MenuDrive News

Many companies now know that Facebook can be a great marketing tool to attract people to order visit their store. The only obstacle is gaining a solid fan base on Facebook to advertise to. You can have the best marketing ideas for Facebook, but they will not work if you do not have a base to market towards. In order to expand their fan base on Facebook, many restaurants have decided to give away free food for people who like them on Facebook.

Just last week, Pizza Hut gave away a free P’Zone to anyone who “liked” them on Facebook. They advertised this on TV and also on in-store ads. The goal was to spend on advertising now to be able to advertise to lots of people for free later. The outcome of this new breed of advertising will remain unknown until more restaurants such as Pizza Hut test the waters. Despite the uncertainty, other restaurants are beginning to follow this trend as well.

The second early adopting restaurant giving out free food in exchange for Facebook “likes” is Margaritas Mexican Restaurant. This chain, based in New Hampshire, has a Facebook fanpage for each location. As each location achieves its goal of fans, all the fans receive a free gift. For the first goal, fans get a free appetizer. For the second goal, fans receive a free entree, and for reaching the final goal all the fans receive two free entrees. The promotion runs until the end for August. So far the chain has gained about 1,400 fans as a whole since the beginning of August.

I think promoting people to “like” you on Facebook is a great way to build up your fan base for future advertising. With just one click on Facebook you can advertise to thousands of people and the best part of it is that it is FREE! If companies must give away free items for people to “like” them on Facebook, it might benefit them in the long run to do that. Incurring the cost now may seem harsh, but if it leads to free advertising later, it just might be worth it.

Tim from MenuDrive

Businesses are now hiring again, which is great news to all those unemployed people out there. This may be great for the unemployed, but for hiring managers within companies, this means more competition for workers. Wendy’s has recently had trouble with finding workers to staff all of their stores across the country, until recently. Wendy’s decided to take their application process to the internet with a company called JobApp Network, Inc. This allows all of the applications to be streamed online and allows the managers of the stores to not have to worry about fumbling through paper applications anymore. On top of what the company previously had on their applications, JobApp Network also adds a psychometric analysis, background check, and provides government compliance management. This is great for the managers because they now know that the potential employees that they are looking at are already pre-screened and qualified.

Another great feature that JobApp Network adds is the ability for the head HR Director, Scott McGarvey, to be able to see how the managers of each store handle the application and interview process as well as check if they are up to par with the rest of the company. Before the managers would just have all the paperwork and there was no real way to see if it was the manager’s fault that the store could not stay fully staffed. McGarvey’s favorite feature is the all-in-one hiring marketing kit. This includes cards, signs, and window clings that are sent to the store to help show when they are hiring for people to see and apply. For people who do not have easy access to the internet, JobApp Network also has a portal that people can apply to which easily gives them the same chance of being hired as someone with access to the internet does.

JobApp Network, Inc is a great company that helps people find jobs in today’s struggling economy. I think that companies can really benefit from their services and keep an eye on what their managers are doing. For all of you that have little marketing knowledge, their all-in-one hiring kit is a great way for you to be able to easily access lots of people to inform them you are hiring. This is best for franchise type restaurants or people who own more than one location, but it could also help people who only own one store as well. This can give all restaurants a little advantage in trying to reach the best employees, and every little advantage can go a long way.

In case you haven’t heard, Domino’s Pizza is running a social media experiment that would make most PR managers cringe. They have rented a 4,630 square-foot billboard in Time Square in New York City to post unedited comments about their pizza. The billboard is a live stream of comments from people as they post them on Domino’s website and can be either good or bad. Domino’s CEO Patrick Doyle states that, “Our customers deserve, and have come to expect, honesty from us. And when it comes to the idea of posting direct feedback in Time Square, it really doesn’t get more honest and open than this.” Doyle sure isn’t lying there. I have heard the saying that no publicity is bad publicity, but this takes that a little extreme. There will be a person monitoring the comments and removing ones that either contain offensive/obscene content, is irrelevant to Domino’s Pizza, or is viewed as self-promotional content. Because of this, whose to say that this same person won’t be removing poor comments in an attempt to make the franchise look better? We will never really know this, but it is as close to full disclosure as Domino’s can get. I think it will be interesting to see how long Domino’s leaves this billboard up and if they last until their goal date of August 23, 2011. As for me, I will sit back and watch as one of America’s leading companies in online sales and advertisements continues to change the industry of how we market to the public.
Do you think that this is a good idea? Why or why not?