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Restaurant Owner Increases Sales by 110% using Social Media

2010 March 9

How do you attract a mob of over 150 people to your restaurant?  AJ Bombers, a  Milwaukee restaurant did it by offering it’s fans the possibility of a Foursquare Swarm Badge.

What’s Foursquare?  It’s an online community that allows its members to meet up with friends and discover new places. It’s also a great platform for retail businesses to reward their customers for letting their friends know about them.

What’s a Swarm Badge?

FourSquare AJ Bombers

It’s something you can only get when 50 or more Foursquare users check in to the same place at the same time.  To hard core Foursquare users, this badge is elusive and extremely desirable.

Joe Sorge, owner of AJ Bombers decided to try Foursquare to entice a mob at his restaurant after noticing that many of his restaurant’s Twitter followers were becoming regular users of the Foursquare App.  He emailed Foursquare and told them what he wanted to do and they supported him in implementing this promotion, even tweeting about it.  He promoted the event primarily using Twitter, but also used his Facebook fan page to help spread the word.

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Video From The AJ Bombers Foursquare Swarm Badge Party

Blogger Steffan Antonass did a great job of covering this event and his post is definitely worth checking out.  His interview with Joe Sorge is enlightening.

Bottom line?  160 Foursquare Users converged on his restaurant and for 56 of those Foursquare users, it was their first visit to AJ Bombers.  And Sorge reported a sales increase of 110% that day.  Can you say, “ca-ching?”

But wait, there’s more!  Those who frequented the restaurant that night generated a ton of buzz about the meetup via their social networks.  And Joe created a You Tube Video and page on Flicker – all pointing back to his restaurant, greatly improving the chances of him being found through search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Flickr Photos from the AJ Bombers Foursquare Swarm Badge Promotion

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flickr Screen Shot courtesy of Steffan Antonass

Twitter Feed during promotion

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All in all, an amazing promotion that will continue to deliver customers to AJ Bombers for a long time to come.  Check them out next time you’re in Milwaukee.

One Response leave one →
  1. March 10, 2010

    Steve, thanks again for this. We really appreciate you sharing our story with your readers.
    Cheers!
    Joe

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