Three Steps To Improving Your Restaurant Marketing During Slow Economy
Last year was a hard year for restaurant operators thanks to the recession. I should know. I have friends who are thinking about throwing down the apron for good, or else cut back significantly on their budget. “This business is getting nowhere,” my friends tell me. They all sing the same tune.
Experts are saying it’s okay to cut back during down times. But if there’s one thing you shouldn’t shy away from, they say, it’s marketing. This video explains the critical points of why you shouldn’t cut back on marketing and how to steer it so it works to your advantage… even during a recession.
Here’s a brief summary of the pointers discussed in the video.
- Step up your online marketing
- Determine what works, what doesn’t
- Invest on the right campaigns
Step up your online marketing
The logic is that recession is a time when most businesses pull their shutters down for good, or else cut back on their advertising campaigns. This creates the perfect opportunity for your business to take center stage. So step up and increase your online marketing campaigns. I say online marketing because, in most cases, advertising on the Internet is free or cheap at the very least.
Determine what works, what doesn’t
There’s a saying that goes, “You’ll never know whether you succeed or failed if you don’t measure your efforts.”
So okay. I’m not sure if there’s a saying that goes like that – sorry! But I definitely heard that from somewhere, and I want you to see the value of that phrase here. Organize your marketing campaigns, and then by the end of the month, try to figure out which ones work and which ones don’t. What comes next ought to be self-explanatory: slash those campaigns that don’t work.
Invest on the right campaigns
Repeat the same marketing strategy of whichever campaign works. For example, if you paid 20 cents to advertise on Google and got $600 worth of catering business out of it, you’d do well to tell yourself, “Hey, this actually works. Maybe I’ll keep advertising here instead of that other website.”
In the previous pointer, I told you to cut back on failed campaigns. Here I’m telling you to start investing more especially on those that pay for themselves.
The video talks about business in general. But it sure works wonders for restaurant marketing, too.