These are no doubt tough times for every industry but it seems the Restaurant Industry is taking it a little harder than most.
I read today from the NRA 5 lead articles all talking about what restaurant companies are doing during these tough times. All the stories had to do with shutting restaurants or layoffs. Those are tough calls and I have been on the front lines of that. I am still one of the guys that signs the front of the check in my restaurant business so I know what it is like having people counting on me.
I led a call today with some real high level restaurant owners. A high level conversation developed with ideas for battling the economy, “Creating Your Own Economy” as I like to call it! No one is giving us a “bailout” we have to be smart and aggressive and bail out ourselves during tough times.
Here are a few of the topics and some details I noted:
Email is a popular marketing communication tool, very economical and effective… How effective? I cautioned being too reliant on any one media and discussed the effectiveness of email marketing. You may be missing out if you don’t utilize email marketing strategies. Even if you are capturing their information you may only be getting a potion of customers giving you their email and then only half are deliverable or get opened. It is realistic to think that you are only hitting 25% of your list. So if you are effective only hitting 25% how effective would you be if you hit 75%. The biggest suggestion I have is to mix direct mail into your marketing at some level, at the least get a quarterly communication out.
The bottom line Email works and is cost effective, use it as part of your marketing, not all of your marketing.
A twist on a birthday mailer. We all agreed that a birthday mailer for a restaurant is a must. Here’s what a colleauge suggested, Kyle suggested ways to improve our cover count with his recent change to his birthday mailer. Birthday customers get their EntrÈe Free when 2 customers dine. However, when 4 people dine, they receive the entrÈe and a cake. When 8 customers dine, they recieve a free entrÈe, 1 free cake and 1 free appetizer. What a great way to drive up the size of birthday parties!
What type of ideas have you used to bring customers into your restaurant? Chime in, we’d love to hear from you!
