mytable8

**__MyTable Team Members:__**
Chananya Pongputaruk - //Thailand// Pham Bao Linh - //Vietnam// Yang Ying Christy - //China// Kaufmann Claudia Tamara - //Thailand/Switzerland// Wanwang Raoug - //Thailand//



__** Executive Summary **__

 * Product understanding **

MyTable is a tool for users to find restaurants and make online reservations, with the option for users to share their opinions about restaurants by writing reviews and voting whether you would recommend the restaurant to a friend. MyTable AG is based in Luzern, Switzerland, which is the restaurant booking website throughout Europe, The reservation is instant, guaranteed and completely free, without a subsequent confirmation by the local. MyTable provides a booking engine to be installed directly on the restaurant ’ s own website. This helps convert visitors to the restaurant ’ s website into paying guests of the restaurant (MyTable, n.d). - Find restaurants in Europe - Offer a convenient way to locate restaurants - Organized by cuisine type, price and other important criteria - Make a free online reservation - Advanced website and smart phone technology


 * Competitor comparison **

OpenTable is one of many online restaurant reservation tool and it is considered to be the most competitive competitor, which have many advantages and very popular (OpenTable Inc., n.d). OpenTable is a free, real-time online restaurant reservation for consumer’s reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants (About OpenTable, n.d). The OpenTable network delivers the convenience of online restaurant reservations to consumers and the operational benefits of a computerized reservation book to restaurants and hotels. (Open Table's app, n.d). - Restaurants reservation internationally (including America, European and some of Asian countries) - Using mobile solutions, including apps for the most popular smartphone platforms - Has more than 25,000 restaurant customers and more than 280 million diners around the world (OpenTable, n.d) - O wns and operates toptable.com, a leading restaurant reservation site in the United Kingdom. - OpenTable is currently only approving new affiliate partners for companies in the United Kingdom

According to the statistic below, it shows the trend of the restaurant reservation app, OpenTable is now leading the US. Market. However, MyTabel should be aware of this main competitor because they now work well in US. Zone and have expanded their availability of destination dramatically. Moreover, the choices of restaurant, which are offered to the customer, is influencial to the customer and therefore beneficially if one uses a specific app. OpenTable have greater number of the restaurant, participated in Europe. To complete with this competitor, MyTable should give the importance in developing their restaurant networking and push for more effort on doing promotional activity such as festival campaign (refer to the slide in Prezi).

Source: http://www.alexa.com

Referring to the statistic below, this shows the restaurant reservation app users behavior. Promoting the webpage via Google, tends to be a more powerful marketing strategy comparing to social networking site and other search engines. People often search the app in Google and mostly visit the ones that have the most visible (web ranking in search engine), while they visited one web page they tend to go back to the searching page again and visit other websites. Therefore, the author can see the importance in the usage of Meta tags for restaurant reservation application like MyTable. More explanation about Meta tags use will be reviewed in next section.

Source: [|http://www.alexa.com]


 * Theories application **

To increase fan community of fan page, the group planned to launch two campaigns through social media, one to be done without budget and one with a budget of 5000 CHF as required.

Firstly, for the social media campaign with budget, Festival campaigns will be created. The cost will roughly cover 5000 CHF according to the requirement. For the Christmas campaign a 50 CHF cash voucher will be handed out to randomly selected 30 lucky people, which they can use in their chosen restaurant. For the Chinese New Year campaign, there will be a lucky draw with discount vouchers of 15% in red envelops, which can be used in any restaurant available in MyTable. Another example is the Blues Ball festival campaign, discount vouchers of 15% is given to a person who able to guess the name of the right singer(s) in limit of time.

To elaborate the campaign, a link to Facebook fan page will be attached in the main page of my MyTable, blogs and partner restaurant websites. Basically, the campaigns encourage potential customers to click “Like” on Facebook by participating in some simple activities. The campaigns will be promoted through MyTable official webpage by using Meta tags, search engine, and linking (lecturer’s slide, 2012). Referring to technical web-marketing slides by Ritzel (2012), the research has been done before promoting the website to check the trend and get some ideas from successful webpage and make it better. During the campaign, the website will be using powerful keywords to differentiate from competitors such as `Gutschein` or `Coupon` (consumers always like something free). The trend of those keyword`s is illustrated bellow:

Source: [|https://adwords.google.com] (cited in lecturer’s slide) Source: [|https://adwords.google.com](cited in lecturer’s slide)

As can be seen from the pictures above, two of the words, which will be used for Meta tag in the most common search engine in Switzerland – Google are currently ranked high in Google searches but low or medium in competition. It means by using efficient metatags, MyTable app can be differentiated from competitors and have the potential to attract the attention from customers.

Secondly, for the non-budget campaign, we will be using a video for promoting MyTable festive campaign. These include international and local festivals such as Christmas, Chinese New Year, Blue balls festival and so on). The video promoting campaign is tagged in Youtube and various social websites (eg. Twitter, Facebook etc.) to create awareness, referring to pictures below. Before the authors set the tag word for this video in Youtube, the authors have conducted research on competitor promoting video allowing the author to understand what kind of emotional words or the keywords they used. Referring to technical web marketing slides by Ritzel (2012), he stated that when selecting the keyword it is important to choose the words that is of relevance to the content. The tags for our video are Christmas, restaurant Christmas, reservation, book restaurant, restaurant booking app, Mytable.








 * Marketing Approaches **

Our concept for my table is based in Switzerland and other European countries, whereby the main domain website has included all the major of cities in Europe. As a marketing plan, in order to target customer, our objective is to gain more customers via Internet mobile and smart phone. In addition, the involvement of youth and middle age customers are since the introduction of social network and extensive amount of smartphone users in the market.

Nowadays, customers are looking for a quick way to access the information and internet provides that. In order to engage consumers with MyTable, our main marketing strategy is to spread the usefulness of the application via social media such as facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. Also, our video will be posted on Youtube, which is the most famous tool to easily market a product to consumers. A small organization such as Mytable has a potential to promote their product’s contact from one business to another, for example, Mytable acts as a useful application to others business establishments such as other restuarants, tour guiders and hotels.

The platform of social media is a massive channel that allows consumers to browse through an application such as mytable, which will help them in locating the restaurant of their choice and their favorite food choice.

Hence, the idea of moving forward to build a link to crowd source will help to increase sales by the power of social media, in this case the ideas are thorugh Facebook, Twitter and Youtube as a video sharing site that will also increase the popularity of the applications. The idea to promote Mytable is concentrated on festivals seasons, not just in Switzerland but also international holiday and festival, which will attracts a larger group of target customer, when consumers start to recognized the brand of Mytable, word of mouth will also help to spread around. This would be the ideal way to promote and create awareness for MyTabel as it does not cost money.


 * How to increase fan awareness and Facebook ´likes´**

As already mentioned above, the concept and objective of this project is to increase fan awareness and to promote Mytable through different Social media platforms. From in-depth investigation into Facebook MyTable Page, it can be seen that they have very little likes and the Page is in German. First suggestion would be to change the site into english as english is the universal language and most people understand it, therefore increasing target market from not only german speakers but also the set of the world. Furthermore, in order for MyTable to be more known around the world, it would be a great idea of using the budget to create Meta Tags on Google, so that once a person searches for a restaurant in Switzerland, MyTable would be one of the top 3 first links to click on.

Using Social Media platforms such as Youtube, where the festive promotional video will be uploaded to present and advertise Mytable, this will create advertisement and highlight new promotions. QR codes can also be posted around the cities, other restaurants or cars which belong to MyTable employees which will direct them to the MyTable website. If someone took a picture of this QR code, they would see the Facebook MyTable page and would be able to access the festive seasonal campaign.



media type="custom" key="15674374"

__**Reference List**__

MyTable (n.d.) //Restaurant guide with unbiased reviews and online reservations,// Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://www.mytable.com/en/About

OpenTable (n.d.) //Restaurants and Restaurant Reservations,// Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://www.opentable.com/info/about

OpenTable Inc. (n.d.) //Investing & Stock Research by Company and Industry - Businessweek//. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=32474

Open Table's app (n.d.) //Business News - The Business Journals//. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/11/17/daily2.html?s=smc:3

About OpenTable (n.d.). //LocalizedUSA//. Retrieved April 24, 2012, from http://localizedusa.com/2012/01/09/opentable-inc-open-shares-upgraded-to-a-overweight-rating-by-barclays-capital-bcs-analysts/

[|http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/opentable.com#] (Last accessed April 25, 2012)

[] (Last accessed April 25, 2012)

[] (Last accessed April 25, 2012)

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ (Last accessed April 25, 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuLMLMUdTNk (Last accessed April 26, 2012)

Technical web-marketing, lecturer's slides (Mr. Ritzel), 2012


 * __Appendices__**


 * __Individual Task__ **

//Your responsible: // Question 1 - Christy Question 2 - Ying & Linh Question 3 - Raouf Question 4 - Claudia

//Final piece:// Claudia, Raouf and Linh- Executive summary Ying and Christy - Prezi


 * __Group Discussion__ **

After a group meeting and consultation with Mr Ritzel, we have come up with some suggestions for social media campaign with budget of 5000 CHF. We have decide to make different seasonal campaigns which will be available on MyTable website during the different seasons. Four different seasons will be created ( Christmas from 20.12.12 - 27.12.12), (New Year 30.12.12-2.1.13), (Easter 6.04.12-10.04.12), Summer (25.07.12-02.08.12). These campaigns will be linked to facebook and the most important part of this campaign will be that in order to make a table reservation during these seasons, each person will have to like the (facebook page) first.

In order for people to become aware of these seasonal campaigns on MyTable, we will use our budget of 5000 CHF to add MetaTags and key words on Google so when consumers look for restaurants in Switzerland, the MyTable will show up as one of the first options to chose. Facebook will also promote these seasonal campaigns with a link to mytable.

The benefits and attractions of these seasonal campaigns will be that the individual that books through MyTable will receive a 15% discount.

//by Claudia //

We have change a bit of our seasonal campaign, as Claudia mentioned we still keep the concept of 3 to 4 days seasonal campaigns and the process of clicking like the Facebook page before making a wish. However, instead of giving out 15% discount voucher to every booking, we all are agreed to giving out 50CHF cash voucher of the restaurant they wishing to go at specific date (according to their wish). The total cost of cash voucher and web MetaTags are covering under 5000CHF as request. To elaborate this seasonal campaign, MyTable team will create one more link in the main webpage of MyTable as well as posting the link in Facebook (as Claudia mentioned), blogs and restaurant website (we may ask for their support). If the audience interesting in this campaign activity, firstly they have to open the campaign link and click Like of Facebook page as provide, without clicking the audience won’t be able to continue the next step. Secondly making your wish by naming the preferred restaurant and date, remember the restaurant should be the member of MyTable. Then MyTable team will randomly grant the wishes, only 30 wishes are giving. The audiences only wait for MyTable team to deliver the gift. The list of the name will be available online in the last day of every campaign. As everyone have preferable restaurant, this seasonal campaign give a chance to people who want to go dine at some specific restaurant but they don't have an opportunity (eg.money), and therefore, this campaign would be a good opportunity for them by only join simple activities.

//by Ying //

As for our campaign for non-budget related promotional tool, we will be making a video to promote the advantage of using MyTable. Moreover,we will make a scenario video showing a business man who is busy with his work, therefore, he has no time to make a reservation on particular restaurant. Immediately, he found out about MyTable and use it as a quick application to book his reservation in the next day from his smart phone. For that reason, it shown how efficient and less time consuming technology is today. By using this video consumer will be aware of the important of technology and the power of the internet which will be self-promote itself into social media and other sources of search engine.

//by Raouf //

The video is more vivid with animation and sound than the dry text. It is more easy to understand and accept by people. Social networking is getting increasingly popular very fast. As of today, 250 million people are using Facebook to stay updated on what's happening around them and share with the people in their lives. The huge user group will be chosen to our target market to disseminate this promotion video. At the same time, it should be one kind of advertisement without budget and high efficiency working. Therefore，we can post the video to My Table(main website), and Facebook also, even we can through the other famous social community, such as Twitter, Blog, etc. According to more and more people sharing the video, through this video, My Table can be getting more and more popular than before. How should we post the video? The way we can choose is upload this video to the My Table which is the main page website. In order to attract people to click or watch this video, the video will be played automatically to avoid the video are not mentioned by people sometimes when they enter the website.

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">by Christy //

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. To attract the attention of the audience, we can make a 'fun to watch' video since the audience has too many things attracted them. People will share the most those videos that make them laugh or cry.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. An other idea for the campaign: we can hold a contest. Holding a contest is an easy way to increase the number of Fan.That may be a simple contest of the best photos of restaurant or some of their thought about their favourite restaurant. Instead of "randomly grant the wish", those who got the most "Like" can win the vouchers as Ying and Claudia mentioned. Then now, the candidates attending the contest (which seems easy to win) will 'accidentally' become a promoting tool for the fanpage. They will need to share Mytable fanpage to their friend to ask for supporting and in order to vote for the candidates, their friends will have to 'like' the fanpage first.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Or we can do like Starbuck fanpage. They allowed people to send an e-gift for their friend via facebook. ( [] ) My table team can let people buy voucher then send to their friends as a gift via facebook. The gift will be more valuable if it is sent by a friend. And people also like to give their friends some small gift. By doing that, people will spread the fanpage to their network.

//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">by Linh //