An Easy Recipe

Make no mistake about it, your restaurant promotion strategy will be your most strategic and important tool when you are planning a new venture ahead. This kind of business will not reward you unless you promote it correctly and you need to be in business for at least five years before you can even be classified as “surviving.” Far too many companies go under within that time frame and this is often due to a lack of attention to promotional matters.

The good restaurateur knows fully well how an experienced and successful marketing consultant could help when it comes to compiling a restaurant promotion strategy. This is a core element of the business plan and must be fully detailed and understood in advance. All possible methods of exposure and promotion should be applied before committing to finer detail.

With a restaurant, promotion strategy always includes a wide variety of marketing initiatives. You cannot simply focus on a particular style and not pay attention to the others. The customer’s buying decision is affected by so many external forces and different triggers, some of which are not easy to quantify and others are rather indirect. As such, you will need to take a multi-pronged approach here to ensure that the customer ultimately pays attention and visits.

Restaurant promotion activities will involve a variety of above and below line options, direct and indirect approaches. Social media is of course very hot and must be included within your plans, but public relations activities are important too. Know how to brand your marketing correctly and how to package your services.

Compose a special public relations campaign to reach out to the media contacts in your direct area. Be consistent and always positive and get on first name terms with a specific person at each major media outlet.

A restaurant promotion strategy is not just about branding or advertising, it is about the entire customer experience and must be couched accordingly. The business plan should detail how you handle your customers from every conceivable angle. It’s not enough to attract the visitor through your door in the first place, as the primary goal is to ensure that they are so impressed that they always come back to you. Customer service and experience policies are critical.

Compose a schedule, listing sales promotions and corresponding backup actions and activities. Who is responsible for each element, the production of these promotions and follow through? Understand that logistics means that you should leave no stone unturned.

If customer relations is an essential part of the restaurant promotion strategy, branding is a key component of this as well. As a restaurateur planning a big opening, it is all too easy to be caught up in all the intricacies of your plan and not to be able to see how your would-be client perceives everything. Ensure that you have a common message, that the decor matches the uniforms, the branding, the facade, the billboards, the flyers and so on.

Expert Jose L Riesco shows you the best methods for getting more visitors to your restaurant at www.myrestaurantmarketing.com. Learn more about honing your restaurant promotion strategy here.