More Effective Restaurant Marketing

Thoughts On Guest Loyalty

A Bad Economy Doesn’t Mean Stick Your Head In The Sand

Why You Need A Restaurant Marketing Plan
Or is it enough that people come because the food and service are good. Certainly, if your tables are full every day, you probably don’t need one (unless, of course, you’d like to make a bigger profit). Simply put, a restaurant marketing plan is a plan for success. If you agree that you need a restaurant marketing plan and are able to write one, we don’t have to convince you of its importance. But before you sit down to write it, keep in mind that a restaurant marketing plan has to cover much more than the 4P’s taught in Marketing 101 product, price, place, and promotion. Restaurant marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Great marketing i

17 Leadership Best Practices
We’ve been talking a lot lately about Leadership so here are my top 17 hottest best practices. One-On-Ones: The best tool that gets the best results for our clients is the 5-minute, “One-On-One” utilized with EVERY employee, EVERY day. We Coach them to pick one employee every day to sit down and have a one-on-one conversation with. This isn’t a “gotcha” event as much as it is a “what can I do for you to help you achieve your goals” event. You learn tons when they begin to share what their own personal goals are – or aren’t! Then when you go through your entire staff – start over! Employe

More Restaurant Marketing Lemons
General retail marketing strategies don’t work for restaurants. No restaurant puts butts in seats by selling themselves – no one wants to be sold anymore. They do so by telling their story to a target market which makes a connection to those guests who have a social proclivity for patronizing that restaurant in the first place. Retail strategies and tactics are great if you want to create a commodity, compete on price and slug it out in your market along with every other like minded concept that wants to sell a chicken sandwich. Restaurants sell experiences not products. Marketing them like Wal Mart, Sears, Gap, Apple, HP, et al is just plain dumb and is extreme

5 Thoughts On Guest Loyalty
Loyalty is all about building relationships and the emotional experiences that build and solidify them. Experiences are built on increasing trust and adding value at each guest touchpoint while at the same time increasing the emotional appeal of that touchpoint and consequently the guest relationship. You can’t buy loyalty through frequency schemes or discounts – period! When you embark on a guest loyalty initiative(s) your only competition becomes yourself. This is innovative and differentiating. Focus on increasing the emotional appeal of your existing touchpoints and then look

More Effective Restaurant Marketing
Yes there is a silver lining to every cloud! Everyone is cutting back on their advertising (most think falsely that advertising is marketing). Because there is a lack of advertisers, the cost of advertising, across all channels, is rapidly falling. If you have a marketing message that is relevant (something more than the next, great value deal!) there is much less noise to crowd it out of the minds of your guests (think mindshare) and therefore it should be easier to communicate to them more effectively and efficiently. Research shows that businesses that continue to market themselves (or even increase their marketing) even during recessions perfor