How to Write a Restaurant Marketing Plan

Yellow pages used to be the top marketing strategy utilized by restaurant owners. Traditional and word-of-mouth marketing tactics still work, and we should not skip them. But as restaurant owners, we have to take advantage of the opportunities that the Internet presents. The competition is fierce and you need a restaurant marketing plan to be successful. Understanding where you play and how you win is important.

According to studies, 60% of new restaurants fail during first year of operations due to lack of solid marketing plan. Explore business propositions. Start building your restaurant business plan, and begin developing unique business ideas that will help you ensure your restaurant’s success. After going through this marketing plan, you can now begin executing them. Here a few things that take the forefront for restaurateurs during the teething phase of marketing planning .

How to get over the Challenges of Building a Restaurant Business and how do you ensure your restaurant’s success?

Marketing Goals and Objectives

Majority of startups fail not because they lack funding but due to not spending enough time researching the marketplace and planning the business. Benchmarking, Market Research and SWOT Analysis must be laid out to help you assess your marketing plans, minimize or reduce business risks, and suggest ways to improve marketing and sales processes.

These approaches will help you check how you will fare against your competitors. They serve as your business’ reality check, helping you identify your niche, hence making you understand and get to know your customers better. Customer satisfaction survey should be made out from these approaches. Financial plan template should be made available too.

• Build Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty.

“Was the experience great for me to tell my friends about it?” In a world where the competition is so rigid, customer satisfaction and loyalty are the new marketing. When customers are well taken care of, they are more inclined to rely on your service again and again.

• Generating Restaurant Traffic

Customers are confronted with many choices, the question is: “What is unique about my restaurant that customers could not find in other restaurants?” Having great services or great food are not “unique” selling points, mind you. Creating a wide reaching strategy that covers both offline and online environments could give you that edge.

• Achieving Financial Goals

A financial goal is a target, whether monthly, quarterly or yearly and you compare the progress. Your goal should not be money-centric for your marketing not to sound deceptive or lacking core values. Factor in your purpose, values and financial goals so customers see those synonymous to the services that your restaurant offers.

• Build Brand Awareness

“When you order some drinks, do you ask for a cola or Coca-Cola?” (Sorry, Pepsi). Coca-Cola is already a giant name but it continues to spend more for exposure. But unlike Coke, you don’t have to spend millions to promote your brand. Thanks to the internet. When building your brand, It is a smart idea to use the SMART model of goal setting. Here are the five elements of specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals necessary not only in business but also life in general.

• Specific

What do you want to achieve. To whom, where, and when it is to be achieved. Why should this be achieved. This is how specific and clear your goals should be,

• Measurable

What gets measured, gets done! Adding measurable metrics will help you benchmark your success otherwise it can be very challenging. Your restaurant business goals should be quantifiable. It is important to be ascertain about the numbers objectively.

• Attainable

Here, you have to make sure that your goals are within reach. Start with small ones the slowly work your way up. You have to convince people around you that the goal is achievable otherwise they will likely be unmotivated and unwilling to put in all their efforts.

• Realistic

We often hear people say, “goals should be realistic”. Yes! Quite similar to attainable, your restaurant marketing goals should have that sense of reality. Nothing interests your employees more than setting realistic targets.

• Timely

This refers to a time and a date to achieve your goals. Creating a specific timeframe will prevent your business from failing. Having a timeline for short-term and long-term goals will keep your employees stay on track at a healthy pace.

Target Market

Who are you selling to? Why should they buy your products. What do they stand to gain? These were some of the questions asked when Grant Lebof tried to explain how to identify your target market in his book entitled, Digital Selling. This was supported by Greg Chapman of Empower Solutions when he said, “If you want to grow successfully ask yourself- why are you different? Who (which customers) will value this difference?”

Defining your target market and reaching out to them are two of the greatest ways bringing closer to success.

• Define your Target Market

Your market research should reveal buying patterns of customers that include where they buy, what they buy and how they buy. A regular review of trends will be of great help along the way too.

• Reaching your Target Market

Time to fish where the fishes are! Different medium works for different audience though, so, it’s best to get your customer’s demographics. After which, your next task is to determine what message to give, and how to meaningfully communicate the message.

Competition Analysis

You just don’t profile customers but also your competitors. Doing a competition analysis on a regular basis will help you uncover your competitors approach to business that will help you improve your competitive advantage. Start by listing your competitors, their services and market objectives. You also have to take a look at the competitor pay rate and profitability.

Understand their organizational structure and conduct competitor pricing survey that covers the entire business size in terms of sales over time. The market competition is rigid. It can change quickly, and new market players may come out tomorrow. Here are important guide questions to consider when conducting your competition slash market analysis. There are three categories where our questions should revolve around: Products, Sales and Marketing.

• Products

1. Are they a low-cost or high-cost provider?
2. Are they working focused on volume sales or one-o purchases?
3. What are the characteristics and needs of their customers?
4. What pricing strategies for online purchases are they using?
5. How do they distribute their products or services?

• Sales

1. What does their sales flow look like?
2. What channels are they selling their products through?
3. Are they expanding? Scaling down?
4. What are their revenues each year? What about total sales volume?
5. Do they regularly discount their products or services?

• Marketing

1. What online and offline advertising campaigns are they running?
2. Are they using static visual content such as infographics and cartoons?
3. Do they have blogs?
4. Do they post videos or webinars?
5. Are there featured articles?

• Types of Competitors

By identifying the types of competitors in the market environment you belong in, you can respond with the right approach. By then, you define your own competition.

• Direct Competitors & How to Beat Them

If you’re Coke, your direct competitor is Pepsi. These are type of competitors that make money the same way you do. These could be restaurants with multiple facets similar to yours. Here, relationship management gets the top role in wooing customers and grabbing market share.

• Occasional Competitors & How to Beat Them

They are the type of competitors that provide products or services which are slightly different to yours. They can be situated in a different location. It would be great to highlight an important feature that is important to the customer, rather than selling around a relatively minor or insignificant feature.

• External Competitors & How to Beat Them

Competitors that are neither direct nor occasional. To give you an example, in the entertainment industry, a cable channel may compete with ticket sellers for a sports stadium or concert. Or, McDonalds is actually indirectly competing with a buffet restaurant.

• Dealing with Competition

When you deal with competition, complacency is your greatest enemy. Unless you are providing a monopoly service, competition is always up. So, take your competitors as your source of energy. Ask these three questions: Who are my competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can I act on some threats and opportunities?

Marketing Strategy

The most effective marketing campaigns are those targeted toward specific audience. A marketing strategy that is focused on the key benefits based on customers’ interests. A marketing ploy that has clear message and is delivered at the most perfect time. Perfect timing in marketing is when the customers are attentive and ready to receive your message. The marketing strategy should be made ready before you start your business, otherwise you can’t effectively market with limited understanding how your business fits into the marketplace. Marketing promotion tracking will keep you on the loop, and will help you examine the effectiveness of each marketing campaign. For example, a social media marketing proposal should be laid out first too before doing online advertising.

• Online Marketing

When you’re new to the online marketing world for your small business, it’s imperative that you keep things simple, for now. This is to ensure do not spread yourself too thin. It is a good idea to choose just one social media marketing or content marketing channel.

• Social Media

Jumping on the social media bandwagon is no longer a matter of choice if you want to succeed. Every business needs it. The nature of social media ads is highly interactive. Giving your customers an accessible way to express what they feel and at the same also giving you the chance to respond to them. It allows you to target and re-target consumers too. When target market aligns with the user demographics of a social media platform you may expect high conversion rates from that.

• Other e-Marketing Strategies

Even Matt Cutts said: “Don’t just rely on Google anymore: rely on a wide variety of avenues where you can reach people that will want to know about you”. Take advantage of platforms such as web design, SEO, and email marketing. Writing articles and news stories is also good. Press release and blogs are channels where you can also connect to your customers.

• Take Orders Online

Letting your customers know that you are taking orders online is an important step for your customers to get quick assistance. You may inform customers about this special delivery option through your social media channels.

• Offline Marketing

Clearly, online marketing has taken the driving seat of our marketing activities. The rise of ‘digital’ marketing may have surpassed traditional activities but the truth is, the two are of equal importance. Integrating online and offline activities will help you maximize your marketing potential.

Here are some of the most effective offline marketing strategies. You may want to integrate them into your current marketing techniques.

• Sponsoring/Hosting Events

This is one way to Increase your reach and cultivate your credibility. This enables you to target your customers and have direct contact with them before, during and after the event.

• Distributing Pamphlets

One of the most cost-effective marketing strategies where customers still prefer to have something in their hands that they can touch, feel, save on their desks or shelves and come back to when they are ready.

• In-house Restaurant Marketing

Multi screen digital in-house marketing displays, and motion graphics can be your billboards to promote your menu items to attract attention in side your restaurant. It will also help you educate your customers to make up their menu choices before they are seated.

Marketing Budget

“You have to spend money to make money”. Your marketing budget should also reflect how much and how quick you want your business to grow. A marketing budget is an estimation of the projected costs to promote your restaurant business. Remember, it is the lack of properly constructed marketing budget that dooms many marketing campaigns. This means that failure to properly cost can lead to many problems, hence, you should realistically cost all your marketing communications expenses.

• Creating a Marketing Budget

“What goes into the budget?” There are plenty of budget method options available that you can choose from. If it sounds interesting to you, using a percentage of sales to set your marketing budget is also another method that you may want to take a look on.

• Types of Marketing Budgets

To get the ball rolling, here are the most common types of marketing methods to make sure all areas of your marketing plans are covered and get proper attention. This way, you keep track on all the parties involved with zero to minimal margin of error.

• Timely Marketing

“What is trending”? One trick here is to for research topics for conversations that are actively engaging. Positioning the right message at the right time will help you tailor your content according to your target market.

• Directional Marketing

The game here is to make sure that customers choose you over your competitors. How can you be easily found when a customer already has a buying interest?

• Incentive Marketing

This is a quick-fix in marketing. Here, you have to use incentive devices such as discounts, premiums, rewards, buy one take one to tick your customers interest.

Marketing Budget Plan

Your marketing budget plan outlines your marketing strategies, tactics, costs and projected results over time. It is time-consuming to draft, yes, but this forces you to think and be creative with your marketing tactics.

You need a marketing plan whether you have set up your restaurant business already or still trying to conceptualize it. It’s a lot easier to gain more customers, increase income and profitability if you have secured an excellent marketing plan. Everything you do, requires continuous planning, hence, excellent marketing plan should be a living and breathing document. Our easy to print Restaurant Branding & Marketing Templates will help you layout your marketing intentions. Spot the gaps and fill them with flair. Here are some helpful Tips to Run a Successful Restaurant too.