mytable8


 * Zator Kaitlyn ||
 * Zhang Xiaoye ||
 * Zhao Lu ||
 * Zhao Ti ||

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 * 2013 Promotion Plan for MyTable **


 * =**Introduction:**=

MyTable AG, with headquarters in Lucerne, Switzerland, brings guests and restaurants together on one online platform. Using this system, guests can easily select and book restaurants at no cost via the MyTable website and smart phone apps. This means more guests eating at restaurants, more business for restaurateurs and a greatly simplified system for making and handling reservations.

** About the company **
The MyTable reservation system was developed in 2010. The concept and technology grew out of the airline and hotel industries, where today almost all reservations are made online. At MyTable, guests can select restaurants based on multiple search criteria and easily make reservations at no cost via MyTable’s website and smart phone apps. This means more guests eating at restaurants, more business for restaurateurs and a greatly simplified system for making and handling reservations.

** Key Figures **
Number of employees per 1/1/2012: 21 Number of registered restaurants 2012: 5,000

**Major cities:**
Switzerland: Zurich, Geneve, Lucerne, Basel, Burn, Lugano Europe others: Paris, Berlin, London, Vienna, Milan, Munich, Frankfurt ||
 * =**Objectives:**=

To increase the numbers of fans on the Facebook fan page and promote the "mutable" application through the social media. || Provide the service of online reservation in Switzerland and main cities in other 5 countries (France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Netherlands). With the application, users can also geographically localize and find the restaurants nearby.
 * =**Analysis and Suggestions:**= ||
 * ==**1. What service mytable provides?(Product)**==

**Recommendations:**
Generally, apple application users will not only use the application for online reservation, but they would like some advices or presentation about the restaurants too. So we suggest that "mutable" should diversify its service, not only focus on on-line reservation, but also highlights its service of advices and recommendations. We suggest that "mytable" should have different categories of restaurants on the home page. It makes easier for users to find the restaurant they want. ||
 * ==2. **Who are the users?(People)**==

**Segmentation and position:**
People equipped with Iphone/Ipad/Itouch/MAC and android devices, want to reserve a restaurant before going or want to find some ideas for their dinner.

**Their characteristics:**
They are familiar with technological tools (iPhone/Ipad etc.). => So most of aged people will not be the target. They want to save time (most of time, on-line reservation takes less time than calling the restaurant for reservation). => The application should be easy to use. When people want to reserve the restaurant, most of time there are some special events (group dinner, date etc.)

**Recommendations:**
As the on-line reservation through apple application market is already dominated by earlier entrants, we think that "mytable" should differentiate compared to its competitors. The target of "mytable" should be young people who are seeking for some special, chic or funny restaurants with accessible price. So we suggest that "mytable" application may suggest to its users this kind of restaurants. The application is already simple to use, but it should divide restaurants on different categories (including a category called "special event"). ||
 * ==**3.** **Which channel we use to promote mytable?(Place)**==

Right now it seems best to promote MyTable through Facebook, an online blog, famous food blogs and partner [restaurants who use the tool] websites and Facebook pages. ||
 * Facebook: []

**Analysis of Facebook Page:**
Currently, the company is not using Facebook to their best advantage. When compared to OpenTable, another reservation service, MyTable only has 257 fans, whereas OpenTable has over 36,000. There are not too many pictures, except for around 5 staged stock photos that do not really make the purpose of the product known. We think that they should add more pictures to the page: encourage users to post their favourite meals, upload weekly restaurant pictures and add some fun into their page. Hosting events, such as promotions of a different restaurant bi-weekly or monthly could stimulate more users as well, as fans of said restaurants may be drawn back to the fan page. OpenTable, their competition, has an online blog tool specifically for their company that explains when they have certain events, asks fans to fill out polls each week asking different restaurant-related questions and drums up interest in their users. This same model can be implemented for MyTable's Facebook page. However, in order for their online blog to be successful, they may need to ask a popular restaurant blogger or food blogger to promote MyTable on their site. Research could be done to find out who the most influential food bloggers in the six respective countries that are using MyTable and then those people can be reached out to. Possibly, part of the 5000 CHF can be used to prompt these bloggers to make posts about the usefulness of MyTable. ||
 * Company website: []

**Analysis of Company Website:**
The fact that their are options in a variety of different languages is very important as they have target audiences from six different countries, most of whom speak different languages from one another. Currently they offer translations in English, French, German and Italian. An important criticism is that they have one tv advertisement/YouTube video that is not very efficient or useful in promoting their product. On YouTube, this video only has 300 views. They could put out a new advertisement, made easily using amateur filmmakers and real users of the product, something that has been very popular in online promotion recently. Additionally, the use of YouTube could be increased to include a vlog about new restaurants, popular restaurants, promoted weekly specials and restaurants, etc. in order to have more of an online presence that attracts young internet users. ||
 * Apple store page: []

**Analysis of Apple Store Page:**
Looking at the Apple app store page, it is easy to see that MyTable has not been used by many people. There are not even enough ratings of the application to get an average, which is very indicative of the fact that MyTable needs more promotion. The description is very good, but targets more toward only Swiss restaurants, which may be hindering users from other countries from purchasing, as in the first sentences it only mentions "best restaurants in Switzerland" and nothing about how it is also usable in UK, France, Germany and Italy. That should definitely be changed to attract users from a bigger pool. ||
 * Google play page: [] **Analysis of Google Play Page:**

My table's ranking on the Google Play Store.

They only have 14 rankings on Google Play Page,

Although the Google Play Store is a new plateform for the Andriod users, it is very important to MyTable, since the Google Play Store has potentially huge users base. The ranking on the Google Play Store is not so satisfying. My table should well communicate with the users who give the lowest ranking, and try to do some improvement from their complaints. On the other hand, mytable should encouge the users to rank it after using the app. || Currently, MyTable does not have a presence on Twitter. They have a twitter username but have not made any posts. While this may indicative of the fact that twitter is not as possible in the EU as it is in North America, it is a social media where MyTable should be present. Eventually, twitter will become popular over here and it will be important for MyTable to be comfortable with using it. Posting about new restaurants, promotions, events, their Facebook page, tweeting with hashtags linking them to food blogs/restaurant personalities may extend their reach even further allowing the company to increase their fans.
 * Twitter page: [|http://twitter.com/#!/My_Table] **Analysis of Twitter Page:**

||
 * ===**Analysis of SEO**===



The length of the title and keywords are ok.

It‘s better to put key words "best restaurant", "switerzland" into the keywords. It needs to incease the back links. ||


 * ===Recommendations:===

Suggest creating Wikipedia page. [] || There was a promotion that "mytable" Facebook fans can win tickets for the swiss Christmas show in 2011. Moreover, at the swiss carnival, they invited all fans and members to a specific restaurants. Another promotion: If users book a table through "mytable" application from 01/03/2012 to 31/12/2012, one of them can get 250 CHF coupon.
 * ==4. Which activity we conduct to promote mytable?(Promotion)==

Recommendations:
These promotions are interesting, but rarely people know it and they don't get enough echo about these promotions. They should create an album called "events" on Facebook fan page to show their poster of these promotions and events. And also an album of "vidéo" to show how these events were going. || It's the free app, for the constomers users, the downloading and searching is totally free, while for restaurant users it's also free to register and put their promotion news on the app.
 * ==5. Which is the price of using mytable? (Price)==

Recommendations:
Since there is already competitors in the market, who also provides the free downloading and searching, and most of the app users free app users. It's quite risky to change nowaday's free price strategy. We suggest to keep the free price strategy until we could provide the distinct services from other app. ||
 * ==6. Who are the competitors? The strengths and weakness analysis.== ||
 * General Information for Selected Competitors

__Open table__


Company website: http://www.opentable.de/home.aspx

General introduction:

OpenTable is a leading provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants. The OpenTable network delivers the convenience of online restaurant reservations to diners and the operational benefits of a computerized reservation book to restaurants. OpenTable has more than 25,000 restaurant customers, and, since its inception in 1998, has seated more than 280 million diners around the world. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and the OpenTable service is available throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. OpenTable also owns and operates toptable.com, a leading restaurant reservation site in the United Kingdom. ||
 * ====__bookatable__====

Company website: http://www.bookatable.com/

General introduction: Bookatable is owned by Livebookings Holdings Ltd, the leading global online reservation and marketing service for restaurants. Livebookings is the trusted choice of over 8,000 restaurants in 23 countries, delivering over one million diners every month, and growing, to the world's premier independent and chain restaurants. Bookatable enables you to browse restaurants based on location, cuisine and price point. Need some inspiration? Use our handy interactive map to find the most popular restaurants in any particular area quickly and easily. ||
 * ====__Toptable__====



Company website: http://www.toptable.com/

General introduction: toptable is a leading online restaurant booking service in the UK which features some of the top restaurants in over 15 countries. In October 2010, toptable became a wholly owned business of OpenTable - a leading provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and the OpenTable service is available throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. || The event that Opentable bought toptable indicated Opentable's intention to expand their business in Europe. It could be predicted that the competition in restaurant reservation business in Europe would be more and more severe. As a new company, mytable is weak in many aspects comparing with those mature organizations, nevertheless, mytable also has its own strength and competitiveness.

Mytable is located in Switzerland, compare with the competitors, they must be more familiar with the local culture and people's preference in French and German speaking territories, such as Switzerland, German, France and Australia. Therefore, we recommended mytable to focus the business in current territories, instead of expanding business too fast. The analysis data shows that currently mytable is still not known by many people (There are only around 250 of Facebook likes,14 of Google play, and too less data to be show out in Apple store), hence how to improve their prestige is what they should focused.

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 * ===**Recommendations:**===

Comparing the strengths and weaknesses between mytable and their competitors, we suggest mytable to make improvement in the following factors.

1) Mobile application According to the users' feedbacks for mytable android application, the score is much behind opentable and bookatable. Mytable should consider how to improve the customer interface.

2) facebook Actually, we could find mytable had spend a lot energy self-selling on Facebook. There's quite a number of activities and attractive pictures. However, the feedback results are not so good as expected. We suppose the reason is that their pages are lack of interactive between mytable and the users.

3) Discounts and special offers Besides the reservation services, the other restaurant booking systems would also provide some special offers and discounts which is not included in mytable's business. It is also suggested to mytable to add this kind of business. ||
 * ==**7.** **The general promotion plan**== ||
 * ===**Part 1. Free**===



The facebook should have translation in French and English, at least for the main promotion.

Create page on other social network, especially for the food lovers, to add visibility of our app.

Get back links from the famous bloggers, by sending them invitation for using our app.

Create interactivities with fans on Facebook.

Write one story about member restaurant per week on Facebook fanpage.

Create Facebook Events and an album.

Create promotions for the festivals. ||
 * ===**Part 2. 5000 CHF**===

To use the money to create a series of nice, funny and interactive videos and post it on all the channels we use to promote. The objectif is to make the buzz and attract the attention. Attract the people to try our app. We could also use the crowdsourcing, to promote a campain of video creating.

The idea is by video to create a beginning of the story, and let the participants to continue the story telling, and let the users to decide the story ending. ||
 * ==**8.** **Evaluation and Feedback**==

Use Google to track the visiters after during and after promotion. Evaluate the link between the users who download the app and the followers on the Facebook page. Get feedback from users from Facebook, during and after each promotion. ||