Wednesday

Series: After Coups, Part 6 (FINAL CHAPTER)

So the Brand is You. You're the Mayor of Your Village. You've got Promotional Items and you're distributing them at Events in your area.

One final thing you can do to be well known, well liked, and on the tip of everyone's tongue is to take a page from Real Estate agents and become an information broker for the community. Everyone knows that if you want to know what's going on the neighborhood, RE agents have a leg up in knowledge.

This is a great tactic for a restaurant, coffeehouse, pub, or meeting place. Know what's happening. Read the papers, talk to community leaders, offer to help new merchants with City Hall and other issues. Share your vendors, lend a hand.

KNOW YOUR MARKET! If you know more than anyone else, you'll be the first person people come to. When this is the case, you'll know you've made it as a local store marketer. You WILL be the Mayor. You WILL be liked and respected, positive word of mouth will flow. And your sales will reflect that fact. (A side benefit is that if anyone does say anything bad about your business you'll be the first to know about it and can correct any issues.)

Become an information broker for your community - that's what being the Mayor is all about.

Tuesday

Series: After Coups, Part 5

Stay relevant, stay visible, by doing events marketing.

Sponsoring or attending events goes hand in hand with the other non-coupon elements of building your business. You get a chance to be the Mayor of Mayberry (shake hands, kiss babies), they give you a platform to distribute promotional items, and you can finely target your audience while supporting your community at the same time.

Events become your media strategy, your message presented face to face in an interactive manner, building relationships. They're the holy grail.

There are two different types of events, internal and external. Below are some ideas for making them great. Depending on whether you're QSR, fast-casual, or casual, you should schedule no less than three events per month, preferably closer to six or seven.

(Quick Note: I didn't include fine dining because, well, these ideas do not generally match up with the brands of fine dining. HOWEVER, you can definitely tailor events to a fine dining brand. The process and strategy are the same, the tactics and audiences are very different.)

Internal Event Ideas:
- Fundraising night for an elementary school, church, Boy/Girl Scout troop
- Car washes (if you have a free standing building)
- Talent showcase (get band members to perform out front one Saturday)
- Charity fundraisers: wine tastings and food pairings to theme nights
- Toys for Tots drop off
- Business association / networking group meetings (mornings, even if you aren't open for breakfast)

External Event Ideas:
- Sample on site
- Sell on site (won't make much, but good exposure)
- Sell / share profits with an organization (such as at a HS football game, split proceeds with boosters)
- Sponsor the event (signage and other presence)
- Crash the event (show up to a city-wide festival or parade with Frisbees, coupons, t-shirts, and hats)
- Participate (provide drinks for a 5k race)
- Support (provide breakfast for the Chamber meeting one month, for Real Estate agents the next)

Events can be spontaneous or take planning, be involved or off the cuff. In any case, they provide a face to face medium and a chance for you to shake hands and kiss babies. Choose your audiences well, plan your calendar in advance, and make this a strong part of your marketing plan - you'll see results quickly.

Monday

Series: After Coups, Part 4

Promotional products help extend your presence.

So far we've talked about Branding (what it really is) and being the Mayor of Mayberry (a marketing mindset that builds relationships). Now we move to a tactic that has more mass appeal: Promotional products.

Promotional products are anything with your logo on it. The more useful the item is to your target audience the more in-demand the items will be, and the more visible they will be to others. Take t-shirts, for example. If your target audience includes high school students, a cool t-shirt with your image on it will be worn again and again - a walking advertisement for your product. Hats too, but spend the money to purchase ones that the kids will wear (if you're out of touch with style, ask your employees to help select one).

Once you have your items, distribute them in-store or at local events. Now that you're cutting back on coupons, hand out promotional items along with your samples.

Some examples:
- stress balls
- step-counters
- t-shirts / hats
- water bottles (or bottled water)
- Frisbees
- kids tattoos
- coffee mugs
- can cozies

The more relevant the item is to both your target audience and your product, the more successful you will be.

Series: After Coupons, Part 3

Be the Mayor of Mayberry. It's a commitment of time, but no marketing strategy works better than being everyone's friend.

You're told in school that you can't be everyone's friend. That's good advice for high school, it'll keep you from falling in with the wrong crowd and staying true to yourself.

But why can't a restaurant owner try to get everyone to like them? What's the downside? It's not a lack of brand recognition (you ARE the brand). And so what if the "friendships" are superficial? These are your guests, they don't expect you to remember their pets' names (bonus points if you do though).

Being the Mayor of the Village simply means that you care about your constituents, that you give back to the community in which you live and work.

It also means knowing the thought leaders in the neighborhood. PR is effective, and companies spend a lot of money on it, because thought leaders like radio personalities and newspaper reporters say nice things about their products. A savvy Mayor does the same thing, but they include additional thought leaders such as principals, ministers, charity leaders, youth leaders, athletic organizers, Chamber presidents, and others.

Being the Mayor was the only advertising local restaurants did for centuries. Being involved in the community was good business. Still is.

The strategy takes time, but there's no better way to build a loyal base. Thankfully, since you're food rich and cash poor, offering some free food gives you the perfect excuse to introduce yourself to those who will spread the word to their own constituents.

Thursday

Series: After Coupons, Part 2

Branding. The term has been relied on very heavily by people who may, or may not, understand what it means or what it takes to do it effectively.

Branding is everything about your restaurant. Menu design, menu pricing, and menu content all indicate your brand to users. Staff uniforms, appearance, and professionalism contribute significantly.

However, most restaurants only focus on print materials or logos as their brand. That stuff is important, but by not realizing what the brand is, people waste money by spending cash on advertising, and skimping on research and hourly wages.

For independents and franchises alike (though most new franchisees disagree with this), the most significant branding element you have is you, the owner/manager. Love me, love my product. People don't buy products from people they don't like or people who show ambivalence toward them. You might get them once, but restaurants are a game of frequency.

If you support the community, the community will support you.

The second reason most "branding" efforts fail is not knowing what it takes to be successful. Nike is all about the brand and you want to be, too. Never mind how much Nike spent to burnish their sign on consumers' minds, do you know how many local road races they sponsored? How many pairs of shoes they gave away to opinion leaders in the running, basketball, and golf communities?

Branding takes time, effort, and money. It's worth all of those things, but it also takes patience. Just because you opened your restaurant doesn't mean everyone will flock to it. Just because you bought the ads doesn't mean people saw them.

Branding is a process that needs to begin prior to opening, and then be consistently applied forever. Coupons (see previous post) can help fill the gap until your branding efforts take hold.

But when it comes right down to it, knowing (and liking) the owner is the most powerful brand message anyone can have.

Wednesday

Series: After Coupons, Part 1

Anyone who has been through my restaurant marketing class knows that I advocate, in many spots, coupons. There's good reason for that.

Coupons have gotten a bad name because of how the pizza companies did them: always being ho's for the dough, they practically begged customers to call them. Others followed suit with "$1 off" coupons. These only condition customers to wait for coupons (and even ask for them at the register).

They don't change behavior, they don't build loyalty. In fact, most customers lose respect for you.

So why coups? First off, Procter and Gamble spends millions on coupons every year. What do they know that we don't? P&G uses coups to guide people from being non-users, to trying products, to purchasing more product, to being loyal users. There's a method to their madness.

Second, nothing works like a freebie for new people. You can argue all you want, but when it comes down to it, with a freebie they either like you or they don't and the cost per customer gained is far, far lower than putting your logo out there and hoping someone tries you. Coupons are especially good for moving the relationship along.

Third, marketing new or existing products/dayparts/services to existing customers just makes sense. They've tried you, there is no media cost to reach them, and they're prepared to spread word of mouth. But you need to make sure you're not just giving something away, you're trading value for value. "If you do this for me, I'll do this for you."

Three uses for coupons to existing customers:
a) introduce new menu items or incentivize purchase of existing menu items (the more they have tried, the more they will love you);
b) get existing customers to try specific services (carry-out) or dayparts; or
c) increase the ticket average by adding value (get free dessert with any lobster purchase).

If you give regulars more reasons to visit, you'll see them more often. That's worth giving them a free side item, beverage, or dessert. Honest.

There are right ways and wrong ways to coupon, but most of the discussion focuses on tactics (use short expiration date). The strategy of coupons, however, should be to modify behavior and/or jump start sales (an LTO, for example).

In this series, we'll discuss four ways to market your products, with very little money and without the use of coupons.

Thursday

Guiding Principles of Local Store Marketing

Local store marketing is all the rage - again. It seems like everyone flocks to LSM in tough economic times, forgetting that its relationship building and revenue generating tactics are some of the most effective and least costly tools around.

But not everyone will be successful at local store marketing, primarily for one reason only: They don't understand the philosophy behind it. They love the "cheap", "out of the box" ideas, but forget that there's a proven system behind the tactics.

So, if you're really interested in making LSM work for you, keep in mind the following principles.

1. LSM is about frequency of message, not reach
2. LSM is local in nature - 3-5 miles in densely populated markets
3. Persistence is worth as much as, or more than, creativity
4. Add creativity to persistence and you've got a winner
5. Good Local Store Marketing creates a buzz among existing customers that attracts new ones
6. LSM should be measurable
7. LSM considers the lifetime value of a customer, not his/her per visit worth
8. Marketing costs should be measured in cost per customer gained, NOT in cost per thousand
9. If you care about what your customers care about, they'll care about your business
10. LSM can be hard work, but if it's not fun, you're not doing it right