Audience vs. Daypart

Choosing complementary audiences in the early going of a new restaurant is relatively easy: where are my customers immediately before or immediately after they visit? What other businesses are before me or after me in the sales cycle? What types of businesses cater to, but don't conflict with, my target audience?

Health clubs, high schools and smoothie bars; office buildings and coffeehouses; churches and family restaurants. Form partnerships, cross-promote, and sample on-site with these businesses and you can see your customer base take shape.

It's more difficult, however, to identify the audience that can help your business right now. For example, say you want to build your lunch business. Your existing relationships with churches, little league teams, and movie theaters won't do you much good here. What you need are people who are in the 1-3 mile radius of your unit during lunch.

It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how many owners don't take that simple truth to the next level. Would you run a lunch special in the local newspaper? The newspaper reaches households, members of your community for sure, but are residents in your area during lunch? It's doubtful that your daytime population is the same as your evening pop.

So for a store that's been open for a while, you need to add "daypart" to "audience + objective" in order to make your time and effort more effective.

It does you no good to run entree specials, or family carry-out deals, if you want to build lunch. Lunch specials to the Little League baseball teams (usually dinner and weekend targets) isn't effective either.

What do you want to accomplish?
What is the complementary audience for that objective (ie: most likely to take you up on the offter)?
What channels make the most sense in promoting that item to that audience?

Thinking like a customer, instead of like an owner, will help you with those answers.