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Your content is the experience you provide.
Your email should be a short personal notification letting them know about existing content, new content, and planting the seed for future content.
Current offerings, feature offerings, upcoming special events.
There are many components of a great marketing strategy to drive sales growth.
But email needs to be the hub.
#1 - Automation - you are busy. Plan and schedule your engagements, so your contacts are always connected.
#2 - You own the list. The contacts are yours, not the service provider, not the third-party system.
#3 - You can view engagement specific to each contact.
#4 - When you hit send, your message is delivered directly to your contacts.
#5 - It can be personal. Using merge fields and segmentation, you can send the right message at the right time.
You have had that guest that no matter what you do, they can't be satisfied. The guest hates a dish that many others would consider extraordinary. Do you change the recipe or remove the item because of one complaint?
It's just human nature to play it safe. Sometimes no matter how many people love what you do, it's the haters that influence our decisions.
As Seth Godin says in his book, This Is Marketing:
"The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no one and satisfy everyone."
Don't be boring; find your voice and be consistent with your restaurant and your marketing.
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
When you start learning more about the people on your list, you can send them more relevant communications by adjusting your message to make it more personal.
If you had a group of people who prefer beef and another group that prefers chicken and you are promoting a new steak feature, what would you do?
Some might say you only send the new steak feature only to the people who prefer beef.
Why not send it to the people who prefer chicken and adjust the message?
"Hi Joe,
I know you love chicken, but if you were going to have one steak this year, this would be it.
Check out our new steak feature!
We are looking forward to your next visit.
Your Restaurant"
Even though everyone may have their independent roles, how you rely on each other to provide a guest experience will be the basis of your restaurant's success.
Creating a family within your staff will spill over to become genuine hospitality with your guests.
An incentive is that little thing that can help encourage a decision to make a purchase.
We see factory incentives for car purchases all the time. It's a kickback from the manufacturer to help the dealership sell more cars.
Are you worried about the cost of an incentive to try your restaurant? Work with your suppliers to help offset the cost of an item. Mentioning a brand name within the incentive may be worth the supplier giving you free products.
Just one thing, don't use an item as an incentive because you get the product for free. Make sure it fits within your brand.
Having a successful restaurant is always about creating relationships with your guests and your suppliers.
This is a debate that many restaurant marketers have, and there may not be just one way, but here is a thought.
Do people try a restaurant because of the story of how the restaurant was concept was created?
Do people try a restaurant because of the story of your staff, where they are from, and their history?
Do people try a restaurant because of the story of your recipe or the origin of food?
The answer is.........maybe!
However, the story that gets people excited is the guest's story that your restaurant helps write. The experience provided while two friends reconnected, a family enjoyed a night away, a first date, or a 50th anniversary. Those are the stories that are the most important to share and attract new guests.
So are you concentrating on sharing your story, or are you focusing on helping guests with their story for them to share?
"Every business owner takes on three distinct personalities in how they think about—and work within—their business. The Technician lives in the present and is focused on doing the work of making it, selling it and delivering it. The Manager focuses on achieving results through people and systems, focusing on the present and strategizing for the future. And the Entrepreneur defines the business and focuses on closing the gap between where the business is today and where they want it to be."
As a restaurant owner its hard not to get caught up in the daily grind. Budgets are tight, you are short-staffed, and sometimes you do things better. As a business owner, you need to have all three of these personalities. But for your restaurant to become successful, you need to spend less time as a Technician and more time as an Entrepreneur.
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.
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
Most people are not reading your entire newsletter.
Instead of designing a newsletter, create a landing page on your website with all the graphics and information.
Your email should have one focus and a link to more information.
Measure the success of your email based on how many people clicked the link for more information.
BONUS - you can now link to your landing page in all your media, creating a consistent message across all the platforms.
Got 60 seconds? Check out the video.
A house has all the same components.
Foundation, walls, and a roof.
So why do you need a plan?
The foundation needs to be strong enough to support the walls. The walls need to be strong enough to support the roof. So once you decide what your house will look like, an architect needs to go back and create a plan to ensure that all of these elements work together and create a stable structure.
Then each trade uses that plan to make sure it fulfills its obligation of the construction process to create the final product.
What's your plan to get new guests into your restaurant and have existing guests come back more often?
Every Monday we send you a mashup of marketing thoughts, tips, and resources.
It's a quick way to start off the week with tips on how to keep your sales funnel flowing.
If you have a list of contacts, you need to track their engagement! But don't do this based on email opens; do this based on link clicks. These are the people who are interested in finding out more information.
Run a report that tells you who hasn't clicked a link in the last 90 days.
Send them an email asking them if they are ok and that you just wanted to make sure they still enjoy being on your list and receiving your messages.
Create a button to click to tell you they are ok and connect it to a landing page that thanks them for their response.
Anyone who doesn't click the link within a week needs to go.
You want people on your list that are engaged and reliable to take action on your information you send.
There used to be full service and fast food. The line was pretty straightforward. But now, just like the fusion between culinary styles, the lines between service styles have also become very blurry.
So how are you unique?
Your guest gives you more than just money; they commit their time to your restaurant.
How is your restaurant going to give value to a guest for the time they spend with you?
An investment in knowledge doesn't always mean just investing in learning.
Investing in knowledge can be about working with people who may have more knowledge in an area of focus than you, and together, you become unstoppable.
