Apr 10
7
As I was browsing through the unanswered questions on Business.com today, I came across an excellent question regarding restaurant advertising and whether the proprietor should be advertising when they aren’t making any money. This presents the quintessential “chicken or the egg” scenario for restaurant owners.
Advertising for your business is critical, even in a down market — in fact many folks believe that during the down market is the most important time to be marketing your business. It hurts the pocket book and it’s tough to write that check each month, but it must be done. However, it doesn’t need to be extremely expensive. You can read about a lot of guerrilla marketing techniques and work to implement a few of them, but whatever you choose, try to be creative. With all of the advertising ‘noise’ out there today, you need to pick an advertising platform that will get into your customer’s hands directly and ultimately result in coupon conversions. (I run a text message marketing company, so obviously I’m partial to that method, but whatever you choose to do, be creative).
Some quick inexpensive things you can do to get started:
- Be sure to look internally to your own self-created database first. Friends, family, neighbors, or the database that you’ve already built from previous promotions. Get with those folks with some sort of promotional message and ask them to forward to their friends.
- Work with community organizations – partner with local organizations (schools, community organizations, etc.) to provide a “Community night” or “School Night” and give 15% of your proceeds to that organization. If you do that, the school or organization will do the marketing for you.
- Give instant coupons for a return visit to your patrons. Nobody will return faster to your restaurant than someone who knows how good your food is! When you present the bill, give them a card or coupon for 15% off their next visit and then give them a defined time limit (depending on the type of restaurant). This gives them a discount at a place they like, and generates a solid call to action to return before the coupon expires.
One thing to keep in mind at all times is that you have to give them a solid benefit and a good call to action. “5% off a purchase of $100 or more” won’t do it. “$5 Off any item” (including a $5 item) would work to get them in the door, and then you can hope for ancillary purchases. For our clients, I prefer to have them do a “Buy One Get One Free” or a “Free X with the Purchase of X”. You can even try to drive groups into your establishment by offering “Two Free Appetizers with a party of 4 or more”. Sure, you’re giving away two appetizers, but think of all of the drinks, food, etc. that you’ll sell in the process.
One client asked my opinion about whether he should offer a “Free Pizza” deal – no other purchase necessary. He was afraid that he would be giving the store away without any benefit. He told me that a large pizza cost him about $3 in supplies. My response was “Is it worth $3 to get a new client?” His answer, of course, was “Yes”. However, if he simply gave away the pizza, he wouldn’t get information about his client and be able to market to them again, so I suggested that he marry his Free Pizza campaign with his text message marketing campaign. Give them the free pizza, but only if they texted his keyword to his short code, so that he now captured their contact information and can market to them again. Since he knows that they like a free deal, he can him them weekly or monthly with another ‘free’ offer and get them back in the door. You need to keep in mind that every marketing transaction should work to build some sort of long term value to your company, not simply a one time transaction.
Since you are looking to build long term value with your marketing campaign, you need to look at how effective the marketing dollars are being spent and what kind of ROI you are getting from your marketing efforts. However, being a small business owner most of my life, I realize that small business owners are typically so focused on day to day operations that they don’t have the time or money or technology to work on tracking their marketing efforts. An ad placed in local paper, door hangers, a Val-pak mailer or similar bulk mail coupon system, or even a mobile text message marketing campaign may, or may not generate additional revenue unless there is a solid tracking mechanism in place. I would recommend that if you are doing any marketing at all, you include some sort of ‘coupon code’ that allows you to track which promotion generated the business. This can be done as simply as having a manual tally sheet at the cash register to record which coupons were used the most. You can then determine on an on-going basis where you want to allocate your marketing dollars.
Jeffrey W. Arnold
Principal, Pocket-Promo LLC
