Pizza Parlor Promotion

Sounds like you're on the right track. What kind of promotions do you have in mind?

With opening on New Years, it sounds like a shoe in for local PR spots. They always like to do news spots about that sort of thing. Would have to imagine that getting on the air at 5pm on New Years eve would be good for sales.
Just be sure they are coming up right in Google for when people look for it.

Thanks for the great advise people.

What I am looking is for ideas regarding online promotions for now. Making a word of mouth through social network means.

Lets suppose, Facebook is one great platform. What marketing strategy would you guys suggest me to advertise our Pizza Parlor on Facebook?

I hope my question is clear this time.

Thanks

Off line is probably better for a pizza joint. However, if you insist on online, I'd go mobile and get an app developed where people can order online as easily as possible.

I'd also focus on Local SEO and Google Places/Maps, etc.

For offline, I'd "barnumize" a pizza. Barnumizing is creating something so extreme it draws attention.

For example, create a very expensive pizza. The goal isn't to sell any of them, it's to create a press campaign. Or have a pizza eating contest. Or the biggest pizza. Or the hottest (spiciest) pizza. Any event that's interesting to get the local media to cover it.

Send pizza to every drive-time talk radio host in town.

Get a menu in every bar in the area that doesn't serve food. Get a menu in every hotel/motel room in the area you possibly can.

But probably the most important thing you can do is to create simple menus and mail them out to your area every month or more often, with specials and coupons.

I agree with Kurt on focusing offline for this. Does your area hold a food festival of any kind at this time of year? In the local outdoor shopping center, there is one every November where restaurants sign up and offer free samples, games, prizes and what-not. The smoothie shop I worked at last fall did this. We gave out a f*** ton of coupons and samples of our staple smoothies.

The marketing plan worked for about a week or two after the fact, then dropped off. I told them that we needed to hire more attractive girls like our opposing smoothie shop had; but that was a no go.

So: find local events to offer samples and hire attractive women. Thank me later .

My only suggestion would be I think you might need to have a clearer idea of your end goal in terms of marketing by NYE, and the path to get there will be clearer.

I had two pizza parlours / restaurants as clients this year and my main goal was to get them more customers, so I think I can really help here. While it goes without saying, it's important to know exactly what kind of pizza place your friend wants to open and who he plans on catering to. One pizza parlour that I consulted with targeted sports fans, softball teams, and families during the day and in the early evenings. On Friday and Saturday nights they busted out the pool tables and catered to pool players, happy hour folks, and sports fans.

The second pizza place was a fancier sit-down restaurant with a whole seafood / oyster bar and a full menu of appetizers, seafood, soups, and salads. They catered more to families and professionals in the area.

Btw, Kurt gave you an excellent suggestion on how to get some free publicity, I would definitely look into that.

It's imperative that your friend's place serve a quality product at competitive prices (if he's not going upscale) and focus on customer service. I've seen many pizza places go under because of either bad service, bad pizza, and/or bad management. The #1 reason why pizza parlours go under is poor management and poor planning.

Make sure your friend opens accounts on food review websites such as Yelp! and Urbanspoon. While it may be tempting, never ever write fake food reviews or pay someone to do them. People can spot those a mile away. If the pizza and service is good, then the good reviews will naturally follow, however you'll want to post a sign up somewhere that the pizza place is on Yelp!

Have you friend offer something for free if someone uses their Yelp! app to check into their establishment (this is becoming more and more common in the 18 - 45 age range, both genders). The most common ones are offering one free appetizer (it's more effective to give a free appetizer than a free soda). Make sure your friend or his community manager stays on top of Yelp and Urbanspoon reviews once he opens.

Find out if the city he is in allows flyers to be passed out and if a license is needed (some cities require a flyer license). Flyers are a low-cost way of getting the word out. Also look for local publications such as the Pennysaver (both paid-for and free) to advertise in.

The suggestion for teaming up with local business is an excellent one as it's a great way to becoming well-known in the community.

It's very important to get people in the door because if the pizza is delicious, competitively priced, and the service is done with a smile, you WILL get repeat customers. So you'll definitely want to have a "Grand Opening". Now is a good time to get in touch with your local newspapers and find out whom you need to get in touch with to make the annoucement there.

With food establishments like Pizza Parlours, you can buy targeted ads via Google Adwords, but I have found that offline promotions in the local area are far more effective. Get people in the door by offering coupons, contact Groupon to consult with them to find out how you can get more exposure.

Once you've had a few months of operation under your belt and assuming you've gotten some great reviews on Yelp!, then go to Zagat.com and apply to become Zagat-rated:

http://www.zagat.com/restaurant-owne...me-zagat-rated

Another way to get great exposure is to find out what food fairs / fairs are in the area and find out what it takes to get a booth open in there. You can sell pizza slices and then hand out your take-home menus and business cards. If your friend makes a real effort to become active in their community, they will have customers for life as long as the pizza and service remains high quality and top notch.

RoD

Thanks Rob, Kurt and other guys for wonderful piece of advise.

Allow me to tell you about our culture, how things happen in our side of the world.

1) We don't have bars, We don't have eating competitions and stuff.
2) Buying expensive pizza might be a turn off but who knows? High Risk, High Return.
3) People are difficult to accept the change.

We only have Pizza Hut & Domino's, and with that said - These are the only largest pizza change in our country. I am pretty sure, people have had enough of eating just the same pizza taste again and again.

Last but not the least, My friend is only focusing upon delivery and quality. We are not offering dine-in (of-course, low capital). This would just help us to concentrate on the quality and would allow us to identify the change people accepting.

I'll be doing offline marketing but just not right now. I am right now focusing on online options and I see success.

Just to sum up, what would be the possible strategies of creating a hype of pizza brand which is yet to launch?

Thanks

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Well, I've been in this EXACT same situation before and here's what we did -

Set-up a Facebook page with discount codes. Obviously no-one will know about it right?

Well here's what else we did. Get on your local radio station. Tell listeners that if they register to the Facebook page, they will get 50% off their order, a free pizza etc.

We also advertised in all local papers, as well as dropped flyers to houses and businesses within a 7 mile radius (any further probably wont work, especially due to delivery times).

Another thing we did was sponsor local soccer teams (especially the kiddie leagues). Obviously this depends, but we managed to get our advertising on the soccer team stripper (the deal was we could advertise aslong as we supplied the kit). We also did free catering for the events, and gave out coupons to the Moms & Dads.

When we launched, we had people queuing up outside to get in. We also didn't plan on such a great response, and we completely sold out of all ingredients in a 3 hour period.
(so be sure to plan for that!)

ok dude...where is this pizza parlor located...?

...facebook is online and spread throughout the world....

...if your goal is to get people in the door..to a physical brick n mortar business....then umm,,,,you might want to focus on a local market....make sense...?

....who cares if you stir up a buzz on facebook ..and people can't even attend the grand opening...see what I'm sayin...?

...what you should do...is make a video...and have it played on local stations....you can get local networks to run them for fairly cheap...

..you can make the video all..ghetto.,..and that is good...cuz it works and people respond well to that....

...I'm assuming it's for families...so target that group in your video....

...like showing a scene where all the kids are sittin around bored out of their mind...and hungry...and don't want mommy's meat loaf tonight...

....ah Pizza..everyone...and then show how bad ass this new pizza joint is and why you have to go...

...offer promotions/coupons for the first 50 people in the door...make sure to capture their contact info and then send out promos monthly forever....

you're welcome...