Marketing For Restaurants. How Marketing Can Bring In More Customers And Boost Your Profits

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2 Marketing For Restaurants How Marketing Can Bring In More Customers And Boost Your Profits

3 Introduction If you own or manage a restaurant, it is very possible that marketing is not something you would consider to be a vital business tool. Most likely it is something on your to do later list which hardly gets a second thought. This guide will explain why marketing is a vital business tool for both attracting new customers and getting more repeat business from existing customers. (It is also a great tool for communicating with staff, but more about that later.) It will also show exactly how you can use marketing in your business with specific examples of how it can lead to more income and increased profitability. Finally we show how RocketResponder has been specifically designed to be incredibly quick and easy to use so that you spend minimal time on marketing and more time on running your restaurant.

4 What Is Marketing? marketing is simply sending messages to a group of people in order to promote your business. The key thing to understand from the outset is that you only ever send these messages to people who have given you permission for you to them in this way. The second thing to know, is that it is really very easy to obtain this permission and that there are people who will be only too willing to receive your marketing messages. Why Should I Use Marketing? The great thing about marketing is that you are only targeting people who have expressly shown an interest in hearing your marketing message. In other words, you are sending s to the very people who want to know what your restaurant has to offer. This means that you are totally free to use marketing to send out offers, promote your restaurant, request business, build brand awareness and help keep your restaurant in the minds of your target audience. RocketResponder automates the process of ensuring that your list is always up-to-date so that you can be confident that only those people who want to hear from you get your messages. Your subscribers are free to unsubscribe from your list at any time, and if they do so then RocketResponder automatically removes them from your list without the need for you to do any administrative work at all.

5 Won t This Take Up Too Much Of My Time? We designed RocketResponder with busy business owners like you in mind. Our customers told us they wanted a quick, easy and efficient marketing tool that took up the minimum amount of their time and was virtually automatic in its operation. With that in mind, we built a system that would allow you to send out stunning looking s while being about as quick and easy to use as regular . Attracting New Customers Using marketing to attract new customers begins by simply asking for their address. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by asking potential customers who visit your website for their address. We do this ourselves every day with RocketResponder and we highly recommend that you do exactly the same.

6 In our case we give people a free trial and that works very well for us. We don t recommend that you offer a free meal to obtain subscribers but you could invite people to: learn more about our fabulous menus sign up for our newsletter receive our latest offers join our 10% discount club sign up for our monthly gourmet offers join our wine tasting club find out about our new tasting menu Those are just a small selection of ways you might tempt people to join your list of subscribers and you can probably think of many more. One of the great things about RocketResponder is that you can create as many different subscriber lists as you want...all at no extra cost. This allows you to send out one group of s to those who want to know about your latest offers and another to people who want to join your wine tasting club, for example.

7 Other Ways To Build A List Of Subscribers While your website is a great way of getting subscribers, there are also many other great ways of doing so too, such as: have a special leaflet for addresses which you can enclose with the check...this is a great way to get subscribers (especially if they really enjoyed the service they just experienced.) ask for an address when people call to inquire about your restaurant or when they book a meal. (Simply by asking: Would you like to receive promotional offers by ? works well.) if you offer a comment card to customers, then ensure that you ask for their address too. (If they are prepared to leave feedback then they may be willing to subscribe to your list.) make a point of having staff ask customers whether they would like to leave an address to ensure they are first to know about future special offers and promotions. ask for people s on promotional items or on menus that your customers can take away. (They would return the completed form the next time they visit.) When you collect addresses offline in this way, RocketResponder makes it very easy for you to add them to your subscriber list.

8 Simply click Add Subscriber, enter the subscriber s name and address and click save. RocketResponder will then automatically send your new subscriber an just to confirm they want to be on your list and that is all there is to it. Why You Want Subscribers To Confirm Their Addresses It is a total waste of time to send marketing messages to people who are not interested in your restaurant. Asking people to confirm their interest is the best way to ensure that your s only go out to those people who really want to hear from you. This should ensure that more of your s get opened, read and acted upon. (The other main benefit is that it ensures that you are totally compliant with anti spam regulations.)

9 RocketResponder In Action It goes without saying that attracting customers into your restaurant is good for business. However you can greatly increase your profitability by encouraging your first-time or infrequent customers to become regular, repeat customers. Not only do repeat customers bring in revenue without the costs of acquisition, but they will often be outstanding marketers by freely recommending your restaurant to their friends, co-workers and family members. RocketResponder helps you both find new customers and convert them into repeat customers by reminding them why they should choose your restaurant rather than a rival establishment. Choosing a restaurant is very often an impulse decision, so you want to do all in your power to help ensure that the impulse is to choose yours and not the competition. By using RocketResponder you will put yourself at a huge advantage over your rivals who just sit back and hope their customers will return because you are actively encouraging them to come back by giving them valid reasons to do so. Some customers will choose to come back on their own, but most will need a series of nudges in the right direction to get them into the habit of doing so...and marketing is an ideal way of delivering those gentle nudges.

10 Four Ways Marketing Can Boost Your Business (i) Series Once you have subscribers on your list you will need to tempt them back to your restaurant with s which are designed to do just that. Typically you will write a series of s which go out to every new subscriber in the days, weeks or months after they sign up. (The exact time period is totally up to you.) You write this series of s once and RocketResponder ensures that each new subscriber then gets your s in the right order and over the time frame you selected. Even if you have many thousands of people join your list there is no more work to be done after the initial series is written. Example: Let s say you have 2,000 subscribers on your list and you send each one the same series of five s after they sign up. The s may look like this: Day 1. Welcome. You send out a welcome the day the subscriber joins, thanking them for showing an interest in your restaurant and pointing them to your website, social media links, menus and contact details. Day 2. About My Restaurant. Introduce your subscriber to the restaurant such as providing information on the type of cuisine you serve and any other relevant company information that sets you apart from the competition such as what makes you unique and sets you apart from the competition.

11 Day 5. Tempting Offer. As an incentive to get your new subscriber into your restaurant you might want to make them a suitable tempting offer such as: 10% off your entire check free welcome cocktail on arrival free starter with every main course free dessert with every starter and main course combo ordered kids eat free 2 meals for the price of one (Those are just some examples, but feel free to make an offer or offers that you know will work for you.) Day 12. Meet the team. It is always a good idea to introduce your key staff to your subscribers so an with profiles on the head chef, restaurant manager, Maître d, bar manager and the owners might go down well. Day 15. Delightful dishes. If there is a story behind your signature dish or if you have won awards for your food then don t be shy in blowing your own trumpet. The work required for this short introductory series of s is just five s but now every single person who expresses an interest in your restaurant by giving you their address, gets a very comprehensive introduction to your restaurant, the food you serve, your online links and your key staff. No matter many how many subscribers sign up to your list, there is no more work to be done on your part, everyone gets to hear from you and nobody is ever missed out. The only ongoing work needed is to update the s whenever there is a significant change, such

12 as if you change your phone number or website URL or when you might want to add or remove s from the list. (ii) Broadcasts This is where RocketResponder really comes into its own. We have a series of templates especially designed for restaurants to ensure that your establishment and your food is shown off in the very best possible light. Our drag-and-drop templates make it easy for you to make custom-designed s which will look really stunning. With this type of you are sending the same message to your entire list at the same time. This is a great way to share news such as: a weekly or monthly newsletter, changes or updates to your menu, seasonal offers, special promotions, dish of the day, lunch menu specials, early bird offers, themed events, holiday specials,

13 A promotional may look like this:

14 With this type of you can either send it out immediately or write it in advance and schedule a time and date when you want it to go out. This allows your marketing to fit into your schedule rather than the other way round. As long as you are providing content that your subscribers find useful and relevant then you will not go far wrong. Remember that not every subscriber will want to take advantage of every offer you make. Your aim is to get enough subscribers to think of eating out at your restaurant when they may have otherwise have stayed at home or visited one of your rivals instead. With RocketResponder, getting your message across is effective, easy and will never take up too much of your time. You will be able to produce professional-looking marketing s with ease and the interaction with your subscribers will help ensure that your restaurant is always in the list of options when it comes to deciding upon a venue to eat out. (iii) Reminders If you ask subscribers to provide their birthday when they sign up, then you can set a reminder which will automatically send them an every time their birthday comes around. Wishing them a Happy Birthday and providing them with a gift such as a free drink, starter or dessert when they visit during their birthday week is another easy way to boost your business and increase profitability. This sort of personal also sets you apart from the competition and shows your customers that you care about them as individuals.

15 (iv) Customer Feedback Customer feedback can be vital for your business by highlighting the things you are doing well and the areas where you need to improve. The problem is that many customers who might be willing to give you feedback may not do so unless they are prompted. Also some people may have had a bad experience but will not tell you about it...unless you ask them first. When it comes to negative feedback, you really want your customers to tell you so that you can nip it in the bud and fix the problem as soon as it arises. The alternative is that they say nothing to you but post to social media about the totally awful experience they had at your restaurant...and that is a far worse situation to be in. You can add an to your initial follow up series letting your customers know that you actively encourage feedback - good or bad - from your customers. The could also be linked to an online survey where you ask for specific information and you can also send out an to your entire list specifically asking for feedback after their next visit. The information you get from this feedback alone could be vital in spotting weaknesses in your business which you may not otherwise have discovered until it was too late.

16 Communicating With Your Staff Finally you can also use RocketResponder to communicate with your staff via . Simply create a new list for your employees and use RocketResponder to send your staff internal s about your business. For example, you might have a series of s for new employees where you set out some information they will need to know about the business such as company policies, dress codes, standards etc. Other s you might send to employees include: sales goals menu items you wish to promote changes to your menu shift changes or work rotas staff notices/newsletters feedback from customers

17 Conclusion RocketResponder is a flexible and easy-to-use tool which will allow you both to handle your external customer communication and your internal communication with your workforce. RocketResponder s easy marketing system has been specifically designed to be incredibly quick and easy to use so that you spend minimal time on marketing and more time on running your restaurant. marketing helps you: ensure that your restaurant stays in your customers minds identify and market to new customers get repeat business from existing customers improve sales and profitability target offers identify problems before they become serious issues build up strong customer relationships solicit feedback and communicate internally with your management and staff Next Steps A well-timed , especially if it contains mouth-watering pictures of your food, might be all that it takes to tempt customers into your restaurant for the first time, or to have existing customers coming back for more. Now that you know how quick and easy it is to use marketing for your restaurant, we would like you to try RocketResponder free for 30 days.