Mud on the Wall Restaurant Marketing
If you don’t accurately measure results on all of your marketing efforts, you are using what I call “mud on the wall” marketing. Throw a bunch of mud balls at the wall and see what sticks. Most advertising independent restaurants do falls into the mud on the wall category. It is expensive and, most likely, very ineffective.
When you run an advertising campaign using the largest newspaper, television or cable, the common thing is to give general statements about your restaurant such as “great Caribbean influenced cuisine”, “impeccable service and northern Italian entrees” or “understated, but greatly refined”(whatever that means!). These descriptive terms mean little and certainly can’t be measured. The chains with established brands utilize a very simplistic approach to measurement. They narrow their ads to one or two small items that can easily be measured.
McDonalds usually uses an individual menu item to measure. At the time of this writing they are advertising a McGriddle Sausage sandwich. Red Lobster is using a dish that features “15 shrimp combo” and Olive Garden is highlighting a “Tuscan Sausage & Pasta” entrée. Each of these can be measured in units and sales dollars to determine the impact of advertising vehicles.
Independents can mimic the giants if you choose to use mass media customer communication. Focus on one dish or group of items. Feature your “Chicken Rosa” or “Homemade Pasta’s”. These are measurable items that can be counted using more than just sales dollars. Even more helpful is the creation of a new dish for a promotional period.
One local upscale well managed restaurant that I have followed has about three or four seasonal dishes they use to measure marketing efforts. In early summer they bring in Maryland Soft Shell Crabs. In early fall they focus on Jumbo Stone Crabs and annually, you can plan on them using a bone-in “Frenched Rib Steak”. All of these items are non-menu features run during a specific marketing period with different media used to measure results. It is a simple approach to test the value of a given media.
Keeping accurate records is essential to data comparison. For instance, in one of our operations we decided to use a number of subtle ways to increase gift card sales. There were no media ads, but we had reminders with every check, signs throughout the restaurant and website featured ordering from October through December. At the end of the measurement period (Oct.-Jan), we were disappointed to see that our sales dollars only increased by about $1700. However, the units, number of cards, increased by 28% over last year. On closer review we discovered that the previous year we had one purchase that was $2400 for 12 gift cards to one individual. That sale did not occur this year. Without accurate records, we may have made the wrong decision about our efforts.
Measuring results is the only way to perfect your marketing efforts over a long period of time. As years go by you will be able to implement previously used programs to make marketing more effective and less costly.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment