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Toast Pos Installation | Little Gecko Technology
Toast POS installation is a straightforward process. It involves setting up the hardware, installing the software, and configuring the system. Trained technicians handle the installation, ensuring a seamless transition. Once installed, businesses in Boston can enjoy the benefits of Toast, including efficient order management, easy payment processing, and effective inventory tracking to optimize their operations. We offer comprehensive IT solutions that cater to all your business needs. For more information, contact us at 617-749-7139.
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Downtown Boston’s Forthcoming Food Hall Reveals Killer Chef Lineup
Tiffani Faison will have two restaurants at High Street Place, opening this fall
The Year of the Food Hall is certainly getting underway. Time Out Market, coming soon to Fenway, has already begun teasing its star-studded lineup, and now High Street Place is coming out swinging with its own initial announcement.
Opening in downtown Boston in fall 2019 at 100 High St. in a five-story atrium that connects to 160 Federal St., High Street Place will take up over 20,000 square feet, accommodating 20 food stalls and 500 seats. The High Street Place team — which includes Rockpoint Group, Rockhill Management, and CANAdev, with Boston Realty Advisors working on the leasing — announced the first 11 vendors today. Buckle up:
Dive Bar and Tenderoni’s from Tiffani Faison, who is behind Fenway’s Sweet Cheeks, Tiger Mama, Fool’s Errand, and the forthcoming Orfano: Dive Bar will be a raw bar — a “Mason-Dixon water fight,” per today’s announcement, pitting North and South Atlantic classics against one another. Think po’ boys, lobster rolls, and peel ‘n’ eat shrimp. Meanwhile, Tenderoni’s is meant to be a ’70s and ’80s throwback pizza-and-grinder joint.
Daiquiris & Daisies from Daren Swisher and Joseph Cammarata, who were Eater Boston’s 2015 Bartenders of the Year for their work together at Hojoko: A cocktail bar featuring “creative and classic cocktails with seasonal twists.” The cocktails of the bar’s name will make appearances, of course, including a pineapple daiquiri and an amaro-based daisy.
Haley Jane and Wheelhouse from the team behind popular downtown burger spot Wheelhouse: Haley Jane will feature fried chicken based on Wheelhouse’s existing Thursday fried chicken sandwich special. Look forward to Nashville hot, Korean-style, and Buffalo hot honey fried chicken sandwiches. In addition, they’ll have a new Wheelhouse location at High Street Place.
The Farmacy Cafe, from a shipping container in the Seaport (formerly known as Jubali): A cafe serving breakfast toasts, rice and salad bowls, CBD-infused kombucha, Ayurvedic items, and more.
Fuji Sushi, from the JP Fuji Group: This will be the ninth location for the growing group of Fuji restaurants, which serve sushi and lots more. At High Street Place, Fuji will feature bestsellers from existing locations as well as some new exclusives. There will also be sake, beer, and whisky available.
Mother Juice: This will be the fourth location for the juice shop, which is also in Kendall Square, Back Bay, and at the Boston Public Market. Expect juices, smoothies, toasts, breakfast bowls, and more.
Noodle BOS: Noodle and rice bowls with vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. There will be dishes like tonkotsu ramen, curry ramen, tempura udon, and more, including Southeast Asia-inspired street food.
Northeast of the Border: This will be the first non-truck location for Northeast of the Border, which will be serving Mexican tacos and guacamole.
Pennypacker’s: With a food truck and a Somerville location, Pennypacker’s will expand to High Street Place with its popular porchetta sandwich as well as other sandwiches, salads, and snacks.
When High Street Place opens this fall, it will also play host to live music, book signings, and other events. There will also be a seasonal patio outdoors, and the indoor space will allow for open-air dining, weather permitting, thanks to a retractable window system.
Stay tuned for updates as the opening gets closer, and review the food hall guide for more information on other projects in development, including the imminent debut of Time Out Market in Fenway and the eventual arrival of the Beat in Dorchester, L Street Station in South Boston, and more.
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Toast POS | TechRadar
Toast POS | TechRadar
Boston-based Toast is an all-in-one POS system with a focus on catering to the needs of restaurants and other businesses in the food service industry. The company was founded by three former Endeca employees after Oracle acquired the software firm in 2011. Toast’s founders initially set out to create a consumer app centered on mobile payments, customer loyalty and promotions that could integrate…
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Food Ordering Kiosks Market: Top Industry Players, Revenue By 2027
Food ordering kiosks are self-service kiosks at cafes and restaurants enabled with digital touch screens where customers can place their orders instead of standing or waited in line to place an order. Self-service food ordering kiosks play an important role as a point of sale in businesses. The use of kiosks as POS in restaurants and cafes helps to increase the business. The food ordering kiosk is an advanced and reliable technology in the food and restaurant industry to reduce the food ordering time and improve restaurant delivery services. The food ordering kiosk is expected to be adopted by large quick service restaurants. These kiosks reduce human errors while ordering and manage the orders as well, besides maintaining the order history of all customers.
The food ordering kiosk will act as full service restaurant point of sale (POS) solution, quick service point of sale (POS), Bars and clubs point of sale (POS), brewery point of sale (POS). The best kiosk software has multiple food menu configurations, prompts for add-on items, product photos, and upselling. Multiple kiosk vendors are expected to provide customized kiosk solutions for quick service restaurants.
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Food Ordering Kiosks Market – Competitive Landscape
Toast, Inc.
Founded in 2011, Toast, Inc. is based in Boston, Massachusetts, the U.S. Toast Inc. provides software and hardware for food ordering solutions. The company offers the “Toast Go handheld” device, terminals, kiosks, guest facing displays, and kitchen display systems. The company also generates revenue from point of sales, reporting and analytics services, payroll and team management, online delivery and ordering system, and loyalty system.
TouchBistro
Founded in 2010, TouchBistro is a global provider of POS solutions in quick service restaurants. The company provides quick service kiosks, bars and club kiosks, food truck solutions, brewery POS solutions, and full service restaurants. It also provides the solutions in online ordering integration, kitchen display systems, digital menu boards, and setup & implementation services.
NCR Corporation
Founded in 1884, NCR Corporation provides software solution banks, restaurants, and retail sector. The company offers a restaurant solution which includes cloud-enabled enterprise POS, back office work of restaurants, consumer engagement solutions, self-ordering solutions, digital connected services, and restaurant hardware solutions.
Alberta Payments, LLC
Alberta Payments LLC is based in New Jersey, the U.S. It provides retail management solutions such as point-of-sale systems and merchant processing services in small to medium retail businesses. The company provides POS solutions for inventory management, loss prevention, scan data programs, mobile applications, and food ordering kiosk systems.
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Quick service restaurants adopting food ordering kiosks to increase business
Increasing demand for food ordering kiosk systems in large quick service restaurants to increase the footfall is driving the driving the growth of the market. The food ordering kiosk is expected to increase the business of restaurants by reducing the processing time and enhancing the customer experience. Several solution providers are expected to provide advanced kiosks for food ordering. The trend observed in food ordering kiosks such as Cali Burger launched the face recognized food ordering kiosk which is the advance technological growth in kiosk for ordering food by own.
Integration and pricing of customized kiosks restraining the growth of the market in small and medium businesses
The integration of the food ordering kiosk system with existing systems and numerous issues in the operating system is hindering the growth of the market. Several solution providers are offering customized solutions for the food industry which increases the cost of the overall system. Increasing cost of the system with technological growth is expected to hamper the market growth in small and medium businesses.
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POS Reviews For 2018
A POS system shows your customers you’re on the cutting edge.
A restaurant Point of Sale System (POS) is designed specifically with the food industry in mind.
A POS enables you to process payments as well as manage your front and back of house operations.
Over the last several years, POS systems have grown to include pay at the table options as well. With the ability to operate without registers or computer terminals, restaurants can now meet their customers’ needs in multiple ways. (tweet this)
Because of this added functionality, it’s more important than ever to find a POS that is reliable, and one you can depend on. You want it to process payments quickly and easily, especially if your patrons are using it.
According to Michael Oshins, a faculty member at Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration, “The payment system is the technological heart of the restaurant. This is why it’s so important to your business.
To help you sort through the solutions we look at POS reviews for 2018.
Toast
A well-known POS, Toast offers an option for quick service restaurants like sandwich shops, ice cream parlors, and coffee shops at $79/month/terminal.
They also offer a full-service restaurant POS that has additional features including a tie to the front of house, kitchen and bar processes. For example, you can manage tables and orders to the kitchen and bar. This is $99/month/terminal.
You can also add on online ordering and delivery options starting at $50/month.
Toast simplifies all of your restaurant operations by combining POS, front of house, back of house and all guest-facing technology such as paying their bill and tipping in one platform.
All of this is available to you to monitor in real time and from any location.
What’s more, you can add on an inventory feature for just $79 more per month. You’ll love the advanced features like monitoring sales, labor costs, menu engineering, recipe costing and food cost reports.
In addition, you get free updates and 24/7 customer support.
While Toast is more expensive than most, it is a full-featured, robust POS that justifies its price tag.
Get Toast
TouchBistro
One of the most popular POS systems, TouchBistro has also won many awards.
It bills itself as the hybrid solution because it doesn’t depend on the internet. What does this mean for you? It means the system doesn’t crash if the internet does.
You can, like some of the other systems, access your data and manage your business using any device at any time and from anywhere.
TouchBistro is great for virtually any size restaurant, and its reviews are great.
You can manage tableside orders, help your staff upsell, manage floor plans and tables, take mobile payment and manage staff and scheduling. In addition, it offers inventory management, reporting and analytics.
Finally, with TouchBistro, you can take gift cards and integrate your loyalty program to encourage repeat visits and increase your customers’ lifetime value.
Its pricing is $69/month for one terminal, $129/month for two, $299/month for five and $399/month for unlimited terminals. Depending on your type of restaurant, there’s a solution for you.
Get TouchBistro
Your customers have come to expect tableside ordering and payment options.
Breadcrumb
This is a nice POS for full-service restaurants. The price is reasonable at $69 per terminal and $30 for each additional terminal.
In addition, you can process transactions through Breadcrumb or integrate the system with your own third-party processor.
In business since 2011, it was acquired by Upserve in 2016. This iPad point of sale system is designed to allow you to create table maps, update menu items and monitor your sales in real time using their live mobile app.
Get Breadcrumb
Lavu
Lavu is a budget-friendly restaurant POS system that starts at just $59/month/terminal with pricing available for multiple terminals.
It’s bonus feature is that you can use their online ordering and home delivery system as well. While Toast’s package costs extra, Lavu’s does not.
You will be able to track inventory, schedule shifts, and print reports from anywhere.
It also has an offline mode, so you can keep operating even if your internet goes down.
This is a great POS if you’re on a budget, but you will notice a lower level of functionality.
Get Lavu
Lightspeed
With plans starting at $69/month/terminal, Lightspeed is another reliable POS system for restaurants.
It’s cloud-based and helps you with tableside ordering and payment, reporting, integrations, loyalty programs, restaurant management and more. You also have access to 24/7 support.
You’ll find it’s simple to create your menu, and you’ll be up and running in no time.
Lightspeed is adept at helping you with your floorplan and menu with photos, descriptions and prices as well as your end of day reporting.
It’s a nice budget-friendly option with multiple integrations.
Get Lightspeed
Final Thoughts
Now that you have some POS reviews for 2018 to look through, we leave you with a few thoughts on what makes the best restaurant POS systems.
They consist of:
Till management that includes a cash manager, tip tracking, tip calculators for customers, multiple ticket-splitting options and payment tracking. As a bonus, it would nice if it had support for gift cards, coupons, online menus, and discount tracking.
Menu management that allows you to add/change menu descriptions, modify orders, provide kitchen support and orders.
Food inventory management that helps you with your accounting and monitoring of inventory waste.
Reporting tools that allow you to access the system remotely, integration with your accounting programs and reports including front and back of house.
Employee management that includes employing scheduling and staff messaging.
The most robust systems will include customer management including loyalty program options, order history tracking, social media integration and automated marketing tools.
Finally, consider your budget. How much can you spend on your POS system and how many terminals do you need?
Know this upfront before signing any contracts. Ask about monthly fees, set up charges, contracts and cancellation fees.
Bottom line – whether you run a full-service restaurant, quick service restaurant, coffee shop or deli, a restaurant POS system can adeptly help you manage your business. (tweet this)
From taking orders to processing payments and managing inventory and running reports, a POS system can take your restaurant to the next level.
At Restaurant Engine, not only do we create great, responsive websites, but you can count on us to create a website that drives business to your restaurant and edges you above the competition by using mobile-friendly design with a terrific user experience. Ready to take the plunge and create a website with an online menu, blog and beautiful photos? Get your free website consultation today!
Image: QuickOrder and by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash
POS Reviews For 2018 syndicated from https://happyhourspecialsyum.wordpress.com/
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Got a great tour of Toast POS this morning! Thank you Cassy Lee for taking time to show me around! Wicked awesome team and the BEST POS system out there for restaurants! #toasttab #therestaurantcoach #boston (at Boston, Massachusetts)
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The main attraction that bring customers to a restaurant is the food that restaurant serve to its customers. But serving the best food in the world doesn’t bring customers in the restaurant.Every night there will be full occupancy in your cannot be guaranteed unless people know how good the food is, that your restaurant serve. For this you as a owner and your restaurant contractor has do some extra promotion to attract customers and tell them about the food that is served in the restaurant. Once they are inside the restaurant and try the delicacies served there, they will come back time and again and also promote the restaurant among their friends and relatives.
To attract more Customers to Your Restaurant one of the priority should be to bring them indoor first and in order to this happen here are few efficient and innovative ideas that can help you to get more loyal customers to your restaurant.
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Use of Smart Flyers: To promote your restaurant it is very important that flyers promoting any event or any special occasion are not distributed in a generic way by leaving it just on the car window or any other way and hoping that people will find this, but it should be smart flyer with a targeted message and that too the promotion of restaurant, and details of delicacies serviced and discounts or any other offering. Here in flyer what offer you are giving depends upon you but this offer should continue for one month at least, if not more as it will provide sufficient time for the people to visit your restaurant. You can also include discounts, free appetizers or desserts and free gifts also to attract customers.
A professional approach with flyers distribution is must. You will have to choose an appropriate time when to distribute the same as distributing every week will annoy your customer base also and they will refrain visiting your restaurant. You cannot get customers with leaving flyers just on the windshields as most of these end in the garbage. So a careful strategy be made for every thing.
Attract Local Businesses and create partnership: One of the area generally ignored by restaurants is local businesses. As local businesses hold meetings and conventions, they go for catering and special lunches for their clients and staff. It is better that you make a list of local businesses holding such meetings and start conversations with them. You can offer discounts so you can get full catering order instead a part one. All this will make your restaurant to attract a greater stream of revenue and add to your profits.
Extra discount to first timers: A customer loyalty can be created if your restaurant can offer a good discount to the first timers. This discount should not be less than 20% as this is good deal. You can also offer them free appetizers or any thing else which can help them to come to restaurant in large numbers.
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Introduce the happy hours : To attract more customers to your restaurant create happy hours in your restaurant. Happy hours to the restaurant means happy profits. Generally happy hours are late afternoon. Spreading from Monday to Thursday, but it is up to your choice when your restaurant will have happy hour and what are offers in happy hours. Generally drinks and appetizers are offered as happy hours deal. With free drinks and appetizers in happy hours people order many other things in restaurant and likely to stay and order for dinner. You can also offer a great happy hours for your regular and loyal customers so that they can come back again and again and making your restaurant a popular place for lunch and dinner.
Celebrate big events: Many big events like New year eve, sporting event, Valentines day can be celebrated and promoted by restaurant in a big way as these events are perfect occasions for you to take advantage to increase footfall in the restaurant. Generally people go out for dinning on these big events and if your restaurant is not celebrating these then you are loosing a great opportunity to Increase loyal customers base who will be coming back time and again in the restaurant.
Host Customer friendly events: Your restaurant can hold special events like cooking classes, themed parties, special events for younger generation and kindling a sense of loyalty in them towards restaurant .
Arrange special dinners on customers birthdays and anniversary: People goes out to celebrate birthday and anniversary and invite their friends and relatives to celebrate the occasion. Your Restaurant can arrange special party/dinner for such celebrations. For this you can send emails and notifications in advance that if they celebrate their special event and make like it be memorable then they should come to your restaurant and you can offer them special dish, appetizers and gifts. It’s a great way to remind them about your restaurant and attract new customers.
One of the foremost thing to attract customers to your restaurant is to bring them through front door and this is the first and basic step. Providing them with customer friendly service and best food dishes is the other important way to attract them to your restaurant. The planning of every effort should be such that first time visitor to your restaurant makes a mind to visit again and again, and all your effort will go waste if your are not converting new customers into a long term loyal customers.
It is the combination of above ideas which can bring more loyal customers to your restaurant and not any single idea. Once you are able to know which combination of ideas detailed above can more customers loyal to your restaurant then you can make double effort on those ideas and reap extra business and of-course more profits in your restaurant business. You can also take help of latest restaurant technology to achieve your goal like mobile POS system, and social network.
Little Gecko Technology Consultants are a leading technology provider in Boston and Greater Boston area. If you in process of opening a restaurant in Boston or already in the restaurant business and need technology solutions for your restaurant like Restaurant POS Systems, WiFi backup internet, routers, music and acoustic systems, we are here to help you as we are supplier and installer of all these systems. We also provide training for restaurant POS system to restaurant employees. Now the rest is up-to you! How soon do you want to make this decision and reap the benefits of advanced technology?
This Blog"How Can Your Restaurant can Attract more Customers'' is originally Posted Here.
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Toast Pos Installation | Little Gecko Technology
Get efficient & reliable Toast Pos Installation with our expert team. It is preferred by leading brands in the hospitality business and accredited by successful proprietors and managers of restaurants and bars. Streamline your business with the Toast Pos Installation today! For more information, contact us at 617-749-7139.
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Get efficient & reliable Toast POS installation services in Boston with our expert team. It is preferred by leading brands in the hospitality business and accredited by successful proprietors and managers of restaurants and bars. Streamline your business with Toast POS system today! For more information, contact us at 617-749-7139.
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The restaurant POS system now have a built in system for table reservation for restaurant guests or a separate table reservation system can be integrated with Restaurant POS system. Little Gecko Technology consultants are leading restaurant technology provider and handles technology installation and there up keep in Boston and Greater Boston area. We supply and service all kind of restaurant technology solutions in the field of Toast POS System. Contact us at 617-749-7139.
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We generally read about the news reports that restaurants are are closing here and there in the town. When we try to find the reasons why the restaurants are closing then we find that all of the world the restaurants run on a very thinner margins, eve thinner than a sushi knife. Even the restaurants that are opened by Michelin stars, have a great reviews, employing celebrity chefs are also on the list of the restaurants that closed in United States. Now there is a question that how can a Restaurant Contractor in Boston Call 617-749-7139 find the type of such which will mean longevity and serving diners for years or end abruptly? One of the smartest way is the use of restaurant technology which is right for the restaurant to grow and reap rich profits so that it can run for a very longer period of time without the fear of holes in its bottom lines.
One of the main profit centre in a full service restaurant is its bar. It is very important that the bottom lines maintained in the bar operations with a efficient beverage plan, and same can be programmed on day to day basis as per the customers demand and preferences.
The next question arises as how technology can help in making sure that your restaurant can have a strong bottom lines. Inventory management software especially developed for the restaurant can help in drafting strategies that drive profits and more money in your bank account. Below are some of the points which the owner or managers of the restaurant should consider in applying the technology in restaurant operations.
According to Hospitality Technology study survey most of the restaurants spend 32% on software and 27% on hardware, personal 20% and network and telecommunication. So as per their study the main top goals that restaurant owner using technology in restaurant projects are:
Improve operational/process efficiency
Improve customer engagement/loyalty
Increase employee productivity
Let us examine how by spending on technology that is specially designed for the restaurant industry business can pay off in long run.
Improving Operational Efficiency: The right kind of Point of Sales (POS) system can make all the necessary difference in keeping the restaurant business smoothly. Few examples how operational efficiency can save lot of money in restaurant operations.
Accuracy in Order: Conversational ordering, requirements, modifier pricing, proper routing of kitchen items, calculating the tax impact in detail and getting orders right every time in a complex restaurant environment can add more in restaurant profits. Even if one restaurant mistake is avoided each day with technology can add a large amount in the profits of the restaurant.
Order Taking Efficiency: If your restaurant is taking orders on phone, by using a technology using sound and optimized system of phone orders and delivery can add to your bottom lines if it is able to cut typical order time from 3 minutes to 30 seconds by removing the bottlenecks.
Inventory tracking: Inventory tracking in the restaurant is a chore, but with right kind of tools this job can be made more easier and fast. By choosing a software which let you and your restaurant managers to track the ingredients that are required in the restaurant can make a lot of difference on the profits of the restaurant.
Coupon Control: General purpose restaurants and pizzerias operate on a system of coupons, that are quite complex and many Toast POS systems Call 617-749-7139 cannot handle the same in an efficient manner. By using a technology which can keep a strict control on the coupons and discount can add lot to the restaurants profit. So always upgrade your technology as per the requirements of the restaurant and change the POS systems accordingly.
Improving Customer Engagement: It is no secret that the online ordering system have a more than 25% higher ticket average than the order placed by phones. A powerful suggesting technology of online order not only provide alternative to the customers but also keep them more satisfied also. So investing on these technologies can help restaurants earn more.
Turn New Customers to regular customers: It is very difficult to turn new customers into regular customers unless a proper reward programme tailored with your restaurant requirements is used. With technology it is possible to have a automated marketing reward programme can be tailored for your restaurant and make your restaurant to grow faster.
Labour Management Cost: Labour management in a restaurant is a nightmare for the restaurant owners and managers. With use of technology a POS System that helps to run the whole labour management system in a simple and less cumbersome and paperless way can make lot of difference on restaurant working with quick order taking and delivery by the staff. Your managers can spend more time with customers and less time in office managing the labour. Even if a restaurant manager can spend only one hour looking for the customers complaints and able to generate one or two more sales orders and earn about $20 more per day can add up to $ 600 per month in a restaurant profits per month and a huge amount in a years time .
So we see that investing little more on the technology and keeping it abreast with latest developments in the industry can add more number of years in your restaurant operations. The right technology can help you to innovate your restaurant operations, gain more customers and fans among the digitally savvy customers and make your restaurant earn more and stay in business for a quite longer period of time.
Little Gecko Technology Consultants are a leading consultants and contractor of restaurant technology in Boston. If your running your restaurant or thinking of opening a restaurant in Boston, and are in need of latest technology implements in your new restaurant or in your running restaurant, then you can contact us and we shall help you in providing latest restaurant technology solutions in your restaurant. We are the leading supplier of restaurant POS Machines, Installation of POS systems, wi-fi system, backup internet, routers, video and acoustic systems and also provide training in a restaurant POS system to employees. We are here to help you to grow your restaurant business and also let you run your restaurant operations smoothly and earn more and stay for the longer time in the restaurant business.
This Article "How You Can Save Your Restaurant with Right Restaurant Technology" is originally Posted Here.
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How Restaurant POS Power your Business as Central Unit
Restaurant Toast Pos Boston is a powerful software for restaurants and food service businesses. It has been created to help you manage your money and operations more efficiently, improve the quality of life at home or in the office and save time by increasing profitability through advanced accounting functions such as cash flow tracking, receivables management, productivity reporting and expense tracking that work with your existing back office systems.
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How (and Why) to Use Branding to Supercharge Your Advertising
In the world of paid digital marketing there are various components that determine whether your efforts are successful or not. But within the technical complexities of account structure, campaign optimization, conversion tracking, and audience targeting (amongst many others) lies an important detail that many advertisers—regardless of expertise—often neglect. That detail is branding.
Many advertisers direct a majority of their focus on the individual promotions themselves and the results they want to drive from them. Much less of this energy is spent on the impact and representation of their brand within all of this. And this is where the problem lies.
Filling the top of your marketing funnel with leads and site traffic may appear to be progress on paper, but if the leads and traffic you are driving don't have a concise recognition of who it is that they’re engaging with, you may be wasting a lot of time and resources. So in this post, I will explain why you need to focus on your brand and how to use it to improve your paid strategy. We'll cover:
The long-term benefits of incorporating branding into your advertising.
Examples of businesses doing this right
Ways you can incorporate your branding into your advertsing.
The consequences of advertising without branding
As mentioned, the popular approach to running paid ads is oftentimes focusing solely on producing the desired result no matter what—whether that be a click, form submission, or video view. This guerilla-esque strategy drives marketers and business owners to sacrifice their own brand consistency in favor of something that yields a quick win within their goal parameters.
But this narrow thinking can cause problems down the line, particularly when the individuals submitting forms or arriving at landing pages have no idea of your business and what it does, or have failed to retain that memory over time.
The internet is a realm of reward system feedback loops and subliminal stimulus triggers. The brain processes images and words at lightning speed and determines which information has value—whether that value is the satisfaction of fulfilling curiosity or something more direct like a cheese pizza. This is why click-bait exists.
But these “hacks” are oftentimes merely shortcuts to superflous results. When attempting to realistically grow your business through advertising, it's important that you drive the results you want while simultaneously leveraging your brand to leave a lasting impression on the user.
The benefit of aligning branding and advertising
It’s critical to have brand recognition and retention at all steps in the process of advertising. If the people you are marketing to have no familiarity with your brand, then to achieve this, your ads and landing pages will always need to speak to your core brand value proposition in addition to the value of the specific product or service being offered.
But as your company’s brand recognition grows and flourishes, the need to drive that core brand value proposition home through every ad campaign becomes less important—which is a good thing because that proposition can often become complex, ambiguous, or implied over time. Let’s use the extremely broad example of Coca-Cola.
Rather beautiful for a company that has aided in tooth decay and the early onset of diabetes for decades, but I digress. Keep in mind that Coca-Cola owns a countless number of other companies at this point, aiding in the complexity of creating one inspiring mission statement. The point is, because they have built up such strong brand awareness and recognition, Coca-Cola doesn't need to explicitly state their brand messaging through their mission statement. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t continue express that brand messaging through their ads:
Consistent color schemes, imagery, and tone account for instantaneous recognition from a user observing their content. This ad plays on one of Coca-Cola’s biggest brand value propositions: nostalgia. These subtle details fill in a variety of gaps of information already stored in the customer’s brain associated with the Coca-Cola brand. This allows for the individual to draw upon related information instantly in their mind without having to do any heavy cognitive lifting. This is the power of a strong brand.
This allows for the individual to draw upon related information instantly in their mind without having to do any heavy cognitive lifting. This is the power of a strong brand.
Branding and advertising alignment for small businesses
Although a massive company that has had decades of success marketing carbonated sugar water surely won’t have any issues with brand recognition, smaller, more nuanced businesses will. The B2B tech space, for example, is swimming with companies that choose to neglect the existence of vowels in their names. When potential prospects in this space are inundated with the plethora of B2B tools that will supposedly make their lives easier, the brands will all start to blend together. This same reality rings true for many other industries as businesses compete for digital attention.
In these cases, a strong brand will set you above the crowd of overly technical or feature-based propositions. A great example of this is the Boston-based tech company Drift. Drift’s platform allows companies to do a variety of sales and marketing-related activities that all inherently carry their own respective value propositions. However, they’re branding is broad enough to be digestible but specific enough to clearly hit home with their target audience:
Their product was once primarily focused around the “conversational marketing” aspect of their chatbots but now you can see the reuse and repetition of the words “revenue” and “acceleration.”
There is a clear effort on Drift’s part to rebrand, in a sense, away from the over-saturated chatbot market (one that they stand on top of) to convey that their product has much more to offer. It may not seem like a massive change but this messaging is carried throughout their site. The foundational function of their business is still conversational marketing but the point of the matter is that their brand story encompasses all aspects of their platform and uses repetition throughout their digital properties to make “revenue acceleration” synonymous with their product perception. As I will explain, consistency is key.
How small businesses can use branding to improve advertising success
It's clear that big or small, brick-and-mortar or ecommerce, businesses must always incorporate branding into their advertising strategy for sustained growth. Below are some tips and guidelines for doing so.
Remain consistent
When speaking with clients about branding, one of the most important points that I try to drive home is that of “brand consistency." This means ensuring that your landing pages and ads use the same language, tone, and color palette as the rest of your site. This may not seem like an important aspect but it's not unlikely that individuals will research your business either before or after they convert on the ads that you set before them.
For example, let’s say someone clicks through on a Coca-Cola ad and they are directed to a page with McDonalds colors, font, and tone. That individual will certainly be confused, believing that they clicked on the wrong link. The same goes for your business in a more subtle way. The impression left by your landing page may not be drawn upon in their memory bank when subsequently visiting your site. You want everything to be consistent in order to enforce familiarity.
Express the goal of the ad through the voice of your brand
Establishing a consistent and persuasive brand on your website will make incorporating these aspects into your advertising much easier. Focusing on the goal of your advertising should always be your first concern, but reinforcing your company identity should be a close second. One way to kill two birds with one stone is to structure your ad copy in a way that addresses the goal of the ad through the voice of your brand.
One way to kill two birds with one stone is to structure your ad copy in a way that addresses the goal of the ad through the voice of your brand
Let’s break down an example of this:
Toast effectively blends both their core brand messaging and functional messaging into this paid search ad. Highlighted in green is the functional messaging of the ad with the branding in red.
“Adapt Fast w/ Online Ordering” and “Contactless Delivery” are the functional value propositions that entice the user to click through on the ad.
“All-in-1 Restaurant POS” and “One Platform to Power Your Restaurant” are the brand reinforcements.
Slogans are an effective way to build a brand because it takes the overarching complexity of a business (or ideology in today’s day and age) and simplifies it into a digestible sound bite. As mentioned before with the Coca-Cola example, this simplified information is stored and recalled upon by the consumer’s brain when interacting with the brand. People who are familiar with Toast can easily construct a mental image when reading these words. The same methodology can be applied to the paid social advertising side as well:
Toast reinforces its identity as the all-in-one restaurant POS system with “Built for Restaurants.” The imagery includes their POS systems themselves as well as their logo. The supporting copy speaks to the functional value proposition of the product, giving users a reason to click through.
Employ a consistent landing page design
Continuing with the Toast example, you can see how their website and landing page echoes the sentiment in the ad:
This messaging can be found across their digital territories, reinforcing their place as the “all-in-one” solution for restaurants. There are a number of point-of-sale systems available for businesses, but Toast focuses solely on restaurants. This is their brand. You can see the repeated use of the term restaurants in almost all of their copy:
Pay attention to branding elements when advertising
Branding has many components that could have their own separate posts entirely. To keep things simple, I’ll break it down to its simplest foundations. If you don’t feel like your business has a strong identity, you can get started with these:
Colors
What color scheme do you feel conveys what your business is about. This may seem silly to some of the more analytical types but colors in themselves can trigger emotions. Branding is all about consistency and repetition. Color schemes become synonymous with brands and feelings, hence why so many companies will rebrand using different colors and logos if their previous combination was tarnished by a scandal or something negative.
Language
Take everything that your business does and does well and try to condense this into a digestible and memorable combination of words. Slogans are powerful for conveying your unique value proposition, and you can always build off of them with supporting copy so you don’t feel like you have to cram too much into one sentence.
Repetition
The key to creating a brand is to reinforce an identity through repetition and consistency. As I have mentioned, the more times that individuals are exposed to your same message, color scheme, logo, etc., the more familiar and memorable you become.
Advertise with brand in mind for long-term results
Paid search ads are composed entirely of words, while display and social consist of both words and images. My suggestion is to pay close attention to how you are writing your ads and how you are representing your business through the imagery that you are using. You are better off with an ad whose message and imagery aligns with your business’s identity than one that is hyper-focused on the short term result that the user may be looking for. You should be aiming for a brand-laced ad that accomplishes both rather than a call-to-action-focused ad that only drives graphs in positive directions.
How (and Why) to Use Branding to Supercharge Your Advertising published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/
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