It is much easier to increase sales when you actually focus on HOW SALES INCREASE IS ACCOMPLISHED:

Your Promotions / Marketing / PR / Advertisements / Social Media Communication should aim at pushing 1 or all of these 3 situations:

New Customer Acquisition

This is the most expensive & difficult task but this is the start – building database starts with the first customer. Important points to note:

Customers will judge their impression of your brand – Love It/ Hate It from the first impression. And unfortunately the first impression is not the first look, its the TOTAL experience, product taste/ presentation/ service/ pricing/ packaging/ timeliness etc. Getting this first impression wrong will cost you tremendous amounts each time, it’s a mistake you cannot afford. Marketing a new brand & acquiring new customers should be strategized AFTER complete operational effectiveness has been measured & tested.

Each new customer holds the potential of repeat sales – that’s where your true marketing expense gets awarded. It costs 8 to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to market to repeat customers. After establishing your customer base, you are now equipped to increase your Sales through the other 2 factors listed below.

Relationship Marketing To Loyal Customer

Sales Frequency is generated by developing enduring relationships and loyalty among customers. Consider the amounts you may be spending on increasing customer base by repeatedly marketing your brand to new customers every day versus offering a LOYALTY program to existing customers. A regular customer who buys from you once a month is encouraged to buy 2 or more times a month with a loyalty offer/ bounce backs etc. That itself is an increase in sales by 100%.

Increasing The Average Check Size

The truth is that people walk into a food outlet to eat the main course! It is how you market your Sides, your Desserts and your Beverages & Specials that will determine how much the customer will try & buy! Check averages can be boosted using strategies like suggestive selling, upsizing, merchandising, nominal price increases at strategized point in product lifecycle of course, any price increase should be in keeping with your product range, positioning, target market & competition analysis.

All That Is Great ! But What Should Be My Marketing Budget?

A good ‘Rule of Thumb’ or the minimum guidelines is to spend at least 4% - 6% of your sales to marketing budgets. And don’t just do this in the low periods, stay consistent & spread your Marketing budget around your highest & lowest seasons effectively. This allows you to take full advantage of the high traffic in peak seasons, build customer loyalty, restaurant popularity. A good strategy would be to use marketing budgets in peak times by giving out ‘bounce-back offer’ that can be used to drive customers in during the low periods & seasons. In the low seasons, you’re your marketing budget to be more active on social sites & directories, focus on special offers. If you don’t have enough ‘walk-ins’ focus on boosting your delivery sales through delivery menu distributions.

Staff Trainings Vs. Marketing Budget

Some big players in the market actually invest more dollars into their training budgets than their marketing budgets. Great marketing is when a customer walks in & receives even more than he expects from Servers who treat him excellently, food that tastes great, looks great & stays consistently so. Such experiences can be accomplished with smooth operations & constant trainings. Add this to effective positioning and the in-house & external marketing efforts you need to do annually – and you will never need a huge marketing budget! You will learn in this manual certain expected & recommended marketing efforts that are crucial to the Restaurant business – like email marketing, bounce-back offers, publicity through event marketing, partnerships with other local retailers, directories & social media presence and, of course food reviews & Menu deliveries.