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.

Outwinning The Competition Without Cheating

Business is war, or so the Japanese say. Businessmen are always taught to think that there is no room for second place in business, and there is only win or lose to think about in the battlefield.

The difference between war and business, however, is that there is no room for unorthodox and dirty tactics. Businesses are not allowed by law to make comments that will discredit the competition, or else risk legal action.

The only thing that businesses can do to win people over is to promote their products as best as they could. All businesses are affected by this, including restaurants.

That is what restaurant marketing is all about. Marketing is a means to make moves to win market share without resorting to dirty tactics like verbally attacking the competitors.
The Two Kinds of Marketing

Marketing comes in two forms: offline and online.

Offline Marketing

Offline marketing involves the use of traditional methods and media to promote one’s business. There are many ways to facilitate offline marketing, and these methods include:

Flyers

You can choose to distribute flyers about your restaurant, especially if you have just set up and started your business. Flyers are a good way of getting your restaurant to other people’s attention and at the same time gauge interest and response.

Calling cards

A restaurant can also double as a catering service if the entrepreneur so chooses. Calling cards can be distributed to potential clients like big companies, schools, and universities so people will know about your catering service. You can order inexpensive professional looking cards to site like www.vistaprint.ca.

Mass media

Mass media includes TV, radio and newspaper ads. This method gets attention to your business quickly and faster, and is the preferred method next to Internet marketing.

Online Marketing

Since the Internet rose to prominence, people have taken advantage of its communication capabilities. These include businesses. More and more people browse the Internet everyday, and thus information is easily disseminated in the World Wide Web.

Considered the great equalizer, online marketing gives small and large businesses equal opportunities for marketing. It is not unusual for a smaller business to eclipse a larger one in popularity because of effective Internet marketing.

Several offline techniques have also been adapted for online marketing. These marketing techniques include:

Viral marketing

The most effective technique, viral marketing has never been easier online with the rise of social networking sites and forums. Through viral marketing, you can promote your restaurant by maintaining a blog and joining forums about topics relevant to your business.

Of course, you can write about anything you like but to ensure interest in your line of business, it is advisable to write blogs only about restaurants or food to make sure you generate enough interest for viewers to click the link to your business website.

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is simply optimizing the content of your website to take advantage of the search engines’ algorithm so that your website is ranked high among other search engine results.

Pay-per-click marketing

Pay per click marketing is an effective yet inexpensive online marketing strategy. Through PPC, your ads appear besides search engine results for keywords of your choosing. What makes this inexpensive is that you can control how much you’d want to spend on this type of advertising.