. Maybe.

P.S.

Remember last week? All about HTFCSM Labeling?

See the snapshots below. Notice how people will talk. You don’t even know they are. Sure, you can save time and have everything delivered to your inbox. www.guestpulse.com (free trial)

PPSS

I know. It sounds a bit like a commercial doesn’t it? Sorry.

I have learned bucket loads over the years. It starts with a spark. These came from events, workshops, college classes and people on the street in the community. There was one common rule for the best ideas: “Go outside the normal path.” Restaurant ownership can make a person feel trapped (and indispensable.) At least twice a year, go where you can get fresh thoughts and think about the path you are on. You will double business just as I have.

Michael Hartzell –, Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, restaurant marketing coach. Member of the American Marketing. Read more at www.michaelhartzell.com/restaurant-marketing

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

P.S. You don’t know it all. | Daily Tip for Wednesday July 14th.

Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by Inside Hospitality in Daily Tip, Marketing

Today’s Tip: Ask for help. It won’t hurt.

No one is born with the innate knowledge and understanding of being able to cost out a menu, determine a theoretical food cost, or market a restaurant.

These skills are learned and mastered over time, usually a lot of time.

Many restaurant operators, managers and owners are often the last to use a simple word that we are all taught at a young age, Help. You learn by doing and observing something being done correctly over time.

There is no shame in asking for help, assistance, clarification, guidance, or whatever you prefer to call it. To succeed in the restaurant business (and in life) you need to humble yourself and ask for help. And when it comes time to ask, make sure you ask someone who understands the application and not just theory.

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

Daily Tip for Tuesday July 13th.- HTFCSM Labeling Guarantees Restaurant Marketing Success

Posted on 13. Jul, 2010 by Guest Blogger in Daily Tip, Marketing

Post by guest blogger Michael Hartzell

Erase everything about how you analyze your restaurant business for a moment.

Bring it down to its simplest form.

Name all the reasons someone would possibly walk into the door of your restaurant.

Hunger

Thirst

Fitness

Celebration (Party)

Show off to someone

Meeting

Are there others?

Here are the labels: HTFCSM

Every transaction is counted not by what guests eat, not by how many are dining … but by their purpose. Each gets a label. If hunger and thirst are the primary motivators, you can satisfy your guests easily since they are simply visiting for personal maintenance.

Do you know the current ratios? What percentage of your guests come simply for “maintenance” and could eat anywhere? Do you know why your place exists in the mind of those who visit?

If your restaurant primarily exists for what I call “maintenance food” then you will have a tough time getting more money from anyone. (Low check averages and discounts will be your motto.)

If your restaurant is a place to have meetings, celebrations and give someone a chance to show off, then your marketing changes. Your chance that the menu price point is less of an issue improves.

There are some restaurants that should put up a sign that says “Food Maintenance” instead of “restaurant”. “We are here to … fill you up.” What a concept. Just fill them up and move them out. J

Next step in breaking it down to its simplest form:

Who is the boss? Who influences your business the most? Who makes business happen?

Look very closely at your restaurant.

Here is a test question:

Ask the management team: Which person do you learn from the most?

The owner?
Your peers?
The persons on the team?

When I have asked this question over the years, the majority of managers have said: The team.

Who influences the return of those guests whom you have labeled HTFCSM? Is it the manager, the owner or team members? You could reverse the question and ask who influences the guest not to return? (It is no surprise to hear the team or staff since they have 100% contact with the guests.)

If the team members have a great influence on the boss and they are also a primary determining factor in whether guests return, will this change your relationship with those on the team? Or will you continue to view them as simply soldiers following orders?

Here is my verdict: Treat every staff person as if they were the boss. If you look very carefully, they already in many ways determine the course of your business whether you like it or not.

Now add social media tools where texting, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, blogging and review sites can be txt, liked, followed, tweeted and commented on by anyone on the staff.

Anyone who owns a restaurant must know the REAL reason for the guests visiting. HTFCSM
Any restaurant business has an army to blog, tweet, comment and review.
Any restaurant owner better look very carefully at who is truly influencing the business and ensure nothing gets in the way of their success.

Sure, you need a leader but that leader must understand the power which is at their disposal.

Don’t forget HTFCSM labeling. You will be surprised at what you learn.

PS to you the reader:

This is another test for you to follow. It is about branding and being found in the search engines. The unique phrase of “HTFCSM labeling” should come up within a very short time after this blog is posted. You can ensure this by bookmarking this blog post on www.delicious.com, tweeting it on Twitter, sharing it on www.digg.com and sharing on Google Buzz.

Google Caffeine is so fast that it responds in minutes. Do you have a very unique brand, phrase or menu item that you want to impress your community with and have NO competition? Pick something fun and relevant to your community and begin to tweet or blog about it. Create products with the name.

While in the beginning there will be no one looking for your unique name and you will not be found, over time you will dominate the term as you make it a household name in your community.

Here is the alternate plan: Try to rank in Google for a term everyone is trying to be found for. A small business will NOT be found on Google for a popular term. Chances are the term will be only more difficult and you will NEVER be found in Google. Seafood Tampa Bay for small restaurant businesses would be always tough to beat. How about seabayfo?

If you think this is crazy then take another look at the big names today. Squidoo? Google? pipl?

You decide: In 24 months you will dominate your market with a unique name for a product no one else serves. It will be your signature and it will become bigger than the word fish in your community.

This was just an example. Make up your own unique name here: http://www.bustaname.com/

Michael Hartzell –, Inbound Marketing Certified Professional, entrepreneur, writer, speaker, restaurant marketing coach. Member of the American Marketing. Read more at www.michaelhartzell.com/restaurant-marketing