Tag Archives: marketing

Does your business exist?

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Letting your target audience know that your business is an option for their wants and needs

Many small businesses go unnoticed by their target audience. The reason this happens usually isn’t caused by bad service and/or low quality products. Mainly, the cause is that the strategies for promoting these unnoticed businesses to the forefront of customer awareness are not effective. Luckily, there are various resources available for, you, the small business owner to use in hopes of creating a positive buzz about your business. In addition, there are activities you can do to connect with your potential customer base.

Understanding the basic concepts of marketing, advertising, and public relations are very helpful in getting your business noticed. Also, if possible, you can get advice/services from professionals in these areas to help maximize your opportunity for exposure. Customers are not going to visit if they aren’t aware of who you are, what you offer, and where you are located. If you are unable to hire a professional at this time, there are free and inexpensive guides to get you started. Business sites offer tips to help in marketing efforts. In addition, Amazon.com offers many highly recommended business books, at reasonable prices.

When customers happen to wander into your business, encourage them to spread the word whether they purchase from you or not. Visit your neighbors to build a business relationship in hopes of getting referrals. Lastly, display signage promoting your social media sites to give customers the opportunity to connect with you online. Once you’ve made that online connection, make attempts to connect with their friends, followers, and connections. Having an online presence is just as important as having a physical presence.

Need more tips? Another way to aid in these matters is to utilize the resources, Small Business Tips, provided by AdvanceMe Inc. They are designed to give small business owners guides to helping their businesses grow and become successful. These tips include ways for your business to stand out by innovating your marketing efforts, interacting on social media, networking, and advertising.

For more information on how to raise awareness for your business, check out the following Small Business Tips from AdvanceMe Inc. Resources:

• How to determine the best advertising vehicles
• Inexpensive tactics for getting attention for your business
• Networking ideas for shy business people
• Don’t Overlook Paid Search Marketing
• Understanding the Basics of Local Search

Promoting your Restaurant

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The 21st Century Culinary Quest

Promote your RestaurantIf you want your restaurant, café, or bistro to thrive, you need to promote it where the customers go to help them make their decisions. 

It seems that the scientists and statisticians at Pew  conducted an exhaustive study titled How People Learn About Their Local Community and came to some very interesting conclusions.

They discovered the following: 

  • Most people go to their local paper to get information about the goings-on in their community such as crime, government issues, and cultural events, among others.
  • Television was hot when people wanted to find out about the weather or news stories that were best reported from the cockpit of a helicopter or the front steps of city hall.
  • Not surprisingly, radio was the go-to source for information on traffic jams.
  • And, when it came down to where people look when they are trying to decide where to go eat, the Internet won, hands down. 

Most cities have their own assorted community pages, mostly run by local businesses or the media. Microsoft long ago had their fingers in this pie, starting back with their local Microsoft Sidewalk websites. Of late, sites like Zagat and the rapidly growing Yelp! smartphone app provide consumers with unbiased (if somewhat uneven) real-person reviews, as well as physical directions to the different restaurants. Finally, there are many independent local bloggers who report on the different goings on in any given locale. 

What this all comes down to  is the conclusion that smart restaurateurs will spend part, if not most, of their advertising dollars online, where their ad will never end up in the recycling bin. Truth be told, more weight should be put in what a non-paid, real customer has to say about a place than what some highly polished marketing pro comes up with, anyway. 

In conclusion, a bit of advice to you restaurateurs who want new business:

  • Save your money on the newspaper ads. People might look at them, but they are going to see what other real (as in “not on your payroll”) people have to say about your place.
  • Have someone post a review of your place of business on popular sites such as Yelp or your local CitySearch.com page, or add your business in the AroundMe smartphone app. Promoting Your Restaurant
  • Encourage your most loyal customers to offer reviews on local-focused entertainment and leisure websites.
  • Make friends with your local food critics, both independent and affiliated with media outlets.
  • If you’re going to purchase advertising, spend your dollars in the media that most diners trust.
  • And finally, do a regular search for reviews of your place on the sites listed above, as well as any others indigenous to your area. Show both your gratitude for the good reviews and your commitment to turn even your biggest detractors’ opinions around. Even if doing so costs you an undeserved free meal, the payoff in customer relations will be far greater than the cost of the food you serve.

Tell us how you promote your restaurant or business.

Marketing your Restaurant Business – Wrap up of a 9-tip series

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Marketing your Restaurant Business – 9 tip series wrap up

Marketing your restaurant business tip seriesWe released a poll asking about challenges your business faced when “Marketing your Business“. The results were interesting – As of today, of those that responded, 77% believed that Getting Customers was the area that they found the most challenging when marketing their business, whereas, 6% believed that Making Customers happy was the most challenging and 17% believed that Getting Customers to Come Back was the most challenging. Click to participate in the “Marketing your Business” poll. It will close on 12/31/11 and we will update the stats for your review.

As a result, we released nine tips about Marketing your Restaurant, although the concepts can apply to most businesses. We hope you had a chance to read through them, if not the links are below.

Thank you for all your feedback through the blog, via email and on Twitter and FaceBook. We will incorporate this feedback into an eBook and post that to our eBooks page, so sign up for eBook notifications via text or email. If you want to add your story, please click on the Leave a Reply link below.

If you have suggestion for other Tip or eBook topics that might help your business grow, please let us know.

  1. Get Customers: Know your Customer highlights the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.
  2. Get Customers: Let them know who you are notes the need for you to let your customers know what you and your brand stand for and offers many ideas to let them know.
  3. Get Customers: Make It Worth Their While highlights the importance of making the trip to your restaurant worthwhile without hurting the bottom line.
  4. Make your Customers Happy: Employee Retention offers some insightful tips on what you can do to create a balance.
  5. Make your Customers Happy: Create a great first impression stresses the value of understanding why people come to your business and then how to make that experience memorable.
  6. Make Your Customers Happy: Keeping Customers Coming Back points out the potential cost of losing a customer and how fast and wide news about a bad experience can spread.
  7. Get Customers to Come Back: Seek Customer Feedback notes that people like to give their opinion and, you, as a Business owner, want to hear that.
  8. Get Customers to Come Back: Loyalty Counts points out different types of loyalty programs and how to implement them.
  9. Get Customers to Come Back: Developing relationships with your Customers highlights how you can build an event around something that might interest your customers to get them to come back. 

Marketing your Restaurant Business – Developing Relationships

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Get Customers to Come Back: 6 Tips on Developing Relationships with your Customers

Keep your Customer coming backOur last Business tip in our “Marketing your Restaurant” series notes the importance of looking after new customers and developing them into long-term customers. Get Customers to Come Back: Developing relationships with your Customers highlights how you can build an event around something that might interest your customers to get them to come back.

“Customers dissatisfied by service, or who feel ignored or just not welcome, will just disappear taking all chances for a long-term relationship with them.”

“Facebook is probably the easiest of the social media options with which to share your doings as it’s much less time-consuming to update than a blog.”

How do you develop relationships with your Customers?

Read on if you missed the other tips in our Marketing your Restaurant series:

  1. Get Customers: Know your Customer highlights the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.
  2. Get Customers: Let them know who you are notes the need for you to let your customers know what you and your brand stand for and offers many ideas to let them know.
  3. Get Customers: Make It Worth Their While highlights the importance of making the trip to your restaurant worthwhile without hurting the bottom line.
  4. Make your Customers Happy: Employee Retention offers some insightful tips on what you can do to create a balance.
  5. Make your Customers Happy: Create a great first impression stresses the value of understanding why people come to your business and then how to make that experience memorable.
  6. Make Your Customers Happy: Keeping Customers Coming Back points out the potential cost of losing a customer and how fast and wide news about a bad experience can spread.
  7. Get Customers to Come Back: Seek Customer Feedback notes that people like to give their opinion and, you, as a Business owner, want to hear that.
  8. Get Customers to Come Back: Loyalty Counts points out different types of loyalty programs and how to implement them.

Marketing your Restaurant Business – Make a Great first impression

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Make your Customers Happy: 3 Ways to Make Great First Impressions

Business tip # 5 in our “Marketing your Restaurant” series focuses on that all important first impression. Make your Customers Happy: Create a great first impression stresses the value of understanding why people come to your business and then how to make that experience memorable.

“First impressions are important because they last forever. Their power is so strong there’s even a name for it: The Primacy Effect. This means that the first information we learn about someone (or some place) has greater impact than subsequent information.”.

Making a great impression the first time and every time should be everyone’s priority all the time. Tip #5 provides some pointers on how to achieve this. What do you do in your business to make a good impression? How do you customer react to this focus?

We plan to create an eBook of all the tips in the series with feedback and ideas from our readers included, so sign up for eBook notifications.

Read on if you missed the other tips in our Marketing your Restaurant series:

  1. Get Customers: Know your Customer highlights the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.
  2. Get Customers: Let them know who you are notes the need for you to let your customers know what you and your brand stand for and offers many ideas to let them know.
  3. Get Customers: Make It Worth Their While highlights the importance of making the trip to your restaurant worthwhile without hurting the bottom line.
  4. Make your Customers Happy: Employee Retention offers some insightful tips on what you can do to create a balance.

 

Marketing your Restaurant Business – Get Customers: Make it worth their while

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Get Customers: 3 Tips to Make It Worth Their While

We have created a series of tips directed toward the restaurant business owner although many of the ideas can be broadly applied to other business types.

The third tip, Get Customers: Make It Worth Their While, highlights the importance of making the trip to your restaurant worthwhile, but not at the expense of your business.

“Be careful with what you choose…Buy 1 Get 1 Free, set promotional prices, combo meals for a set price, discounted additions (sides, appetizers), free appetizers or desserts with entrée, free food/beverage giveaways, they all work to bring in newcomers, but will those folks come back when the deals are done?”

There are some 960,000 restaurants in the US, according to the National Restaurant Association’s 2011 industry overview. We offer some insightful tips on what you can do to stand out from the crowd, but what is your business doing to make your restaurant the go-to one for your Customers? We would love to hear from you.

We plan to create an eBook of all the tips in the series with feedback and ideas from our readers included, so sign up for eBook notifications.

Read on if you missed the other tips in our Marketing your Restaurant series:

  1. Get Customers: Know your Customer highlights the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.
  2. Get Customers: Let them know who you are notes the need for you to let your customers know what you and your brand stand for and offers many ideas to let them know.

Marketing your Restaurant Business – Get Customers: Let them know who you are

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Get Customers: 6 Inexpensive Ways for your Customer to Get to Know you

We recently polled business owners about which areas they found the most challenging when marketing their restaurant business. The choices were:

 - Getting Customers
 - Making Customers Happy
 - Getting Customers to Come Back

We have created a series of tips directed toward the restaurant business owner although many of the ideas can be broadly applied to other business types.

The first tip, Get Customers: Know your Customer highlighted the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.

The next tip, Get Customers: Let them know who you are notes the need for you to let your customers know what you and your brand stand for and offers many ideas to let them know.

“Your business’ brand is its reputation, and there should be no disconnect between what your business is, what it stands for and how it delivers on that promise. “

“If your restaurant claims to be family friendly, let’s hope it has big tables, lots of booster seats and a staff that can sing “Happy Birthday” without dropping a bread roll.”

We plan to create an eBook of all the tips in the series with feedback and ideas from our readers included, so sign up for eBook notifications.

Let us know if you plan to apply any of the ideas in your restaurant or business or if you have a tip for fellow business owners.

Read on if you missed the other tips in our Marketing your Restaurant series:

  1. Get Customers: Know your Customer highlights the importance of demographics research and asking your customers questions about what they want.

 

Marketing your Restaurant Business Tips series – Get Customers

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 Get Customers: 5 Ways to Know your Customers

We recently polled business owners about which areas they found the most challenging when marketing their restaurant business. The choices were:

 - Getting Customers
 - Making Customers Happy
 - Getting Customers to Come Back

The results were interesting – As of today, of those that responded, 77% believed that Getting Customers was the area that they found the most challenging when marketing their business, whereas, 9% believed that Making Customers happy was the most challenging and 14% believed that Getting Customers to Come Back was the most challenging. Click to participate in the “Marketing your Restaurant” poll.

Another study from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Reasons Customers Leave” shows that 68% leave because they are upset with the treatment they’ve received. There seems to be a disconnect between what our respondents find the most challenging and what customers generally experience.

As a result, we have created a series of tips directed toward the restaurant business owner although many of the ideas can be broadly applied to other business types. 

An interesting statistic from the National Restaurant Association is that 88% of adults say they enjoy going to restaurants, which bring us to the first topic, Get Customers: Know your Customer.

“Knowing why they eat out is also important, are they tired of cooking by Thursday, do they just want takeout on Friday so they can put their feet up, do they always eat out on Saturday or only on birthdays or other special occasions. Knowing what they want and when is a great step forward to knowing your customer.”

We plan to create an eBook of all the tips in the series with feedback and ideas from our readers included, so sign up for eBook notifications.

Let us know if you plan to apply any of the ideas in your restaurant or business or if you have a tip for fellow business owners.