Restaurant Marketing Plan – Foundation is Reputation

Restaurant Marketing Plan

Elements of a Successful Strategy

The Foundation is Your Reputation

Let’s first be clear…There is plenty of confusion in business regarding the differences between marketing and advertising and whether or not they mean the same thing. THEY DO NOT. They are not interchangeable terms. In this article we are going to focus on one of the 4 important areas of and effective marketing system that I personally use that is aimed at establishing a presence that is revered in the local or online community.

Advertising is only an element or a piece of the puzzle. Advertising is the activity that lets potential customers know that your restaurant is alive and accepting diners. It is the newspaper ads, the television commercials, the radio spots, the website, the coupon offers, and the billboards. Advertising works as your announcer, your loud speaker on a large truck rolling through your city telling anyone and everyone about your business.

Marketing on the other hand is the complete puzzle that advertising is a part of. Marketing includes your location selection, market research, advertising, menu creation, merchandising, branding, pricing, atmosphere and/or amenities, sales, customer service, and public relations. So marketing is the strategy that is developed that will help you with the complete management of your restaurant. As you can see it encompasses all facets of your business because marketing is your overall presence.

Successful marketing strategies are all about systemizing. Having a system in place for the different aspects of your business will help with running it more seamlessly and with a lot less confusion. Though setting up a marketing system can be a daunting task, the main purpose of the article is to help you with that. So lets get down to business…

This system consists of four primary areas that are aimed at bringing more customers and more sales more frequently. The four areas are Reputation, Reach, Resell, and Referral. This article will address the first “R” which is going to be the foundation of your strategy and that is your REPUTATION.

Now, whether you are just starting your restaurant or have been in business for some time, your restaurants reputation is one of the more important aspects of your business. With the changing landscape of marketing and advertising and the Internet and mobile devices being a primary source of information for the masses its more important than ever to ensure that your business is being properly represented online.

Zagat is now incorporated into the Google+ Local listings that show for restaurants online. Having a poor rating and bad reviews here can cost you thousands of dollars in lost sales all because someone or several someone’s felt they had a bad experience at your restaurant. Ignoring places like this can harm your online presence but this is not the only place that directly affects whether or not people become patrons of your establishment. Sites like Yelp, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, Facebook, Twitter, and other local and social directories deserve a fair amount of attention because that is where people hang out online. Lets take an example: Below are two listings pulled from Google+ Local. Now imagine you are a shopper looking for a new place to go and enjoy some Italian cuisine. Which place would you likely choose to eat? Remember, you know nothing about these restaurants, you’ve never eaten there before so all you have to go off of is the fact that they are being shown to you and their ratings/reviews. Which one would you likely choose?

Lets take another look at some search engine snapshots to show you what other restaurant owners understand about the power of a superb reputation.

Below you will find some of the top listings for “Italian restaurants NYC”. As you can see, from the sheer number of reviews each of these restaurants have, these restaurateurs obviously some type of system or incentive in place to collect these reviews. Because they get so many of them, even if a random customer here and there left them a poor review it would not matter much because it would be drowned out by all of the good reviews. Take a look:

As a restaurateur, you should look for a system that helps you capture as many positive consumer opinions as possible from your new and repeat customers. There are several different methods for acquiring reviews from your patrons, though it would probably be more cost-effective to find a company that offers a full restaurant marketing system instead of putting together individual systems.

For example, having a mobile website that is linked to a QR code that comes on or with the customers check that asks for feedback can be an effective method of gathering reviews. You could also have a mobile website that has the links embedded so that customers can simply go to your mobile site and click a button and write a review. The key is not to make the customer feel totally inconvenienced by doing this.

Unhappy customers will gladly spend their personal time going online and finding a listing that belongs to you to leave a bad review. However, happy customers may not think to do this to tell the world how great their experience with you was. So, sometimes, incentivizing the review process may help to get you more results especially from customers that were extremely satisfied with their visit.

This is also a way to tie in another aspect of the plan, Reselling! Offering that customer a “discount on your next visit coupon” or a “buy this, get this on the next visit coupon” can be and effective way to turn that happy diner into a repeat customer.

Keep in touch for the next lesson in the series. In the next article we will cover the second “R” which is Reach and how your lack of proper exposure is hurting your bottom line.