Hey, Nick Fosberg here with another episode of Bar Restaurant Success. The number one reason bar and restaurant owners make so many mistakes in marketing is because they don’t have the time to study marketing which is probably the most profitable task you can do as an owner.
Good food, service, experience – all that is a no brainer to being successful in this industry. But if you want to be really successful, you better be a wiser and smarter marketer who can turn a profit from the marketing you do. If not, that’s a recipe for failure!
Today, I’m going to cover 3 critical marketing mistakes that I see more than 80-90% of owners make and how you can avoid them.
#1 – Not Testing Your Marketing
Mistake number one would be not testing your marketing. Let’s say you want to send out a direct mail piece with an offer to get new customers in the door. Instead of sending out all of the same mailers, send out 2 with different offers or different formats and see which one pulls the best. Then, take the winner and send more of those out as long as you saw a good return. You could also test different medias. Same offer but different medias. See which gives you the best return and then focus on the winner.
#2 – Running Corporate
Style Advertising
Mistake #2 is running corporate style advertising and this is what you’ll see 90% all the big chains do. Their advertising just promotes their specials and new releases but what they don’t do is create a way to actually track their results. They have no clue after the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spend on national advertising if their marketing dollars really paid off because they have no way to track it. Their marketing pretty much says, “Here’s our special, here’s our price, and here’s when it’s going to end.” How do you track the return if there is no call to action to redeem the special offer? You can’t.
In all your marketing you should have an offer and you should tell them how to take advantage of that offer. Whether it’s going to a website to fill in their information or if it’s showing you their cell phone with the offer. You must have a way to track where people are coming from and how many people took advantage of your offer.
Never ever spend a penny on marketing, especially getting new customers in the door, if you can’t track the return and know whether it was successful or not. Yes, there is a little work involved but it’s critical for you to know what works and what doesn’t.
#3 – Not Differentiating Your
Business From Everyone Else
Mistake #3 is not differentiating your business from everyone else. Within your marketing, you should have what is called a USP – a unique selling proposition and you could have a few. Now before I go on let me say this, there are certain times in social media marketing where you don’t want to use a USP because your marketing needs to be kept short.
However, if you are doing direct mail, newspaper, e-mail, or anything else you should let customers know what you stand for. Maybe you specialize in parties and events. Tell them that you are considered to be the number one place to book events and parties. This will stick in their head. If you’re a burger joint, tell them you’ve got the best burgers in town and why they are the best. Your USP tells your customers why you’re different or better than the competition.
