Restaurant Social Media
Taking Control of Your Restaurant Marketing
In these days of doom and gloom I hear many restaurateurs complain about how slow business is and how the clients are spending less and less money dinning out.
However, as the saying says, "Times of crisis are times of opportunity".
If your business is slow, perhaps this is a great time to re-evaluate the efficacy of your marketing. Eliminate dead wood in your marketing expenses and start investing your money smartly in marketing that really works (and you can prove that really works).
I met recently with the owner of the latest restaurant that I am consulting with, and we did precisely this exercise.
I asked him to write down every single marketing expense that he was making, and then we started evaluating which ones could be tracked.
Amazingly for him (not for me because I was expecting this), 80% of his marketing expenses were non trackable. This means that he was expending a substantial amount of money advertising in the Yellow Pages, two local weekly papers and some other local restaurant catalogs, and yet he had no clue how many customers these expenses brought to his restaurant.
The first thing that we did was to eliminate any marketing expense that couldn't be measured. This is just a logical step to really assess the return of investment.
Let me ask you. Would you invest money in stocks or a mutual funds if you couldn't measure how well (or bad) they were performing?
Of course not, and yet many restaurateurs still spend money hoping for the best and without any substantial way to know how many customers those investments bring to the restaurant.
Since this particular owner was very attached to one specific weekly magazine, and he was assuring me that it brought him many customers, I asked him to change the ad to include a discount coupon.
If people really read his ad and came to his restaurant because of it, they will surely bring with them the discount coupon. In this way, he'll know how many real customers this ad brings him and we will be able to make the numbers to see if it breaks even to cover for the expenses of the advertisement (I sincerely doubt it, but we'll see...)
So after the inventory and cutting down several of his marketing initiatives, this owner was happy to see that he could save $2400 a month! That's money in the pocket that he was wasting.
But this is not all. We also started implementing some inexpensive marketing changes. For example, his online presence was very underwhelming and yet most of the potential and current restaurant customers nowadays (including his, of course) are looking for restaurants online.
So I started working with him beefing up his web presence.
Of course the first step is the restaurant's web site. His web site was nicely done but quite underutilized. I met with his webmaster and we implemented a signup form in the front page to capture his visitors information (on exchange for getting a welcome to my restaurant discount coupon when they enter it). We also added an online registration, a comments field and some other useful and interesting information for his customers.
He also signed up for Meta Flavor (www.metaflavor.com) a great (and free) way to promote your restaurant in the web.
Finally, he created a Twitter account and now started twitting whenever he has empty spaces and wants to bring people (quickly and inexpensively) in.
These are just some examples of things that you can do to improve your marketing and save money in the process.
In these days of slow economy, taking control of your marketing and operating strategically and smart is a must, if you want to survive these challenging times.
Have a great day!
Jose L Riesco
However, as the saying says, "Times of crisis are times of opportunity".
If your business is slow, perhaps this is a great time to re-evaluate the efficacy of your marketing. Eliminate dead wood in your marketing expenses and start investing your money smartly in marketing that really works (and you can prove that really works).
I met recently with the owner of the latest restaurant that I am consulting with, and we did precisely this exercise.
I asked him to write down every single marketing expense that he was making, and then we started evaluating which ones could be tracked.
Amazingly for him (not for me because I was expecting this), 80% of his marketing expenses were non trackable. This means that he was expending a substantial amount of money advertising in the Yellow Pages, two local weekly papers and some other local restaurant catalogs, and yet he had no clue how many customers these expenses brought to his restaurant.
The first thing that we did was to eliminate any marketing expense that couldn't be measured. This is just a logical step to really assess the return of investment.
Let me ask you. Would you invest money in stocks or a mutual funds if you couldn't measure how well (or bad) they were performing?
Of course not, and yet many restaurateurs still spend money hoping for the best and without any substantial way to know how many customers those investments bring to the restaurant.
Since this particular owner was very attached to one specific weekly magazine, and he was assuring me that it brought him many customers, I asked him to change the ad to include a discount coupon.
If people really read his ad and came to his restaurant because of it, they will surely bring with them the discount coupon. In this way, he'll know how many real customers this ad brings him and we will be able to make the numbers to see if it breaks even to cover for the expenses of the advertisement (I sincerely doubt it, but we'll see...)
So after the inventory and cutting down several of his marketing initiatives, this owner was happy to see that he could save $2400 a month! That's money in the pocket that he was wasting.
But this is not all. We also started implementing some inexpensive marketing changes. For example, his online presence was very underwhelming and yet most of the potential and current restaurant customers nowadays (including his, of course) are looking for restaurants online.
So I started working with him beefing up his web presence.
Of course the first step is the restaurant's web site. His web site was nicely done but quite underutilized. I met with his webmaster and we implemented a signup form in the front page to capture his visitors information (on exchange for getting a welcome to my restaurant discount coupon when they enter it). We also added an online registration, a comments field and some other useful and interesting information for his customers.
He also signed up for Meta Flavor (www.metaflavor.com) a great (and free) way to promote your restaurant in the web.
Finally, he created a Twitter account and now started twitting whenever he has empty spaces and wants to bring people (quickly and inexpensively) in.
These are just some examples of things that you can do to improve your marketing and save money in the process.
In these days of slow economy, taking control of your marketing and operating strategically and smart is a must, if you want to survive these challenging times.
Have a great day!
Jose L Riesco
Comment
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Comment by Annette Taylor on May 8, 2009 at 7:05am -
I just came across this post and completely agree. Often, a lot of time and effort is put into the front-end of marketing campaigns (the design, the rush to get the campaign started, the preparation for the response), but then there's a lack of follow-up. Sure, a restaurant might be busier during a promotion, but without a way to track if a particular promotion brought customers in, there really isn't a way to tell if that marketing campaign is effective.
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Comment by Jose L Riesco on May 1, 2009 at 7:01pm -
Thank you so much Norbert.
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Comment by Norbert Marrale on May 1, 2009 at 5:12pm -
Jose,
I've added your blog to our blogroll at http://dinesxm.blogspot.com - Your writing is timely and inspiring. Thanks!
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Comment by Jose L Riesco on April 29, 2009 at 5:15pm
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Thank you for your interest. In the meantime, you can get lots of free information about restaurant marketing in my website www.myrestaurantmarketing.com Check the blogs and archived newsletters. I hope it helps.
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Comment by Amber F. Oswalt on April 29, 2009 at 12:53pm -
I would really like to see that report too! We just opened a new location of our rastaurant in the Buckhead area of Atlanta and really want to get more people in. Thanks for the info!
Amber.
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Comment by Julie Lovelass on April 20, 2009 at 11:35am -
Fantastic I will check that out and would love to see your report.
Thanks so much for your time!
Julie
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Comment by Jose L Riesco on April 20, 2009 at 9:09am
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You can search for targeted Twitter users around the area where the restaurant is located and offer them incentives to come to your place. There are tools such as www.twellow.com where you can specify targeted searches (for example "Seattle & lawyers" will bring you results of lawyers located in the Seattle, area, etc. I am writing a report about how to use Twitter to promote restaurants step by step. Let me know if you are interested and I will let you know when it's ready.
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Comment by Julie Lovelass on April 20, 2009 at 9:04am
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Thanks...you also mention setting up a twitter account to bring customers in. How does a restaurant "target" customers on Twitter?...How does a restaurant create a twitter following? I personally don't understand how to make that happen.
Julie
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Comment by Jose L Riesco on April 20, 2009 at 8:36am
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This is a misconception. The Internet can be global, but it can also be totally targeted to the local areas. When I look for a restaurant in Seattle (where I live), I don't search for "Italian restaurant", and see results from New York, I search for "Italian restaurant in Ballard" (Ballard is a neighborhood in Seattle) because I am specifically targeting the place where I'll go. Then I read the reviews and decide the restaurant where I'll go.
If I was planning to visit the town where your friends lives, I will search on the web for some restaurants before I go. Then I will know where to go. If your friend's restaurant is not on the Web, I will never find it and therefore I will never go there.
Another advantage of promoting your business in the Web is how inexpensive it is compared with the traditional media and how easily you can track the results.
I hope this helps,
Thanks for your comment and question,
JL
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Comment by Julie Lovelass on April 20, 2009 at 8:25am
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I have a friend who owns a coffee shop in a rural Upstate NY area and uses the basic advertising platforms to get his message to the public. I asked him why he doesn't use the internet as a marketing tool and his response was "why do people half way around the world or in the next state need to know what I do here in our little town, seems like a waste of time"...how do you respond to that question?
Julie
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