A Marketing Plan for Restaurant Effectiveness
- Image via Wikipedia
A marketing plan for restaurant development is crucial for growing the business by attracting new customers to your restaurant and maintaining customer loyalty of your repeat business. A successful marketing plan should feature several parts so that it reaches as many people as possible and its effectiveness is measurable.
Once a restaurant is open and doing well, a marketing plan for restaurant fluidity ensures a healthy profit. Your marketing plan can be a combination of direct mail, promotions, community activities, and radio, television and print advertising. In-house promotions are also effective, such as themed dinners or early bird specials.
A marketing plan for restaurant business means enticing repeat customers. Consider marketing efforts that make customers feel special, such as honoring them on their birthday with a special promotion. Not only does this encourage repeat business, but a larger party of diners who will be part of the celebration. This means more people will experience your restaurant, thus creating more referrals.
When developing a marketing plan for restaurant stability, evaluate the dynamics of your overall business. This includes identifying your market, comparing your competition, defining your customer base, exploring other customer based opportunities, implementing focused marketing efforts for new and repeat business, identifying your competitive edge, determining menu price points, and implementing up-sell strategies.
A marketing plan for restaurant lifecycles should address busy and slow months. Establish a marketing budget in proportion to your sales. A good range is 3% to 6% of sales. Have a marketing plan that includes advertising in all mediums, as well as promotions on-site, at special events in the area, or in partnership with a charity or other company. Get to know your local media and find ways to encourage free press. Think creatively and consider every opportunity a way to market your restaurant.
A marketing plan for restaurant development should explore efforts that better connect you with the customer so they feel part of your family and want to support your business. Among the avenues to consider are targeted mailings, coupons, customer loyalty cards, an e-newsletter, a website and gift certificates. An inexpensive marketing plan is an email campaign where you collect customer’s emails in the restaurant or through your website and email them regularly about events, specials, holiday happenings and incentives for dining with you at certain times.
A marketing plan for restaurant continuity should be easy for all staff levels. They are the ones with direct contact with diners, so they need to be an essential part of carrying out any type of marketing effort. A trained staff is the best marketing strategy because they set the tone for a customer’s experience and whether they will return and refer your restaurant to others. Enhancing customer expectations through the dining experience is an inexpensive marketing effort.
A marketing plan for restaurant effectiveness means building a strong foundation that addresses all impact areas, including changes in the restaurant industry, your market, the competition in the area, your customers, and any other influences. You should also be able to track your marketing efforts to evaluate their success. A marketing plan can be established in house or through a marketing consultant and needs to be a part of the ongoing operations of a restaurant.
Jose L. Riesco is a restaurant marketing and consulting expert who has just published a book: Restaurant Marketing Strategies (available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com). His site www.myrestaurantmarketing.com, contains lots of free restaurant marketing information and ideas to help you improve your restaurant marketing.
No comments yet.
feel free to leave a comment
All fields marked with " * " are required.
