Tuesday

Restaurants and Recessions

Local store marketing, being the Mayor of Mayberry, is a great tool for good times. If you have a lot of customers coming through your doors, you're almost sure to get 10, 20, even 33% more money from the same volume of customers. Increased frequency and higher ticket average being the chief reasons.

But local store marketing was really made for gaining new customers with very little money. And in a down market, like now, or when opening a business, there are very few marketing philosophies that offer the benefits of local store marketing.

When times are tough, there's a great opportunity to grab both market share and share of wallet. Market share being new customers, share of wallet being frequency of visit. In a down market, some restaurants don't make it - you can be there to pick up the slack. In a down market, when people are more conservative with their dining dollars, consumers tend to choose restaurants where they feel at home, where they know the owner.

In a down market, increasing the frequency of your message almost always leads to both higher revenues now and higher revenues when the worm turns and things get better. Study after study shows this to be true in every recession since WWII.

In a down market, surrounding your customers, increasing your presence, leads customers to believe that you're strong in tough times. It reminds them that you support what they support. Plus, since other restaurants are decreasing their advertising, you're now the only voice speaking. Advertising is actually more effective in a down market.

But it's also true that you have less money to spend on advertising. So do what great Mayors do: get out of your four walls and shake hands and kiss babies. Amp up your customer experience so every customer feels loved every time.

There is ample opportunity to make lemonade out of the lemons from the economy. And a solid local store marketing plan is the perfect vehicle for making it happen.

Monday

Keep Your Promises

A lot of restaurant marketing comes in the form of behavior modification. We can condition our customers to get the larger size, to purchase additional items, or to make a habit of visiting in the morning.

But we can also condition our customers that we aren't true to our word, that we don't do what we say we will do.

Like the sign on your door that posts your hours. If a customer shows up, during the hours posted as 'open', should they not find that you are, in fact, open? Seems like an obvious answer, but I can tell you as both a consultant and a consumer that this is far from the case.

Last Friday I suggested to a friend of mine we meet for lunch at a new place. When I arrived, at 12:30, there was a sign on the door that said something to the effect that "we have a large catering order today, so we're closed until 1:00pm".

What I read was: "We're either too disorganized to handle more than one thing at a time or we have more important things to do." This isn't to say they should turn down catering orders, but a restaurant that only focuses on the big sale instead of trying to earn customer loyalty day-in, day-out, will most likely fail eventually. Especially a restaurant that can't handle both at the same time.

Whatever advertising this restaurant had done recently was wasted. I wasn't the only one in the parking lot turning around. Plus, this restaurant isn't in my neighborhood, but it's in the one my friend lives in. He now believes that they're open "spotty hours". Plus, since I recommended the place, their being closed reflects poorly on me. My buddy doesn't think it's my fault, but I'm still less likely to recommend this place to others in the future.

Our impressions of the restaurant, and consequently our behavior toward it, have been changed - not in a good way. I'm talking about it now, in this post. We're 7 times more likely to complain than to compliment a restaurant - not good when you're trying to build something good.

This (being closed during business hours) is not as rare as you might think. An ice-cream parlor in our neighborhood has such a reputation for maybe being open, maybe not, even on warm, summer, Saturday afternoons, that most people in my area don't consider it to even be there. We all travel outside the village to get our ice cream. (Note: they have a large contract to supply ice cream to a distributor - their retail location is more of an afterthought, and it shows).

Not keeping to your promises (posted hours) happens very often in smaller ways as well: a coffeehouse or smoothie shop opening 15 minutes late forces customers to find alternative places to stop; stores that close 15-20, minutes before the posted time frustrates customers to drove like hell to get there before closing; "At the bank, be back in 5 minutes" inconveniences customers who scheduled this time to run this errand.

Depending on how the customer's day is going, the reaction will be:
- Oh well, I'll wait (once - they give you the benefit of the doubt one time)
- [Heavy Sign!] OK, I'll wait. But I won't be happy about it.
- Oh look - there's another place down the street that does this same thing!
- Be completely irritated and vent that irritation to all of their friends.

Once you've modified your customers' behavior negatively, you need to spend more money on marketing to get them back. That's why, when I hear "I need more customers", I start with the basics.

As Truett Cathy of Chick-fil-A used to say: "Why invite people in if you're just going to make them mad?"

Wednesday

Mayor of Mardi Gras

Last night my kids and I went to a pancake supper for Shrove (Fat) Tuesday that very clearly showed an example of what it means to be Mayor of Mayberry.

The event was held at our church but pulled from the neighborhood elementary and middle schools, as well as families who live in the area but don't attend this church. It was a fundraiser for a local group called the Golden Age Center, a social and support "club" for senior citizens.

It was sponsored by the GAC and our city councilperson, Carla Smith. While she wasn't running for mayor, we can all learn a lot from her skills as a politician.

The Event: First of all, it was not a homogenous crowd. There were children of all ages, families of all colors, singles, and senior citizens. Several different organizations were represented(elementary school, middles school, local pre-school, neighborhood association, parents' association). Since it was a festive atmosphere, everyone was open to meeting new people. Carla chose this event, partly because of the variety of constituents that would attend (and partly because she lives in the community and cares about the same things we do).

The Activities: This wasn't a grand show, but there were enough activities to form a bond. Kids could get temporary tattoos and helium balloons. Carla herself passed out colorful beads to each child and played games with them.

The Cause: All proceeds benefitted the GAC. Carla showed that she supported what we support. Given her track record on the council, the community clearly supports her each time she's up for re-election.

Carla walked the tables, shaking hands and kissing babies, to meet every person there. She wasn't selling herself, she was selling a good time (and one was had by all). It's these types of connections, tied to community causes, that enable us as marketers to go beyond a logo in an ad and bond personally with our customers.

Come November, most of us in the neighborhood wouldn't think of voting for anyone other than Carla. If you have these types of relationships with your customers, they'll 'vote' for your restaurant more often than others as well.