Lather, Rinse, Repeat

The title of this article is more than the (completely unnecessary) instructions on a shampoo bottle. These directions are more applicable to consumer marketing

Lather
Generate excitement among your customer base.  Also known as , working them into a lather is the first step in any successful marketing campaign.

Rinse
Show them the results.

Repeat
Do it again and again, honing your message until you have just the right mix.

Give extra juice to your coupons

Here’s a tip: Take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks – don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not.

At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing.

Why does this work?

Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again.

From BoingBoing.

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to follow the leader.

It’s sad really, but 80% – 90% of restaurant marketing budgets are spent  getting a new customer to visit for the first time.  This is the least effective place to spend your money.  The majority of new customer efforts are spent in mass media advertising, which is costly and has dismal return on investment.  The fact is, new customer acquisition is 7-10 times more expensive than building restaurant sales through increased frequency, check average and party size.

But restaurant marketing isn’t always about what’s most effective, more often, it’s about what everyone else is doing.  Restaurant operators see that their competitor is on television or in the yellow pages or on a billboard and that they should be too.  They do this without regard for what’s working.  Restaurant owners have to wear so many hats that sometimes they just do what’s easiest – they write a check for mass media advertising and hope for the best.  Mass media is often more about feeding ego than driving sales.  It’s also impossible for most companies to compete in a toe-to-toe battle with the big guys.  Subway spends $290 million per year on television.  They can do that because they are a multi-billion dollar enterprise – a title less than 100 restaurant corporations in the world can claim.  The question you’ll have to ask yourself is do we want to jump off the bridge just because so many other people are?

Excellent Dentist in Downtown Atlanta

If you are a Georgia State Student or work in the Downtown Atlanta area, there is a great Dental Office on Marietta Street across the street from the AJC.  Check them out $25 Coupon for all services

African Art In Atlanta

If you are living in or visiting Atlanta this summer and are interested in purchasing african art.  Check out Gems Of Africa in Virginia Higlands.  They have a coupon for 15% off during the month of July.  They have quite a few unique pieces.

Is your marketing campaign destroying the environment

According to the National Restaurant Association, 62 percent of restaurant-going consumers say they are likely to choose a restaurant based on its environmental friendliness. This metric has not been lost on the restaurant industry; nearly one-third of restaurant operators are planning to allocate a larger part of their budget to environmental efforts this year. Restaurants are taking all kinds of measures to be greener—from changing out light bulbs, swapping out Styrofoam takeout containers to using wind power and water-conserving faucets. And now is the time for restaurant marketing strategies to receive a green makeover too.

 The environmental impact of traditional marketing channels is substantial.

 o According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, over seven billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases were emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere by the US in 2006 and a significant percentage were emitted by business activities associated with print media advertising.

o Research by the Institute for Sustainable Communication reports that a single ad page run in a popular consumer magazine can represent as much as seven tons of carbon dioxide emissions when supply chain factors associated with papermaking, printing, logistics, transportation and landfill disposal or incineration of post-consumer and unsold media are taken into consideration.

o 100 million trees are used each year to produce direct mail which contributes 4 million tons of waste each year in the U.S. according to the Center for a New American Dream.

 

One of the easiest ways to begin reducing your restaurant’s impact is to start the move from traditional paper-based marketing towards other channels such as email, mobile and web search – to get your marketing message across. While the environmental impact of switching to any one these new marketing mediums has yet to be studied at length, the results are lowered consumption of natural resources and less waste to our landfills. And though email marketing may require some print, it is more targeted and those who receive restaurant offers and coupons via email can choose to print them only when they will be used.

 With online marketing, the benefits go beyond its green appeal; they also make economic sense. For example, restaurants that are using email to respond are seeing real value for their efforts. Last year alone email had an ROI of $48.56 for every dollar spent on it. And it’s no surprise why. Email connects restaurateurs with their most valuable customers and rewards them for their loyalty, increasing customer frequency, revenue and overall brand awareness. In comparison, direct mail only produced a $15.57 return and lacks the additional green benefit of email.

 Good for the environment and good for business – a winning combination!