Marketing Services

Home

Services

Featured Articles

About Us

Consulting/Speaking

Contact

Library

Customers Tell Us

Marketing Your Restaurant

By Rick Nagele
President, Advantage Marketing Information

Transforming Research Into Insight

Advantage Marketing Information
35 Steamboat Avenue - Historic Wickford, RI, USA 02852
(401) 294-6910 | Fax (401) 294-6661
Affiliated Offices: Pasadena, Calif., USA and Niigata City, Japan

Marketing Your Restaurant - June 2007

By Rick Nagele
President, Advantage Marketing Information

Ok, so it’s competitive out there. But you can still grow your restaurant.

Rule #1: don’t do what your competitors do and expect a huge return.

Consumer attention is precious today. It’s been estimated that people in the United States have 17 minutes of free attention time per day; that’s it! In addition, most potential customers already have restaurants they like. They don’t need you!

What do you do?

The start of a good marketing program, to quote the book “The Purple Cow,” is to be Remarkable. There should be something about your restaurant that makes it worth making a remark about and provides a reason for people to come. It’s better if some people love your restaurant and others hate it than to have everybody think it’s ‘nice.’ Nice is not remarkable. Nice is invisible. Invisible is death.

To successfully market your restaurant, start by focusing:

* on one idea
* on one well defined group of customers
* with a minimum number of key supporting tactics (so it actually gets done)
* on realizable objectives

Don’t try to do everything or reach everybody. It doesn’t work. To grow your business, you can:

Attract new customers.
Have existing customers come more often.
Have existing customers spend more on each visit.

A good plan considers all three – but focuses on existing customers. These people already like you. By becoming even more remarkable, they’ll use you more and tell their friends (especially if you ask them to). Attracting new customers using traditional advertising methods is by far the most expensive (and probably least effective). It is also what most of your competitors do.

rite a description of the ideal customer – those who enjoy what you do (or will do). Think about the people who patronize your restaurant and are profitable. Design your efforts to reach more of these people.

Many restaurateurs experiment with promotions like two for one, etc. Many later realize that, while they generate sales, the sales are not particularly profitable and the customers not necessarily the kind who come back and pay full price. Marketers have done a good job of training the customer to ‘buy on sale.’ This doesn’t build long-term profitability. You are much better off to go back to the beginning, find or create something remarkable, and sell this creatively.

Different types of restaurants need to market differently, so making specific recommendations that apply across all restaurants is difficult. But after creating something unique that is relevant to a specific group of people, there are some common ideas to consider.

1. Focus on staff/internal issues first. Hire people who like people and train them to provide customer satisfaction (first) and sales (second). Consumers are critical of the service they receive in America today. Improving service works.

2. Promote inside your restaurant. Sometimes called 4-walls marketing, some experts suggest that the bulk of marketing money be spent inside the restaurant. Collect names of customers who frequent your restaurant. Send them promotional material (if they want it). Use email. It works well with existing customers and is cheap!

3. Create events that make your restaurant different. Be creative.

4. Work with partners. Jointly promote a new cookbook with your local bookstore. Do the same with wine at retail liquor stores or travel agencies if you are an ethnic restaurant. The ideas are infinite. But because it takes work, most of your competitors won’t do it.

Test your ideas and research your customers. Testing is simply asking good customers about your ideas before you implement them. Research means asking those same customers what you’re doing right, and what you need to do better.

Many restaurant operators think marketing is taking out an ad or giving away a discount coupon. These tactics can sometimes have impact, but they work best with big budgets. And what’s more, they just aren’t remarkable.

Richard Nagele is President & Senior Analyst, Advantage Marketing Information and formerly Managing Director, Hanson’s Landing Waterfront Restaurant, Wakefield, Rhode Island. Hanson’s Landing won numerous awards and grew from sales of about $500,000 under previous owners to over $1.4 million in 2005.

Advantage Marketing Information - Main office: 35 Steamboat Avenue - Historic Wickford, RI, USA 02852
Affiliated Offices: Pasadena, Calif., USA and Niigata City, Japan