While these general factors mattered most to customers of all ages and ethnicities, Mintel also found that different demographic groups have different things they look for when choosing a restaurant. For example, about 93 percent of those aged 65 and up say noise level is important to them when dining out, compared to 82 percent of respondents overall. And while only 40 percent of respondents overall say the kind of music played over the sound system matters, more than half (52 percent) of those aged 18-24 say it makes a difference in where they choose to eat.

Hispanic diners are more likely than their non-Hispanic counterparts to say that decor (70 percent vs. 65 percent), dress code (54 percent vs 44 percent), music (50 percent vs 39 percent) and children’s activities (40 percent vs. 24 percent) matter when choosing a restaurant.

Do you own a sit-down restaurant? Then you need to know that a whopping 92 percent say it’s important not to feel rushed when dining there.

More than two-thirds (71 percent) of consumers say coupons or special pricing are a deciding factor in where to eat.

A similar number (68 percent) care less about the atmosphere than about the food when choosing a restaurant.

What turns customers off from ever returning to your restaurant? Dirty table settings (76 percent), rude wait staff (74 percent) and dirty bathrooms (57 percent) were the top offenders.

What does this study mean to your restaurant?

• Start by addressing the issues that matter most to customers in general–cleanliness, menu selections and comfortable seating—before drilling down to specific customer demographics, such as seniors or Hispanics.
• Investigate customization options. For instance, can you dim the lights and turn up the music during dayparts that attract younger customers, and turn the lighting up and the music down during times when seniors make up most of your patrons? If you haven’t already done so, different soundtracks for different times of day can work wonders. Or maybe you can break your dining room into different areas, some with more sound-baffling elements and brighter lighting and others that are noisier and dimmer.
• With Hispanic customers making up a big segment of the restaurant-going population, consider offering children’s activity books or placemats in Spanish as well as English to appeal to Spanish-speaking families.

Image by Flickr user dalbera (Creative Commons)

One valuable marketing/branding exercise that most companies don’t bother with is creating customer personas. Customer personas help ensure:

• The content you create is valuable and relevant to your customers
• Your products and services are meeting their needs
• Your value proposition and calls-to-action resonate

In short, creating customer personas makes marketing easier and more effective. Here are 4 steps to create basic customer personas – don’t worry, it’s not that hard!

1 – Research

Though you probably have a fairly good idea of who your customers are, do a little research. Look up customer profiles on LinkedIn, send them surveys, and/or conduct interviews. Interviews can be done fairly quickly with a handful of customers who represent a range of your client base.

2 – Collect basic data

You’ll want to gather a lot of basic information:

• Job title and industry
• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Geographic location
• Education
• Hobbies and interests

3 – Dig deeper

Next, dig a little deeper to uncover your customers’ goals and challenges – this is something I always do with my clients when I begin working with them – and any obstacles or objections that might stop them from buying (cost, time, resources).

4 – Segment your personas

Now that you’ve done your research, you should have a few personas. Name them and compile separate profiles for each. Profiles should include:

• demographic and background information
• how you’ll overcome those obsacles that might stop the sale
• marketing messages that focus on how you solve their challenges and help them achieve their goals

Have you created personas? How has it helped you improve your marketing?

Image courtesy of technomarketer.typepad.com

The poll of small and midsized business decision-makers whose companies use mobile devices to access data remotely found 88 percent say it has a positive effect on their company’s productivity; just 1 percent say it has a negative effect.

The three most common business uses of devices are

1. Keeping business contacts organized (31 percent)
2. Scheduling (26 percent)
3. Keeping a task list and/or assigning tasks to specific employees (23 percent)

Interestingly, despite the widespread use of mobile devices, the study suggests there’s still a ways to go when it comes to harnessing the full functionality of mobile devices for business tasks. For example, nearly 58 percent of respondents say mobile devices are “not at all useful” for viewing their calendars or tracking their tasks, 63 percent say they are not at all useful for organizing or tracking project status and details, and more than 63 percent say they are not at all useful for accepting payments.

Considering the many apps and tools that are available to handle these tasks, it sounds to me like either employees need some education on what is available for their projects and platforms, or companies need to create better apps and tools because the ones that exist are falling short somehow.

Who’s providing the mobile devices that employees are using for work? More than two-thirds (69 percent) of workers use company-supplied devices; one-third use their own devices for work but don’t get reimbursed for them; and 17 percent use their own devices, which are reimbursed by the company.

If you think employees aren’t using their personal devices for work, consider this: The Sage survey found that smartphones, whether they are provided by the company or by the employee, are used for work nearly 60 percent of the time. That means your company’s sensitive data could be at risk if employees aren’t keeping their smartphones updated with virus protection or following common-sense practices like safeguarding passwords and logging out of apps when they’re done using them. Remind all employees that your business’s computer security policy should be carried through to their personal phones as well—both for your protection and theirs.

Image by Flickr user mikigo (Creative Commons)

This May we were honored to have Jill Foster, owner of Live Your Talk, and the founder of Women Grow Business back with us again to lead the discussion on the chat topic whose popularity is second only to the State of Women-Owned Businesses – public speaking.

Jill’s unique slant for us this time was a critical skill many small business people find themselves lacking in – storytelling. The idea was to learn to have your stories for public speaking ready before the opportunities to speak even come along, so you and your team can always be ready to take advantage of them.

Judging by her most retweeted answers, the message was well received: the two most popular tweets were her answers to questions about how to quickly come up with content for speeches.

A6 – footnote: Host 10 minute lightning talks mthly on ideas you champion #wgbiz, as way to carve out your ‘talk of a lifetime.’

— Jill Foster (@Jillfoster) May 13, 2013

The second one even came with a cheat-sheet style post and some video:

A2 – planning tip: How to prepare a 5 minute speech (or #ignite talk). Think passion & 620 words #wgbizow.ly/eiUt2

— Jill Foster (@Jillfoster) May 13, 2013

Missed the Chat? No Worries! The Day is Saved, Thanks to….

The kind folks at Internet Media Labs.

In light of the news that changes at Twitter could change the way we access Twitter chats, it was also our first test of the Beta tool oneQube Smart Stream, which is poised to replace both TweetChat and Tweetgrid.

As such, our wrap-up will be a bit different today as their General Manager of Social Marketing and recent Women Grow Business guest expert, Amy Vernon, was kind enough to provide us with an online hashtag report on our #wgbiz hashtag activity, using the full oneQube suite.

Our 416 tweets reached potentially 1,70,000 people with 5.3 million impressions via 112 participants. It was one of the liveliest chats we’ve had in our history, which is traced back to both how popular Jill Foster’s guest chats always are, as well as the additional exposure from announcing the chat on Web.com.

You can view the chat online by clicking through to the oneQube report, which shows our most active participants, topics, demographics, popular tweets, the transcript of tweets, and links to community profiles. There’s no way to export the data yet, but it seems to print out as a PDF fairly well.

Attend the Next Women Grow Business Twitter Chat

Our next chat is June 10th – stay tuned for details on our next guest expert.

Every second Monday of the month at noon, the Women Grow Business community has a Twitter chat. We usually have a guest expert, announced on our blog prior to the chat. You can subscribe to our blog, our Facebook or Twitter page using the links in the upper right corner of the page, to get the announcement of our next guest delivered to you.

To be reminded when the chat is approaching, whether it’s on Twitter or Google+, sign up for free on our Eventbrite page.

How do you follow The #WgBiz Twitter chats?

1. Log into Twitter, oneQube SmartStream, Tweetdeck, Tweetchat, Tweetgrid, or any other Twitter tool that lets you isolate a hashtag.
2. Follow our Twitter hashtag #wgbiz.
3. Arrive as early as 11:45 a.m. to introduce yourself, send us a link to your site, and share your latest project, as well as to meet the other chatters.
4. Make sure you’re following the host, in this case me (@wgbiz is the official channel, while @Tinu is my personal handle), and featured guest(s). This way, you can easily follow the conversation, send questions during the chat, or follow up  later.
5. Have fun!  Our free twitter chats are meant to be educational, sure, but also lighter fare than a teleconference or webinar.