Offline/Online Marketing Ideas for Restaurant?

[RevenueRabbi]

I'd try something not as costly.

"give us your card for free extra cheese on your slice"

IF I'd be convinced that the card idea would work.

as a general pizza place things, you might consider offering "free curbside delivery", "call in your order and it'll be ready when you arrive" and "we accept credit cards" as things which can have a positive impact without costing any money.

[RevenueRabbi]

here is a website of a Rory client

Wendt's Pork Palace | Wendts Pork Palace

see what you can get out of it...... see the guarantee too!

[Paul Coleman]

In restaurants we use table tents just like you see for happy specials etc. Typically the ad will say something like "Sign up for our VIP club, and get a free appetizer tonight!", with the optin instructions. They can then show their confirmation message to the server, and they get their appetizer for joining!

Genius. Thanks Melody, I will be in touch.

We did get people'l email addresses right away and entered it into the restaurant's computer directly with huge success until Getresponse banned the IP address. I guess they have to have each subscribers IP address by law so there went that.

Yikes, thanks for the heads up.

Identify their U.S.P. and see if it qualifies for interviews with local TV and radio media.

Good point. We need a memorable angle.

Wendt's Pork Palace | Wendts Pork Palace

Thanks. Little goldmine there.

Paul

[RevenueRabbi]

here is some more for you to study:

Treasure Map to Restaurant Riches Seminar – LIVE in Chicago with Rory Fatt

Foodservice Forums - Rory Fatt - Anyone buy his marketing package?

[RevenueRabbi]

and see this google result:

roryfatt-client.com - Google Search

[Paul Coleman]

Thanks. Good info.

Paul

[AndrewCavanagh]

Capture the email addressses of people who eat there and follow up with special offers.

If you capture their birthdays too you can send them a special gift on the month of their birthday...no one eats alone on their birthday.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[donhutchinson]

Originally Posted by ic7

Hi Don,

Well, I took the advice in this thread and decided to build a business portal. It will be a kind of home base to sell marketing services to every different kind of business. I am still building the portal because I've been super busy with online IM.

I went out and talked to three business owners, and two are interested. I don't do any selling, I really just chat about the web. I can already see that this Offline Gold stuff works. So I'm going to get the portal complete and launch out there.

Paul

Hey Paul, glad you're making progress.
Great idea to have all your services accessible in one portal.

Interesting that you say "I don't do any selling".
Just one business owner talking to another.
Cool.

Don

[Adaptive]

Paul, I'm curious what your strategy is for sharing all of these techniques with the pizza place. Are you going to give them a huge menu of a hundred different options? Put them into your idea of the week club? Or something different?

Regards,
Allen

[donhutchinson]

Originally Posted by Maria Gudelis

1. Get a flip video camera (the non-hd one) - anyone can use it - I even taught a 61 year old biz owner who was a total non-techie, non-youtube user...and she got 10 videos up in 2 weeks for her business!

2. Get a YOUTube channel, charge for a cool background on their profile/channel - cool pics of pizza and the owner or something

Cheers, Maria

Hi Maria,
Thanks for all your incredible info on this forum.

I have a couple of questions... maybe you could help me out?

1 - I'm looking at getting a video camera and was considering the flip. Why do you recommend the non-hd one?
2 - How do you get a new YouTube channel? Got mine but want to set up others on my PC for clients...

Many thanks,
Don

[jack_turner]

Hi Paul,

Just a quick post, and forgive me if its already been talked about, its such a long thread I may have missed it.

One thing that works very effectively for an upmarket restaurant near mine is that when I first went there they had me fill out a 'review' card with my bill and promised competitions and stuff.

I went home and hadn't heard a thing from them for months. However on my birthday they sent me a card through the post and a £10 off voucher.

They also send me details of events like a valentines day set menu they did with live band and gave me a voucher for £5 and did the same for their new years eve party.

I think the vouchers were valid for about a month as well which I guess enables them to recoup the spend on the mail shot fairly quickly.

Jack

[Paul Coleman]

If you capture their birthdays too you can send them a special gift on the month of their birthday...no one eats alone on their birthday.

Thanks, Andrew. You are Offline Royalty.

Interesting that you say "I don't do any selling".
Just one business owner talking to another.
Cool.

Thanks, Don. It is actually fun talking to Owners because it pulls me away from the computer! And Warriors love talking about the web and tech stuff. Smooth sailing.

Paul, I'm curious what your strategy is for sharing all of these techniques with the pizza place. Are you going to give them a huge menu of a hundred different options? Put them into your idea of the week club? Or something different?

Hi Allen. I basically just follow Andrew Cavanagh's advice. First, let the Owner speak. Listen, listen, listen. Then brainstorm IM solutions until one makes their eyes bug out. Then sell them that one.

I went home and hadn't heard a thing from them for months. However on my birthday they sent me a card through the post and a £10 off voucher.

Jack, I love it. Noted.


Thanks all,

Paul

[W.P. Allen]

Try Adwords. Link your adwords ads to a page with printable coupons that way you can track the effectiveness of the Adwords campaign.

Plus you won't have that much competition for local based keywords so your campaign shouldn't be too expensive.

I'm running an adwords campaign for a local business in my hometown and it is working really well.

I think I read that something like 60% of all internet searches are local searches.

[Adaptive]

I basically just follow Andrew Cavanagh's advice. First, let the Owner speak. Listen, listen, listen. Then brainstorm IM solutions until one makes their eyes bug out. Then sell them that one.

I hadn't seen that one before. That sounds like a brilliant technique. I should try it with some offline businesses near me!

Regards,
Allen

[Paul Coleman]

Try Adwords. Link your adwords ads to a page with printable coupons that way you can track the effectiveness of the Adwords campaign.

Excellent. Maybe I could sell that as the "Adwords Package".


Absolutely, Allen. Plus you will learn a ton about their biz from listening. They will immediately tell you their biggest business challenges. As you say, Owner to Owner.

[johnsamuels]

Originally Posted by ic7

Paul - what's the pitch? Do you talk about traffic?

I did similar things while I was building up my seo whitelabel service, and you really only need to make one point clear to any client. TRACKABILITY (may not be an actual word, but should be).

A restaurant owner operates on quite a tight margin, and they are masters of tracking the return per dollar spent on produce, staff, rent etc. Chefs are even better at it.

Once you show a restaurant owner how they can track the profit from each dollar spent on online advertising, then you have a lifelong customer.

Sometimes establishing that tracking can be hard, but it is always possible. At least it is always possible to agree on a tracking mechanism with the owner, and if you have any skills as a negotiator this will be no issue.

[Vince Runza Online]

I don't know if this has been suggested to you yet, but getting customers on an email list can be painless!

Create a flyer, handout or coupon that instructs people to send a BLANK email to the client's autoresponder addy, e.g. pizzasandiego@getresponse.com. Then walk them through the next step -- opting in.

They do this at home, so no IP address problems should crop up...

[Paul Coleman]

Once you show a restaurant owner how they can track the profit from each dollar spent on online advertising, then you have a lifelong customer.

Really good point. Thanks. I will put that front and center.

Create a flyer, handout or coupon that instructs people to send a BLANK email to the client's autoresponder addy, e.g. pizzasandiego@getresponse.com. Then walk them through the next step -- opting in.

Hey Vince, good workaround. Thanks.

[RevenueRabbi]

another addition:

Restaurant Marketing Systems: Bootcamp in a box

some nuggets here!

[Paul Coleman]

Nice. I shall dig through it.

Originally Posted by BizBooks

another addition:

Restaurant Marketing Systems: Bootcamp in a box

some nuggets here!