Restaurant Mailer: Get A 15% to 25% Increase In Sales Through Direct Mail Advertising

I opened my inbox the other night, after having a wonderful dinner with some old friends, and found five spam emails waiting for me. I clicked each of their checkboxes and then clicked delete. So there, gone, just like that. This is one of the things direct restaurant mailer does better than email advertising.

If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.

Charles F. Kettering.

I believe a restaurant mailer campaign is still an effective way to advertise your menu and your restaurant—that is, if you done right. Otherwise the flyers will end up just like those emails, in the recycle bin, and you wasted even more money on the direct mail service.

Here are some tips on how to make your restaurant mailer campaign work.

1. Make sure the mails arrive at their destination
Bank on the campaign by ensuring each and every mail gets received by potential customers within your area of business. For instance, this includes accounting for flats, condominiums, student accommodations, etc.

This doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but it makes a lot of difference in the long run. Trust me.

2. Color says everything
Who wants to look at a long list of food items printed on a brown piece of recycled paper?

Good restaurant service appeals to all the senses. Same goes for mail advertising. So okay. You don’t have to spray perfume all over the flyers, but make sure the design is visually attractive and makes a bold statement as soon as you lay eyes on them.

3. Use restaurant mailers to flirt with their budget
Tease potential customers by slipping discounts, coupons and meal deals along with the flyers. It helps out a lot in convincing customers to dial your number when deciding which restaurant to call for takeout.

4. Redesign your menu
At first it seems like a lot of hassle. Constantly redesigning your flyer sounds like a job in itself. But trust me, it is well worth it.

Constant changes to your flyer design help keep your image fresh. It appeals to both new customers as well as the old ones, since they’d be wanting to try out the “new” you. It’s a lot of work, yes, but the payoff is just too good to be left alone.

Expect a dramatic 15% to 25% increase in your sales if you manage to pull off the campaign successfully. If you commit a mistake somewhere in the process, don’t take your losses to heart. The good thing is that there’s always a second chance when it comes to restaurant mailer campaigns.

Learn Exactly How To Promote A Restaurant With Style

Promoting a restaurant is no easy task. It’s going to take a lot out of you. These days of global recession and restaurants going out of business, you need to be extra creative if you want to see your restaurant take off. It’s sad to think not every restaurant owner out there could get this right.

The grand opening is no doubt the most crucial period of a restaurant’s life. How you handle this phase either makes or breaks your business in the coming months. So it’s important to promote your restaurant in a positive light as soon as the double doors swing open to receive the first customer.

Here are some tips.

1. The restaurant must have personality
CEO of Quantified Marketing Group, Aaron Allen, has this to say about restaurants being unique,

Define how the brand should walk, talk, act and behave. It will be easier to align the operations and marketing with this in place.

It’s important to identify what makes your restaurant unique, and bleed it until it shows. Brand personality is essential if you want to make an impression on your customers and want them to remember you later on. Allen agrees.

2. Employees can promote your restaurant, too
Ron Yudd, a Gaithersburg-based restaurant consultant, said employees should act as “walking billboards” for your restaurant brand.

Refrain from taking in shy and reserved people. Instead hire passionate applicants who are easy to talk with and love to pass around word about anything new and exciting in your restaurant.

3. Give customers a reason to come back
The first and second pointer invites new customers to your restaurant. This last one keeps them seated at your tables.

Why not consider adding celebrities to your restaurant marketing mix? Offer them a complimentary meal or something. When one comes to visit, grab a couple of pictures, and display them in a prominent place in your restaurant. I’m telling you, exposure of this kind goes a long way.

Another tip. Create special promotions based on local events. For example, during the Writer’s Guild of America strike, Campanile restaurant, a Los Angeles-based business, launched a 50% off promo for everyone with a writer’s union card.

The owner of Campanile says,

It’s definitely our thank-you back to our community.

Promoting a restaurant is no easy task. It’s going to take a lot out of you. But if you work hard at it and make all the right decisions with the help of course of an experienced consultant, it is by no means an impossible task. Fact is promoting your restaurant might as well be the most fun you’ll have out of running this business. It is where the story of your success begins.

Three Big Reasons To Hire A Restaurant Marketing Group

There is a big difference between talking and walking it.

It’s easy to know anything about everything these days, even if it is about establishing a restaurant business and marketing it. But let’s not forget the most essential part restaurant marketing – experience. Simply knowing this and that thing isn’t going to make everything work according to plan as if by magic.

Running a restaurant requires a large investment, and this is where restaurant marketing groups come in. A restaurant marketing group is a firm of restaurant consultants and business coaches, waiting for your Go signal for them to pounce on your problem at hand.

Here are ways on how a restaurant marketing group can help grow your business.

1.    Helps with market research
restaurant marketing books provide useful data. A restaurant consultant or business coach offers more than that: helpful insights on problems and issues at hand. These guys work using proven methodologies and techniques to formulate a solution to your problem.

2.    Provides insight on customer profiling and loyalty
Success means nothing if you can’t track it. Until you find a way to measure your success, you won’t be able to maintain it long enough to really help your business. Restaurant consultants can show you how to pull off effective customer profiling to help you track down which moves went right and which ones went wrong.

3.    Knows the deal on strategic planning
There are hundreds of restaurant marketing strategies out there waiting to grab your attention. How do you know which one is right for you? Consultants have the experience to pinpoint which marketing strategy works well with what type of restaurant catering to a certain market niche.

Need tips on how to get better marks with the local health inspector? Need advice on how to spot trustworthy applicants? Need help on planning an effective restaurant marketing mix? Hiring a consultant with the proper expertise from a good restaurant marketing group or firm is the right direction to solving all your problems.

Ask friends or local business owners for references on a good restaurant marketing group to hire a consultant from.

Restaurant Advertising: Are You At Risk Of Saying The Right Things The Wrong Way?

Mark Twain once said,

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

I don’t know what Mark Twain was referring to back then, but I do know what he said, or wrote, makes a lot of sense these days, especially in the foodservice industry. restaurant public relations is a critical formula to success, even more so than restaurant advertising.

Restaurant public relations is telling your restaurant’s story through third-party organizations, primarily the media. People believe what they see on TV, hear on the radio, or read in the paper or magazine. On the other hand people are less trusting of what they see in straight up restaurant advertisements.

Most restaurant advertising campaigns are too systematic, almost too mechanical, and lacking that human touch. A campaign may reach its target audience with enough frequency, but still doesn’t do anything to increase sales of a product or service. Restaurant public relations does things differently. Instead it touches on the credentials of the medium and quality of the ad placement to generate impact.

Here are three good reasons why you should focus on restaurant public relations rather than restaurant advertising.

1.    Restaurant advertising is intrusive
I once read a book by the famous writer Haruki Murakami. Murakami is a Japanese novelist and an avid long-distance runner. He makes it a point as a runner to participate in at least one triathlon every year. But one time, while he was training for the New York Marathon, he exerted himself too hard and was forced out of the competition. He said that experience taught him a very important lesson in running.

Same goes for advertising. Restaurant advertising is counter-productive. The harder the sell, the harder the intrusion resists the sales message. But restaurant public relations, it produces hard results by presenting the sales message through a more credible third-party outlet.

2.    Restaurant advertising is hard on the wallet
People have the impression that the higher the price, the greater the value of something, including product advertisements. Would you rather get a free 30-sec ad on TV or a feature article on Fortune or Forbes magazine?

History shows people enjoyed the Pets.com sock puppet ad very much. But even so, it didn’t move people enough to buy the products online. Another example. The Joe Isuzu ad was hilarious, but again it wasn’t funny enough to cause a stampede at Isuzu dealerships.

The most successful businesses—or product brands, for that matter—are built on long-term restaurant public relations, not on short-term restaurant advertising gimmicks.

3.    Restaurant advertising is short-lived
A restaurant advertisement is much like a butterfly – its lifespan is short-lived. Same is true for your restaurant business if you don’t watch how much you spend on those advertisements.

Restaurant public relations doesn’t work that way. For example, a well-placed article or story can do a lot for your business over an extended period of time. The critical step is to publish a story in one publication, and then move it up the ladder or transfer it to either radio or TV, if you can afford it. This process works both ways, too. For instance, you can publish a story on a premiere restaurant magazine and later have it appear in smaller publications.

I’m not saying restaurant advertising isn’t worth anything. Fact is a combination of short- and long-term campaigns is still the best way to reach out to new and old customers. If your restaurant advertising efforts isn’t doing you any favors, consider allocating 20% to 30% of your promotional budget to public relations campaign.

You won’t be disappointed.

Restaurant Consulting: Learn To Become Your Own Sanitation Inspector

restaurant consulting isn’t a walk in the park. If anything, it’s a job that takes personal experience and creativity to get good at. You need to have both, or else just one or the other isn’t going to get you very far.

I have a restaurant owner friend who came to me, a business coach, one day about his problems with the local health inspection. Thing is, most restaurants worry more about passing the sanitary inspection than implementing good food safety procedures regularly.

I didn’t want to let my friend down. I did some hard research on restaurant consulting for a couple days, and came up with the following solution: why not be your own sanitation inspector?

After doing research on restaurant consulting, here are some tips that come to mind.

Show up unannounced. Don’t tell your employees you’re coming. Surprise them and enter the establishment from the outside, giving you a better perspective of what the health inspector sees when he comes to visit.

Secure an authentic health inspection form. This should give an idea what the sanitation inspector looks for in the operations of a commercial kitchen. This way, you’ll see what you’re doing wrong and what you’re doing just right.

Be thorough. Wear a pair of white gloves, if possible. Be as objective about the whole procedure. Make sure your employees are sticking to the handwashing, food storage, labeling and food preparation guidelines.

Talk to your employees. Take time to conduct mock interviews and training exercises with your employees, pointing out errors and correct procedures. It helps to prepare them when the real inspector arrives.

Finally, when all is said and done, it’s time to address the problems that arises from your little operation. Restaurant consulting is nothing without action.

The local sanitation inspector is a great resource for keeping you on track about food safety regulations. But until his, or her, next visit comes, why don’t you hold a small notebook in one hand and a pen in the other and become your own inspector? If it keeps your employees on their toes, why not?

My friend took my advice and did good. In the end, it only took a bit of restaurant consulting experience and creativity to pinpoint a solution to his problem.

How To Attract More Repeat Business Through Fine Dining Marketing

As restaurants go, you can’t get any more sophisticated than fine dining restaurants.

These restaurants are at the top of the foodservice business hierarchy. So okay. Fast food might bring in more profits at the beginning. But fine dining restaurants make reliable long term sources of income, and you get be in the position to serve a special group of clients. Fine dining restaurants is where eating out and making good memories come together.

But even the most elite clients need to be reminded one time or another why your restaurant is their favorite. You need to get involved in fine dining marketing.

A good approach to fine dining marketing on the Internet is to group your clients into different categories.

1.    Business/Corporate clients
These clients come in from time to time to host a business lunch, office party, client dinner or anything like it. Corporate clients make up a significant portion of your profits if you could make them keep hosting events at your place.

2.    Potential regulars
Potential regulars love your restaurant and keep coming back to it over the years. You’ll see them on dates, anniversaries or birthday parties held at your place.

3.    Interested customers
Clients like this one just happened to be hungry and saw your restaurant. You could easily convert them into regulars though, if you could arouse their interest with the help of some fine dining email marketing.

Email marketing solutions is your friend in this one. By tweaking the content and design of your marketing campaigns, you can easily stir new clients and attract repeat business. That’s all anyone could ever want.

Now, the offers.

For business clients, send them pictures of your restaurant and conference rooms, if any. Throw the menu in there and some client testimonials. Your email marketing campaign should target their potential to advertise your restaurant by giving them a reason to host events at your place.

For potential regulars, give them a 10% to 30% discount when they celebrate a birthday or anniversary – do this by gathering customer feedback information and sending them personalized emails when the special dates come up. You make clients feel special in the process. About interested customers, the best way to make sure you’ll be seeing them again is to tempt them with discount coupons and seasonal menu items. If possible, showcase the awards you’ve received over the years to help them get to know your place a little better.

You can do all sorts of things with an efficient email marketing system. Anything is possible. Don’t miss this chance to put your fine dining marketing opportunities to good use.

Give Me Five Minutes And I’ll Show You The Real Deal About Restaurant Marketing Books

The Internet makes it so much easy for us to get our hands on credible information. Anything you need to know, right this minute, just one click of a mouse and there it is right in front of you. Same is true for first-time small restaurant owners looking for tips and advice on how to get started on their dream business.

This is where restaurant marketing books come in.

Why restaurant marketing books?
There’s the Internet, and it’s free. There are hundreds of articles out there right now trying to get your attention.

But there’s something else you need to know – anybody can say anything on the Internet.

Writing on the Internet requires little to no investments whatsoever. Unlike restaurant marketing books, you can be rest assured the writer somehow made some effort to get his book on the shelves. That says a lot about his confidence in his expertise—in this case, restaurant marketing—and that people are going to want to read what he has written.

Restaurant marketing books on the Internet?
It’s possible. As more people learn to use the Internet, expert writers and restaurant operators are preferring to publish their stuff online.

Take me for example. As a small business marketing coach I have a free e-book and audio book ready to give struggling restaurant operators a chance to turn their business around. It’s okay to trust what people write on the Internet, but only as long as the source can walk the talk.

Restaurant marketing books versus restaurant consultant?
If a restaurant marketing book was written by a consultant, do I really need to hire another one?

It depends. If this isn’t your first time starting a restaurant business, then I assume you have a pretty good idea what went wrong the last time and keep it from happening again. But if you’re new to this business, still trying to find a stable footing, then simply relying on the guidance of restaurant marketing books isn’t going to take you very far. You really need to hire a business coach or restaurant consultant. Trust me, I’ve been there and done all that.

Look around your local bookstore or Amazon, ask friends if they could recommend you a restaurant marketing book worth entrusting your business on.

Seven Simple Tips To Creating A Restaurant Website Design That Works

Associate Editor of Restaurant and Institutions, Erin J. Shea, says about restaurant websites,

Web sites are strong allies in an operation’s marketing arsenal and invaluable when it comes to communicating with guests.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Restaurant websites are essential, almost indispensable. These Internet days, a restaurant requires online presence if it wants to succeed in this business, and building a restaurant website is the way to do that.

I won’t go into a discussion on how to go about creating your restaurant website design. I’ll leave that to your programmer, or a future article. For now, I’m going to share some general tips on what makes a good restaurant website design that complements a successful online marketing effort.

1. Introduce yourself right away
Put your basic information on the main page, meaning your phone number(s), hours of operation, directions to the restaurant, etc. Spreading this info is why you’re on the Internet in the first place.

2. Highlight your menu
Maintain a separate page with detailed descriptions of your menu. People like to know what the food is like they arrive.

3. Tell your story, but keep it brief
Don’t waste time by going into long paragraphs about the history of the restaurant. A sense of history is fine, sure, but customers visited your website to find a place to eat, not to take a history lesson. I’m sure you get what I’m saying.

4. Be user-friendly
Make sure your restaurant website design is easy to navigate. Keep it clean and simple. Most people view restaurant websites from their office computers, not exactly the best ones around, and sometimes too much sound and animation could throw them off.

5. Use simple language
Talk in simple descriptive language, and avoid marketing jargon.

6. Keep it updated
Consult regularly with your website designer on how recent in-house events can be reflected onto your restaurant website design.

7. Be familiar
Most importantly, design your website so when a customer walks into your restaurant, he gets the same feeling from the website he visited just a couple minutes earlier.

John Yesko supports these restaurant website design tips, a Chicago-based web designer.

You can hire the best web designer in town, or create the perfect restaurant website design, but you won’t be able to achieve success until you get down the sole reason why people visit restaurant websites in the first place: to get a feel of your food or service, maybe even your delivery hotline number. Everything else—restaurant background, flashy intro, etc.—is secondary.

Keep this in mind when formulating your restaurant website design.

Five Action Ideas To Impress With Your Restaurant Design

George Bernard Shaw said, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”

It’s true, if you think about it, every second commercial is about food, every second episode of a TV show has a lunch or a dinner scene, and you can’t take a walk outside in the city without seeing or smelling a restaurant. Food is the world’s most popular product.

But the design of your restaurant is important, too. As an operator, you need to impress customers—if you want to turn them into patrons—not just with the taste of the food but also with the overall dining experience. This is what I believe is a mark of a true entrepreneur, what separates the men from the boys.

Here are five restaurant design tips to help bring more customers to your place:

1. Go all out outside
A restaurant should have curb appeal. Enhance your restaurant design’s curb appeal by investing on good lighting, the exterior and design elements updated based on the time of year, the landscape around your restaurant properly maintained.

Make sure to highlight your restaurant’s name out front. Diners only eat at restaurants they can find.

2. Polish with paint
White walls give off a clean, sanitary vibe. But if you ask me white-painted walls are too safe for comfort. They don’t emphasize your restaurant design or say anything about it.

Paint the walls with a color that suits the brand personality you’re going for. Give your place a sense of currency, but make sure it fits your type of restaurant. Good use of colors allows any establishment to make a bold statement even when budget is an issue.

3. Proper lighting whets the appetite
You should read my article What Everybody Ought To Know About Food Visibility. It talks about customers being able to glimpse the food before they place an order as well as the importance of using natural lighting in and around the restaurant.

4. Fine dining with fine art
This one is a tried-and-true approach, especially for fine dining restaurants.

Decorate the restaurant with pieces of artwork—mosaics, sculptures, mounted paintings, murals. Great art is a fine compliment to good food, and goes a long way into supporting your brand personality.

For example, the Brickhouse bar. Brickhouse has a large mural painting of 1930s San Francisco. It is by all means a beautiful background for the dining area, and goes well in complementing the establishment’s color scheme.

5. Upholstery is just as important
When it comes to upholstery, wear and tear is your worst enemy—that is, if it doesn’t become outdated first. No one wants to sit at a table with wine or coffee stains on the upholstery. So change the upholstery from time to time, at least once every couple months, to give your restaurant design a fresh and updated appeal.

It is just as disastrous to have the wrong accessories in your room as it is to wear sport shoes with an evening dress.

Dorothy Draper, interior designer.

Same goes for restaurants. I can go on and on about tips on restaurant design. But in the end, it’s you who gets to decide which goes well with what, and the answer lies—where else?—on your type of restaurant and brand personality. Take a long hard look at your brand, and draw inspiration from there.

I hope you find great success on your restaurant design.