We are on the brink. The morning show on K C A. M. 10 50 FM 106.5 and FM 102.3. And I am super excited to welcome to the show Mary Barnett. She is known as “MobileMary” in the industry as a text marketing expert and as a mobile social concert conversationalist. Yes, I can say big words and love sharing her passion, innovative strategies and expertise on live weekly video training on her facebook page. And that’s the mobile mary Tuesdays at three o’clock as well as a keynote speaker on stages for Companies Industry Association and business groups. “MobileMary”, Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much and I love that song. It was There you go, Get your heart moving, get your, get your blood pumping. Absolutely. So, so tell us about um what you have going on, you’re going to be doing a special for restaurants, right? Yes, I’m super excited. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Yes, We’re being sponsored by the Inland Empire Women’s Business Center and the Coachella Valley Women’s Business Center to put on an event called restaurant recovery. A lot of restaurants have really been struggling through the pandemic.
Just so many limitations not able to serve people the way they have done for years and they’re really struggling financially. So we’ve put together a four part master class. We’re going to be hosting on facebook actually in a group called restaurants that rock and we’re going to be talking about profiting from reviews empowering their loyal customers to come back promotions that create customer buzz and eating with your eyes and reaching their best customers instantly, basically using mobile marketing and social marketing to really create a way for their customers to realize what they have that they’re open.
They’re ready to serve them and increase their their take out sales or drive through sales and their delivery sales. And so we can keep these restaurants open because we all love to go out to eat and we love the convenience. So we need to really support our restaurants. Were hoping to really help restaurants really come through this pandemic stronger on the other side with a list of happy customers that keep coming back. You know, it’s there’s a there’s a balance with text marketing, right?
Because you want to let you want your, your audience to know what’s going on. You want them to be enticed to come in and remember, oh yeah, I was going to do that thing, whatever that thing is including picking up dinner for the family before you get home. Um but you know, you also don’t want to spam them, right? So you don’t want them to feel like, oh my gosh, I’m getting another text and so there definitely is a strategy to it, but that’s the key is knowing that your customers want what you offer. So giving them what they asked for but not over doing it. There is a balance. But what’s nice about text marketing. You don’t have to be on social media. I mean we use social media promoted and say why the restaurant’s awesome and get people salivating literally when they see your pictures but when you opt into a list you’re getting something maybe a little free taco or free soda or a chance to win something once a month, like a free dinner for your family. But then it’s basic sweet little tap on the shoulder and says, hey remember how delicious our pizza is.
Won’t you want to bring it home tonight? So we’re teaching them all those strategies so thank you for bringing that up. We’ve been in the mobile space for the last 12 years helping thousands of customers. We actually work with Miguel’s jr here they they have 76,000 people in the restaurant. They love their food, it’s great. It really is. It’s very good and and todd is a big fan of not there but picked up dinner from there last night. What’s your favorite thing? You know I I bounce around, it’s one of the few restaurants where I get multiple things from the menu. Most restaurants that I return to. I go back for one meal is not that way. So last night it was it was just a number one combo. Number one combo that my husband says the same thing, I love it.
Yeah you know what you like? I love that and the kids I think there’s something in their in their beans though. There’s like something that brings you back. I’m not gonna say you know what it is but it’s really good. But so many restaurants have that thing right? It’s the it’s the, it’s the reason they started their restaurant. They have this recipe from their grandmother or they have this passion for grabbing people around the table and and we don’t want to let that passion go at the same time. We want to let them get back to work and do what they love to do and not worry about marketing their business and freaking out where to find their clients.
That’s what we want to help them do. Like let’s just get it done, understand it. And so that’s why we’re starting this master class, starting this monday at three o’clock, we’re doing the next four Mondays. Really simple. It’s all be recorded but I hope it’s just one way to give the restaurant some confidence that they’re doing something right and they need to keep doing it, consistency is a key or maybe there’s something they don’t know, sometimes you don’t know what, you don’t know and if they just did one more thing that would just be the thing that would their customers say, oh wow, I forgot. That’s right, you do have the best garbage burrito, I want that for dinner tonight or at lunch on my way to work.
So we’re excited to start this again on this coming monday um to really, really help these restaurants thrive. So I, you know, some people look at text marketing and look at social media marketing and they’re kind of overwhelmed because it’s such a big space and there’s so many different platforms and you know, do I have to be an expert in all of those platforms and how do things go viral and how do I get people to share with each other and all of that going to be covered? Yes, definitely. We want to make this super simple. In fact, every week we’ll be getting a workbook that they can download, print out and take notes and and we’re gonna, they’re gonna walk away with actionable steps.
Um that’s really gonna help them like just get started and that’s the thing, there is little secrets, but you don’t have to be a brain surgeon with this. It can be really simple. The whole point is to be authentic because people buy from people not from companies. So we don’t really want to humanize these restaurants, let people know who they are and get to know the family, the people who work behind the counter. Um and they also as a bonus are going to get access to text marketing software for free. So it’s gonna be a great way to just give them that confidence because I think that sometimes the key to right, you just have to have confidence that what you’re going to do is going to work. Um, you know, nobody gets worried like you just mentioned about being going viral and everything and everyone smile something well, but it’s by utilizing your customers influence, right tapping into the people who are loyal to you and help letting them help that help me help you from the movie Jerry Maguire. Right. Right.
You have your customers, everything about that. We’re gonna let them help you with the quan. That’s awesome. So what if you are, you need help in this area, but you don’t have a restaurant. Maybe you have a dry cleaner or whatever. Is this still good for them? Or of course, of course, yeah. I mean obviously we’re talking a restaurant languages because that’s who we feel like really needs help right now. But of course if you have any kind of brick and mortar, even online, a lot of online businesses use a text marketing to remind because we’re busy. There’s so much noise happening. I mean, my gosh, So much noise right now in the, in the, in the world. And sometimes you just have to cut through that clutter. Um, and so it’s important that we have just little strategies to help remind your best customers because that’s the thing. If you just got, you know, one more order, right? I mean we do the math and say like if you imagine if you had 50 customers that came back one extra time this month, Even at just $10 a ticket, that’s $500 more an added sales.
I mean if you sold a $20 ticket, that’s an extra $1,000 in sales by just giving a friendly reminder giving you’re giving the people what they want, right? So it’s just it’s so simple. Sometimes you’ll be like, oh but sometimes you just have to like sit back and unlock your brain to realize, oh I can do this and that and that’s what we really want to do with this restaurant Recovery masterclass. And even if you’re picking up the food at home and taking it home is there’s this feeling of connectedness that was such a part of the social fabric in the United States at restaurants before the shutdown.
You know how many of us went out to dinner, not only because we didn’t feel like cooking, but because we wanted to feel that community, right? And we wanted to, there’s a festive nous that you have inside of a restaurant. And and you know, I think that by creating that feeling um for people just on the web, then you have a more connected relationship with your customers. Actually got shivers when he said that. That is so true. I think we, as humans, I love being social and I think that’s why social media is so important because literally the word is being social and sometimes we forget that the connection we have. In fact, when the shutdown started um I started doing some training on this restaurant, the rock group. And one of them was like set up a zoom call between your customers. So when they, you know, you can actually simulate eating together.
Like we’re having customers like set up a zoom call focusing on their restaurant and their people were like waving at each other while they’re eating and they’re sharing a meal, so to speak together even though it’s virtually, I mean all kinds of cool little ways. Not that we’re teaching that, but you know, we’re trying to help the restaurants find any way that they could continue that connection with their their customers to really like keep that relationship going because that’s so important. Everybody wants to go to the place where they know your name. That’s right. Oh my God, thank you for bringing that up. I always use that expression and my kids go mom that is so dating you.
So I’m like, yeah because norm like normal feeling, right? I love that. In fact when we the pandemic started um we work with restaurants a lot. We, we knew that we were helping a lot for free. A lot of old mom and pops came to us. So we’re talking about 23 from March to june but then I wanted to do something more and I saw this amazing woman back east. Um her, she started this program called flag front line appreciation group. So I called her up and I said, hey, can we start one of these in Coronas where I live because I want to be named after the beer and not the virus darn it. So we’re flag of Corona anyway, so every week we’ve been having community members donate money and we pay the restaurants to deliver food to the hospitals, police stations, fire stations, senior care centers to help their staff who work on the night shift that don’t have access to a hot meal.
Oh my gosh, that’s so awesome. Yeah. So we’re so excited. Last night I was ordering for this coming Tuesday, another meal from one of our local restaurants. But what’s cool is we don’t ask for discounts. We want to keep them in business. So it’s been so neat and another really cool part about it is not only are we helping them with a hot meal, but we have community members making signs, I call them signs of encouragement and there are signs like thanks for going to work so we can stay home or heroes wear masks and they’re just hand written on a piece of scrapbook paper and I just got a big stack dropped off on my doorstep last night to bring out the next delivery. So heartwarming to see how people have come together to really they believe in and obviously thinking our frontline heroes, but also the fact that they’re paying the restaurants to do what they do best.
So there is a win win. We promote the restaurants and we encourage and support the people that are on the front line doing everything for us. So we’re about at a time let people know how they can find out more information about the conference or the the webinars that you’re going to be holding. They just text the word recovery that’s R O V. E. Recovery to the number 71441. They’ll get back a little welcome message and then we’ll be sending out a link to the group that they can go ahead and just join the group for free. It’s absolutely free. Again sponsored by the England Women’s Business Center and the Coachella Valley Women’s Business Center. So if again they take the recovery to 71441. They’ll get that link.
We’d love to have them be a part of it and it’s all recorded that they can’t make everyone that’s okay but we really want to give them actual steps that they can they can really use to help recover and come back full strength or even better. Well “MobileMary” Mary Barnett, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been enlightening and a lot of fun.
Thank you guys. You have a wonderful day. Thank you you too. All right. Take care you too. Bye bye. So with that it’s time for a break. I Marion Brinker, I’m todd Brinker and we are on the brink the morning show on K. c a well, we will be right back.