Marketing

Marketing and Sales

By December 9, 2019 No Comments
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Marketing and sales.

How marketing and sales work together.

What exactly is your unique selling point (USP), what makes you different from all the other restaurants?  Anyone who has gone through this process will perhaps understand that it is not a simple as it looks.

Market research is important

Firstly, you need to gather your staff, sit down, have a coffee and discuss what makes you different from other restaurants eg atmosphere, staff, your building, etc.

Secondly, you need to take a pen and paper and look at all aspects of the restaurant.  In particular, look at each area and decide if it is the same or similar to other restaurants or if it is truly unique to your place.

Thirdly, write down eg:

  • Food style – same!  
  • Pricing structure – same!  
  • Menu items – same!  

These are nice safe things that everybody likes and can buy everywhere!  

  • Staff – nice and friendly, but that wasn’t unique either.  

The list goes on.  After you may be looking at thirty areas you may decide that there was nothing separating what you do from any other restaurant – nothing that was strong enough to be used to make you stand out from the crowd.

To give you a clear idea of what I mean lets quickly look at a business that has more clearly defined selling points.  For example when you think about cars, which car comes to mind when you associate safety with it.  In most cases, Volvo is recognised as the safest car in the market.  Do you honestly believe that it is the safest car?  Who knows if it is or not.  What Volvo has done is taken the safety issue and made it their USP.  You will most likely find that it is no safer than a Ford or Holden.

What you need to do is to take each area identified as being similar to other restaurants and look at what you can do to stand out.    Some will require very little thought.  

The pricing structure was okay.  Customer expectation rises in direct proportion to your pricing and in many areas pricing is determined by the local demographics.  So maybe you will leave the pricing alone.

Maybe you need to change the menu, the presentation, the wine list and so on. 

How marketing affects business

The one thing that may become apparent whilst working through this is that you are not marketing food.  In much the same way as Volvo markets safety to sell cars and McDonalds markets to kids to sell to adults, you have to market experience or a reason other than the food and beverage to sell food and beverage. Therefore, you have to market experience or a reason other than the food and beverage to sell food and beverage. 

I know it is confusing, but if you market food and beverage then the customer puts you in the same category as other restaurants that market food and beverage (and it is a big category).  

If you market a supervised children’s play area (it needs to be good) then people will come when they want to get relief from the kids.  This is a smaller category than just food and beverage.  This category is quite unique and may only contain your restaurant and this is what your goal should be.

Everybody eats.  Every day they make a decision where they would like to eat (home, takeaway, restaurant, pizza delivery, etc).  When they ask the question “where shall we eat tonight?”  You should ask the question, “Why should customers dine in my restaurant?”  It’s a tough question.

Marketing and Sales Training

Want to know more about how marketing and sales work together?  

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How to Discover Your Market eGuide

NOTHING HAPPENS UNLESS YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN!

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