LMC

Hey Guys,

Decided I would post a quick method that we played around with. This method is pretty solid, simple, and effective. The method produced $35,000 in two weeks!

The background:

If you don't know what OpenTable is, it is a reservation system for restaurants. Users search out restaurants in their city or town and if the restaurant is on Opentable they can book a reservation through the system.

What you don't know is, on average, restaurants pay close to $675 per month to OpenTable. The reason for this is every reservation booked through their system costs the restaurant $1.50 per head.

Thus, book a reservation for 10, $11.50 goes to opentable, this is not including the recurring costs OpenTable has for the restaurant to run the reservation system on site.

The Method:

Basically, what we do is build a mobile site for the restaurant. However, build it so it is an app.

You can easily find templates that can work with Wordpress for mobile sites here:

Mobile | ThemeForest

-------------------------------------------------------

We researched restaurants on OpenTable, we found 15 restaurants that besides opentable, they had a Facebook page, or Twitter page, or both. What this told us is that they were keen on New Technologies. They are willing to spend time and money making these new technologies work for them.

We found the restaurants, they usually have a website, we took the information right off their website and put it into the mobile app and published it on our server.

Placed it on the home page of the Iphone.

-------------------------------------------------------

We then went to the restaurant, personally I went into three restaurants. Had the sales team do the rest. I walked in with my phone and asked to speak to the manager or owner.

Usually you will see a hostess or someone behind the bar, they ask what it is about, and I let the product do the talking.

I said, we built this app for your restaurant and I want to present it to the manager or owner to see if they would like it. The product usually amazes the restaurant and sells for you.


My pitch was simple.

"I know you are paying per head on every reservation that you produce through OpenTable. Our app is to help you save costs by giving your customers a way to book reservations quickly and efficiently through your own app."

"We would like to produce 500 cards with an advert for the app, we would like you to staple these cards to your customer receipts, on the front of the card will be a QR code for the person quickly to download the app, otherwise they can go to, www.restaurantnameapp.com "

On the back of the card you present your web development, app development, and marketing skills.


An example of a QR code business Card:
Print Templates - Modern Company Business Card with QR-Code | GraphicRiver


-----------------------------------------------------

In the end, the restaurant agrees to utilize the app, we print up 500 cards which doesn't cost much.

It's about $50 for good cards, 500 prints. (vistaprint.com)

We ask for $200 for setting everything up, which usually came to me in cash.

-----------------------------------------------------

Where does the money come in....

From the back of the card. The goal is to get into the restaurants for the easiest exposure for your business, they also get to see a sample of your work.

We got into 10 restaurants and got $2,000 for our promotional needs. The cards cost was around $500 dollars, but can be done much cheaper, if you don't make them fancy.

From the 5,000 cards....

1,000 people downloaded apps from our server, so we reached 20% of the restaurant go'ers from the promotion.

The response, two weeks after we initiated the promotion, we received around 25 orders for websites of business owners around NYC, we received 5 orders for other restaurant apps.

All orders totaling around $35,000 in sales.

keep it creative'

Steve

techbul

That's a great business plan. Do you think it would work without actually going into the restaurants?
Thanks!

LMC

techbul,

I think with you there it has a much more direct effect on the potential closing of the deal. Generally the manager (not the owner) can make a decision like this since it is low-cost and will be helping the restaurant. If you are calling them they may just see you as another pitch.

The selling is done by the app, they just love watching you open up an app on the Iphone and it being all about the restaurant.

Cabinfever25

Great Idea!

Does this mean that this is not recurring income?

The only time you get paid is when the owner pays the initial $200.00?

Thanks

LMC

It depends on what you do on the backend, really the front-end only provided $2,000 in cash basically, minus $500 in expenses, about $1,500 in profit.

However, the backend sales is what makes the money flow.

You could do a Hosting package for websites you build and charge a monthly maintenance fee on them to create recurring income.

Lexilou

Hey LMC
thanks for the great post. It caught my eye. I live in a heavily restaurant populated area. I will give this a try and let you know how it goes.
Thanks again for sharing
Lexilou

ADukes81

So you created a mobile website for each restaurant? I assume the customer filled out their information on a 'Contact Us' page and the reservation was emailed to the restaurant?

A brilliant idea, I am in a great city for this, just trying to figure out exactly what you did.

Thanks for getting the wheels turning.

How to Build a Sales Funnel for FREE

100million

Fantastic idea. show them,educate them and then let them buy. If you show them then you cut out all the sales pitch. and it makes it easy for the business owner to just ask questions, which is the easy part because now they are asking questions to re-affirm their willingness to buy. fantastic.

Quick question: can you build mobile apps with word press? if so can you briefly shed some light on what you need to make the app.

Brandon Tanner

Nice one, Steve.

I see that OpenTable also has an affiliate program that pays commission on a per-reservation basis, so you could also embed your OpenTable affiliate link into the 'Reservations' button of the mobile app or site you build for them.

Steve Solem

Sounds like a great idea Steve, but could you clue me in on how you build a website as an app?

Also, I assume when you say you build an app it's for iphones, but what about other smartphone users?

All in all getting restaurants to distribute your business cards for you is a great idea! Congrats on your success and thanks for sharing!

Steve

Need Offline Leads? Get them more easily with two great Lead Gen reports and 65 pages of quality PLR PLUS flyers, postcards and other marketing materials. Starting at under $5!

WillR

Guys,

There are plenty of websites out there that will allow you to easily (I'm talking within 5 minutes or so) turn any mobile website into a mobile app people can install on their smartphones.

Here is one example for Android apps: Create Android App | Make Your Own Android Apps | Android App Maker | AppsGeyser

I played around with that tool about a month ago using one of my mobile websites. I had the thing setup in about 10 minutes. People could then download the app on to their Android phone and every time they open the app they see your mobile website or it could just be a booking form page or whatever you want.

The other great thing about doing things this way is every time you update the mobile site, those changes are reflected in the app. So you could easily come up with a one page booking form where you can put their logo at the top and then a booking form beneath, turn that one page into an app for Android using a tool like this, find a similar tool for iPhone apps, and away you go.

I am guessing most people would probably then be concerned about having to upload the apps into the Android and iPhone marketplaces? I have not delved into apps myself so I can't confirm this, but I am pretty sure you don't have to put apps into the app stores for people to use them, you can just host the files on your own website for download, or in this case, on the customers main website.

The Android app I created with that tool was just a file I then downloaded on to my Android phone and it worked right away. I believe this service is free for like the first 50 downloads of the app, or something like that, and then you pay per set amount, but I am sure there are other options out there as well.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

D6BL

Hi Steve. Thanks a lot for this great share. Your strategy sounds pretty good. I will try to think how I can use it in my city Will let you know if it's working for me !

amoladora

@Will Thanks for the heads up. Although I think there is more to it than that for iPhone - you need apple licenses and all sorts of BS.

@Steve can you please share how you develop your app and how you integrate it with their booking system?

steve-wilkins

This is something very similar to what I am doing right now in the UK, I have started by targeting restaurants and use a cheap lead generation software to dig out leads by nearest location and literally work my way through the restaurants city to city offering a multitude of services including mobile optimized websites, mobile apps, QR codes, Facebook fan pages and many more. Mobile marketing is such a huge market now and if presented right it really can make even a one-man band such as myself, a small fortune in a small space of time.

I am actually putting together a small package of templates including sales material, contracts, pricing structures etc so if anyone is interested in having a copy, then just let me know and i'll shoot you over a copy when it's finished

rugman

I would to take a look when you are done - thanks!

Growing older but not up!

ballanrk

I would appreciate a copy also.

Thanks
Ballanrk

POP the Champagne cork I can PM now!

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it......

-Henry David Thoreau

KabirC

My one question with this is, how do you know if they have space available for that time? Wouldn't that need to be coded into the site?

ADukes81

Hi Steve,

If you don't mind, I would love a copy as well when you are finished.

Thank you

How to Build a Sales Funnel for FREE

britnla

wow, very informative post... I'm actually in the hospitality field as well as internet marketing as a side income, and think you have a great idea

http://www.7dollarsecrets.com/?e=aberglais@gmail.com

kimberly Aita

I would also like to have a copy of this when it's available. Thanks!

BTW, fantastic and inspirational post. Now I just have to look into some of Will's suggestions and learn how to do an app. I didn't realize you could them them for free at all.

As a matter of fact, I spent over 2 hours on a webinar and only at the end did they let us know it would be $995 to get started. Not quite there yet lol.

Anyway, thanks for this thread.
Kim

mrtrance

I'd appreciate a copy if you don't mind. Maybe send a PM to us when it's ready.

mrtrance

Hey Steve,

Very good information you have presented here. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you set up the App, how people download it, what about booking times on the app, etc.?

mrtrance

So if we used your mobile template package and made a mobile site for the restaurant then we could take "Reservations" page url of the restaurants mobile site (i.e. "m.anyrestaurantname.com/reservations.php") and convert that into a standalone app using the site you mentioned. Then people could download it and install it as an app on the homescreen of their Andrioid phones and when they click it it would open up to that same reservation page and content from their mobile website without having to go to Google to do a search for their url or type in their url.

Is my understanding correct there?

WillR

Correct. Just keep in mind though that people are not necessarily going to want to install separate apps for each local business they frequent. So you would have to suck it and see.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

rugman

Good point Will - Maybe better have a "town rest reservation app" that would take you to a page that had several places listed on it with reservations available for each one?

Growing older but not up!

mrtrance

But what Steve is doing is exactly that making a single app for reservation for each restaurant and selling it to them for $200 correct?

WillR

Yes. You might be able to sell the app to the restaurant but you want to be sure people are going to use those apps or the restaurant will get no benefit from it and they won't be rushing back to do business with you again. I would first test it out with a few restaurants for free (as case studies).

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

mrtrance

Good point there. If they get no benefit from it then it would be a waste of money. But then again if these restaurants are paying like $650 a month to Opentable how is it really benefiting the restaurant and what sort of ROI these restaurants are getting by using this service on a monthly basis? How exactly are these restaurants benefiting from using Opentable if the service is not giving them more business or customers?

WillR

Yes but there's a difference between opentable and their own booking app. Open table is generally something they link to or integrate into their own website and allows bookings for their restaurant without putting the customer though any extra steps.

An app on the other hand is something users have to download and install on their phones before they can use it. So these extra steps may prevent people from using the app. As I also said I can't imagine people would want to fill up their phone with different apps for each restaurant and local business they frequent.

From a customers perspective it is much easier to just go to the restaurants mobile website directly. They can then just bookmark that website instead of having to install an app.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

mrtrance

Ya I agree with the customer just going to mobile site to achieve the same thing. So in your opinion then this method might not work as well as described and done by the OP?

4webmaster

I don't get it here is it an iphone app or a web app? If it's a real app, I don't think it's a good idea.

https://stevesuard.com

Legacy3

Steve,

Does it actually have to be an APP for this to work? Or can it be bookmarked mobile website that looks like an app icon?

Legacy3

I'd like a copy when you get done. Thanks.

WillR

No, I'm not saying that. The truth is I haven't tested it myself and one of the most important lessons in marketing is to never just assume anything. They are just my thoughts but I haven't got any real results because it's not something I have implemented.

If someone is using such a system and having good luck with it then that's all that matters. I just wanted to give people both sides of the coin. I'm definitely not trying to talk you out of giving it a go.

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

Legacy3

While I'm waiting for LMC's response about apps vs mobile websites and thinking this through I'm considering the fact we have to appeal to two totally different audiences:

1. The business owner / manager who probably thinks having their own APP is the coolest thing since sliced bread
and
2. Their customers who may be reluctant to add one more app to their already crowded phone

...and oh yea...US - the Tehcno Savvy Internet Marketers who live on the edge of the curve and have seen it all / heard it all and probably don't really believe apps will work in the local market vs other IM devices.

Its tough, but we must find some balance that appeals to the DESIRES of our customer (the business owners / managers) while still addressing their longterm needs.

This is still a great idea!

ClaDax

I am also interested. You said that you actually built an app. I hope it will also work with a mobile wordpress theme including a free reservation plugin...

LMC

I'm not going to go through every step of the way.

But, an HTML5 application can be utilized on all mobile platforms, act as an "app" to the user, but really simply be just a mobile website.

If you want to play around with some native app development and have no programming experience, or have programming experience, head to:

http://www.genuitec.com/mobile/

or get more advanced with Mobile app platform for building mobile apps from web technologies for Android, iOS, iPhone, iPad and mobile web.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I think people are missing the point of the "income". The income did NOT come from the APP. The income came from the advertisements on the app.

The app was simply an open door to walk in and advertise to the restaurants high paying customers who like to wine and dine. It's a good market for people that are doing "alright" in this economy and want some new technologies in their personal and business setup.

The money was built from the post sale attack, that is, people viewing our app as a cool phenomenon and calling us to inquire about their own developments.

also... the app had other features such as:

- Save and Rate what you last ate (which went into a database so you can see peoples favorite meals, same concept from seamlessweb)

- The booking system simply was an email system, separate from OpenTable, that connected to their computer, those that turned us down did not want to deal with "yet another reservation system".

---------------------------------------------------------

In the end the main push was simply the fact that the restaurant owner can go home and show family and friends that he has his own app. Just like they have their own facebook page, or their own twitter page.

It's just cool.

And for $200 cash, it's not a "business" investment to them, it's more like petty cash that adds a tiny bit of value to their business.

It's about the angle.... remember... the money was made from the adverts, not selling these apps.

queen bee

Well this is exactly what I've been thinking ...

Great presentation, though!

nickhumph

Great story! But I don't understand a few things

1) Were you selling a iphone/android app or a web app accessed by browser?
2) How much were you selling the mobile websites for, $200 each? And each subsequent purchase made by other restaurants who found you through the QR Code was $200? Isn't that pricing a little low and why didn't you set up a monthly recurring fee?

Thanks

Increase Page Conversions by 72% through the most underrated marketing tool out there!

ClaDax

Hi there,

1. Is there something similar for an Iphone app?

2. Are there any wordpress mobile websites with real time validation booking systems?

3. If there isn't such a mobile website, can we use a standart wordpress booking/reservation plugin for mobile websites as well?

Legacy3

LMC, What is your price point for the follow up sales?

Benc102

Will like a copy also.

Thanks

WillR

Ok guys, this isn't a giveaway forum. Please keep it on topic. If someone wants to give away stuff then please do so in your signature or the War Room, not in the threads as it just sidetracks the thread (as has happened in this case).

.

➨ Here's How to Make Your First $177 Online
This Week Using the Piggyback Method...

.

freeburd

To upload an app into Android market you need to pay Google $25.00 for 1 year. I paid but forgot about it. Will, thank you for reminding me. Now I will turn one of my websites (or more) into an app and will promote my services with it.

alfid

That's pretty inspiring! Congrats on your success. What a great and innovative idea. I know a lot of food places in my area would go for this.

swd123

sounds like a cool idea - may try it locally

bhuff85

Great concept! I'm currently wrapping up a local directory site for restaurants/bars here in town and this postjust helped me think of of an idea of yet another service I can offer these establishments.

Rather than have people download individual apps, I'm thinking of creating and offering a reservation system for any and all restaurants that want to accept reservations through my directory itself. All I would have to do is setup a simple contact form on each page and route it to the e-mail address that the establishment owner provides. Takes less than 5 minutes to implement, yet I could charge something like a measly $25 or $50 per month on top of other services.

Thanks for getting the creative juices rolling! This should be an easy sale for restaurants who are hungry to get more people through their doors.

thetaspark

This is a lovely idea, looking at all the restaurants in my locale, there is really an opportunity to make something tangible with this approach... The way used to scout for information is a great insight.

Kevin Z

Great concept guys. This can work even with Mobile optimized websites which works on all platforms and can be SEO'd.

Many times its even worth giving away a free mobile website to have popular restaurants expose your business to their clients.

[

brick&mobile
Click here to start your
Mobile Marketing business

phweb

I am an American living in Asia, I am not a programmer, how can I use your tools to sell to restaurants here? Thanks in advance.

Crazy Convenience Stores