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Marketing is an investment, just like a savings account. You need to see a positive return with the results compounding on a weekly basis. Things will start slowly, but as you add new guests and existing guests keep coming back, you will build a network of superfans.
If you start with a list of 250 engaged guests and consistently increase that by 5% a week, after a year you will have a list of over 3000 guests who have been in your restaurant.
The key is it takes patience, determination and consistency to get the most out of building your marketing strategy.
No matter your marketing strategy or how big your budget is, all the marketing will not overcome selling an average experience.
Expectations are higher than ever, and the bigger your check average is, the less margin you have for error.
People will easily forgive a mixup on a $5 value meal but forget something on a $50 dinner, and you may never see that guest again.
As an operator, you need to focus on serving the guest and ensuring their experience was nothing less than exceptional.
Your restaurant needs to shift its focus from providing something to eat to providing an experience based on great food, service and atmosphere.
Only then can your marketing help accelerate your restaurant's growth.
But don't take our word for it; read the book.
Amaze Every Customer Every Time by Shep Hyken
You first need to track your results.
What matters?
Followers? Post likes? Comments? Email opens?
Link clicks? Direct messages? Email replies? Contest entries?
Actually, non of the above.
Sales are all that matters.
You need to measure engagement with your marketing by how it transforms into sales.
It's no secret.
Other restaurants in your area provide great food.
Your guest is not exclusive to you and eats at these other restaurants.
So how do you make yourself memorable?
It's all about the experience.
Make it personal and engaging.
Excellent service and average food,
will always be better than
excellent food and just average service.
Follow up.
Keep your restaurant top of mind.
Marketing is more than just having someone experience your restaurant for the first time.
It needs to be ongoing.
Don't just assume that people will be back.
Your marketing plan needs to have two areas of focus.
Attracting new guests
Having existing guests return more often
Increasing the average spend of each guest
in·cen·tive
/inˈsen(t)iv/
a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something
mar·ket·ing
/ˈmärkədiNG/
the action or business of promoting and selling products or services
e·mail
/ˈēmāl/
messages distributed by electronic means directly from one person to one or more recipients
Your restaurant is like a three-legged stool.
Missing a leg would make the stool useless.
Marketing - Operations - Accounting
Are the three legs of your restaurant business.
Each one needs to be strong.
Marketing - brings in the guest
Operations - takes care of the guest
Accounting - makes sure you are making money from the guest
Make sure all three legs are stable in your restaurant.
It's time to stop confusing social media metrics with true connections. It's time to stop wasting money on stolen attention that won't pay off in the long run.
But don't just take our word for it; read the book.
Seth Godin, This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See
Think to yourself, what business would you take 5 min to read an email from?
There isn't one!
The days of the restaurant newsletter are gone. People are overwhelmed with messages from so many places and channels.
How do you make your email stand out? Short and sweet. If you were to put in as much effort crafting 3 to 5 memorable sentences as you do 3 -5 paragraphs of text, you would see an increase in engagement.
Don't believe it?
Test it.
Send half your list a long-form email with a link to a contest at the bottom.
Send the other half 3 -5 sentences that have some humour and reflect your brand's tone with the same link.
Guaranteed the short email has more engagement.
Got 60 seconds? Check out the video.
Everyone loves their birthday, well, almost everyone.
If you are still hesitant about starting an incentive based email program, the birthday club is the best place to start. Birthdays and going out for a meal go hand in hand.
You need to be using an email program that lets you send out date-based emails. We recommend MailChimp as it is inexpensive and can accomplish the task.
When you capture the contact's name and email address, ask for their birthday: month and day.
What should you give them as a birthday present? Well, what is it worth to be able to market directly to someone's inbox for an entire year? This should be over and above anything you already do for birthdays at your restaurant.
Set up an automation to send them emails.
Give them at least 2 weeks to use the incentive.
Send it before their birthday.
Send them an email on their birthday.
Send them a follow-up email after the incentive has been used.
Well, it can be.
Sometimes you need to talk to someone, someone with experience, who can help you see things differently. Someone to help you simplify your message.
There are lots of great people out there that genuinely want to help. Chip is one of them. At the very least, check out his podcast. Search for Restaurant Strategy on your podcast player.
No matter what, before you start investing money in marketing, make sure you have a strategy behind it and don't just do marketing to do marketing.
Most people receive their email on their mobile device. Some of these devices would mark the email as open even if the contact didn't look at it.
Also, just because someone opened an email doesn't mean they read it.
Engagement with your email list needs to be measured by using click-through rates.
Keep the information short within the email and include a learn more button.
Now the people who click the link are interested in what you're sending.
Concentrate on sending engaging emails more than just building the number of contacts.
Generate interest
It all starts with generating interest in your restaurant and turning websurfers into contacts.
Convert interest into sales
Through engaging and personalized messages, contacts become paying guests.
Turn sales into SUPERFANS
Being able to follow up on a guests experience and continuing to develop a relationship builds a network of SUPERFANS.
Opening a restaurant is a dream for many people. Then there are those people who have the guts to make that dream a reality. You believe you can make a better plate of food and give better service, or you have those secret recipes that all your friends love, so the rest of the world is surly to love them too.
But as you open the doors, you realize it's not as easy as having friends over for dinner. You have people to manage, equipment to maintain and bills to pay.
So how do you stay on top of it? You need to create a system. You develop opening checklists, recipes, cleaning procedures and accounting measures, but the one "system" that never gets taken care of is the marketing system.
See, marketing, just like that fantastic plate of food, works best when it's consistent.
The best way to be consistent in your marketing is by creating a plan, systemizing the plan and breaking it down to small steps that can be consistently completed.
The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber, is a great read and inspiration on creating systems so that you can focus on the important things, taking care of the guest.
But don't just take our word for it; read the book.
Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
