Recently, after spending the weekend talking to other business owners, social media folks and marketing leaders in different industries, I visited a client’s restaurant for a very late lunch on Monday. It was perfect timing. As it happened, we ran into the bakery manager who was testing out some new treats, and she let us taste a new chocolate concoction. The dessert she was letting the staff (and lucky bystanders and restaurant consultants) taste was great, and the experience of testing something as it was created and developed was amazing–especially something for the bakery case!

But even better than the dessert was the reminder of a concept businesses often forget to use. To be successful, we must LEVERAGE.

What does LEVERAGING mean?

One can be over-leveraged financially, and that’s not a good thing. But in this case, I’m referring to “leverage” as the ability to move faster or grow more quickly or make sales more efficiently by spending in the currency you have. In every business there is something – whether intellectual property, food, room nights, beverages, event tickets, etc. – that are worth more outside of your business than within.

Leveraging Food Costs in the Restaurant Biz

For a restaurant, that means spending in food whenever possible. Instead of spending $1400 for a magazine ad where ROI is difficult to measure, why not spend $100 in food costs to reach a specific target customer group? Not only do you spend less in overall dollars, but you may be simply using food costs that would have been wasted anyway since food waste is a very real portion of any restaurant’s overall budget.

With that in mind, what if you took excess cookie samples to the law office around the corner or gave away one free pastry tray a week to a deserving office in your neighborhood. What if you gave away a free appetizer through a daily drawing or simply offered dessert samples throughout the lunch and dinner hours to existing guests as leverage to make the upsell?

Recently, one of our restaurant clients ran a last-second Twitter promotion targeting college students. To help spread the word quickly, we offered a free pizza for the first person to re-tweet the message. It turned out that two tweets basically tied due to a technological blip, so we gave a way two free pizzas instead. Let’s assume that the pizzas hold about $4 in actual food costs (not counting wait staff, business overhead, etc. when considered as a menu item). In this case, the folks who won the free pizzas brought in groups of 6 and 12 respectively leading to a direct ROI of more than $200 in additional sales on our $8 in leveraged food costs. This doesn’t even count the other sales they helped generate through their social media participation.

Other Ways to Leverage In Business

Business owners can leverage any asset that is of more value outside the business than within. This means your time, expertise, food costs, employees time and skills, etc. are all fair game. I believe that, as business owners, one of the most critical things we can do is to leverage our time. As an example, I use social media to convert more clients and maintain a much larger network reach than I could have imagined five years ago before Facebook and Twitter.

Marianna and I leverage our time to create opportunity for you. An airplane ride like this one (I am currently flying back from Florida) is filled with getting blogs written, e-mails returned and photos cropped, edited and tagged – tasks that don’t require the Internet. It’s amazing the things we can do when we steal time from a wasted time category and turn it into profitable activity.

It’s great how the little moments that were formerly wasted, can be used profitably, but that also means that as business owners, we must make a real point to relax and turn off sometimes. Some of you know that I can’t seem to free myself from my cell phone at any given time, but we all know there’s a time for disconnecting and turning it all off.

I took a little vacation this month, where you weren’t able to get me by phone, email, Facebook, or Twitter…  I leveraged that time to recharge, stop thinking about old work, spend time with my family, clear my brain, eat some good food, and return–and turn back on!–ready to find opportunities for new work!

How can you use the concept of “leveraging” to improve your business today?

Photo Credit: shortlake

Social Media: A Sprint AND a Marathon

For the past couple of weeks Andy and I have been rolling out an exciting local social media strategy and engagement campaign for a local restaurant management group here in the Jackson, Miss. metro area. It has been a BLAST to work locally and to work with such a passionate client who is ALL in – and totally get it. It’s a rare treat to get to play in our own backyard, so to speak, and tonight the treat was all ours.

After a day out of town to work on-site helping a brick and mortar boutique launch their new e-commerce project, Andy and I opted to take our middle daughter out to dinner at our clients’ cafe (one of three restaurants in the group). For this particular restaurant, we are six days into the launch of a Facebook Page presence with a goal to increase guests IN the restaurant during this immediate push. We were looking for immediate results – so the past week has been a sprint to get that initial boost. Our fan base topped well over 1,000 today (celebration all around) with interactions between ownership, staff and guests along with rave reviews from guests exploding all over the Page wall almost continuously. But that’s obviously not our endgame. Our endgame has everything to do with measuring a bottom-line increase, right?

So, tonight we walked in, and the typically slow dinner hour (this is definitely a place primarily known for breakfast and lunch) was bustling. By bustling,  I mean that most tables were filled at 5:45 pm. By the time we settled in and walked up to the counter, two registers were three deep in customers. A few minutes later, the tables were full, the order counter was filled with happily networking guests, the restaurant was filling orders quickly, busing tables efficiently, and serving up the most beautiful fruit salad that has ever landed on my table anywhere (Did I mention there was yellow watermelon in my salad?).

As I watched, the enthusiastic shift manager skillfully navigated and managed his staff through a much busier than expected Tuesday night crowd. He led by example by filling needs where they happened: working the cash register, order window, kitchen AND not missing an opportunity to sell (out of) day-old and “after 6″ discounted pastries, take-out and much more. When we left (they needed our table, or we would have watched until the end), all tables in the main restaurant area were full, there were people ordering and the food looked amazing. The manager texted us later to let us know that tonight was a “major improvement” over the previous week. (Yes, that’s text messaging, and yes, we text with our clients all the time. It’s part of our accessibility motto – we also Facebook chat and Tweet). P.S. It was a RAINY/STORMY evening this week!

So, the sprint was a winner… The initial boost appears to have happened… And for us, it was definitely a runner’s high.

But here’s my point.

Sure, we won the sprint. But we’re also staring straight into the miles and miles of marathon that lie ahead. You see, launching social media right means launching with a sprinter’s attitude. Go big or go home. Cross promote off-line, draw a crowd, grab attention – all the while, be thinking LONG TERM. If you don’t continue to deliver that promise long-term, keep it relevant, keep it valuable and most of all, keep it REAL, then over the long-haul, social media will kill you. (Why? Because you will have done the worst thing: you will have disappointed your customers because they thought you were going to do something – that you didn’t.)

Everyone says this: It’s NOT about numbers REALLY. It’s about long-term relationships. And that is all oh so true. But when you get together a group of folks who CARE about your business through a Twitter following or a Facebook Fan Page or some other method, you’ve gotten together a group of folks with whom you can engage, educate, cross-promote, convert – over and over and over again… They can talk, tell their friends, recommend you, participate with you and help you build your community. They will be more loyal, and your retention rates will go through the roof.

IF YOU STAY IN TOUCH.

What good are a bunch of followers and fans if you don’t talk to them? Carry on conversations (those work two ways), say thank you, reward them, engage them… Ask their opinions, give them exclusive updates and behind the scenes information. You certainly can’t do all of that in a week (the sprint) and expect it to last for the lifetime of a customer. Every week is a new week, and a new opportunity to be a better friend, a more valuable resource, a greater source of comfort, a more relevant alternative, the go-to guy, a more important connection, a more impressive experience…the first and last thing they think about in your category.

When you examine your social media strategy – and really, any marketing strategy – do you launch with a big, fast sprint that sets the stage for a win at the marathon?

What say you? What have you done to make the sprint successful? To maintain the discipline of the marathon?

Watching Twitter earlier this week, you couldn’t help but notice that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was making a big announcement. (Note: I’m not going to get in to politics on this blog, you can ask me about that later, but it’s not polite dinnertime conversation. We are talking strategy only…)

She’s stepping down as Governor of her state, and she basically told us she has big plans. So what does that do? Well it creates a buzz. Remember another guy that did this. He said he was going to make a big announcement, but he was going to send it out via Twitter. Yeah, I think it was a Vice-Presidential running mate selection, oh, and the guy using Social Media (and using it well) won. You do remember Barak Obama’s use of Twitter right?

So, I checked tight-lipped Sarah Palin’s Twitter stats since her announcement that she’s stepping down. Well turns out she’s gotten quite a bump in followers. Seems she’s started Tweeting a few times a day, and used her Facebook Fan page to give out a little more info, that took the press 18 hours to figure out where it came from. Interestingly enough, her stats indicate an almost 20% jump in followers since she made her statement on Friday, July 3rd.

By creating a place where people feel like they are going to get the most up-to-the-minute information, Sarah Palin is setting her self up to be the gate keeper of her own press info, and she’s been Tweeting out bits of informationn that the press can’t seem to keep up with. It’s great strategy, and we’ll be watching to see what she does.

So, what can we learn from all this. Well it’s something that came up in tonight’s #BlogChat with @MackCollier. Make folks feel like you are a real person, and have a little inside scoop. They said it increases the WOM (That’s guru-speak for Word-Of-Mouth) marketing buzz.

What can you do with this? Well, what do customers want to know about your business? Special deals they can only get using Social Media, insider scoop on your business plans, and ventures. It’s a great way to get the buzz out there, and have more people that are following your brand, and business. Be personable, and work it!

Read the Mashable Story: Sarah Palin Shuns Press: Talks to Twitter, Facebook Instead