If you’re looking for a new way, a more profitable way, to target thousands of potential new customers and get them into your bar or restaurant for pennies on the dollar, then I’ve got the perfect solution for you today.
To start off, I want to show you this image that I found from Newspaper Association Of America. Back in 2000, 65 billion dollars was spent on advertising in the newspaper compared to 17 billion today! Why is that? Because we are now in the digital era and there are smarter, more profitable ways to get your offer or your message in front of the right people rather than using newspapers.
As you may have experienced this yourself, (depending on how long you’ve been in the business) newspaper advertising doesn’t work like it used to and you have to fight for attention with all the other ads.
Doesn’t it make more sense to try to show up directly in front of your perfect customer without having to compete with your competitors for their attention?
Today I’m going to share with you what restaurant geo targeting advertising is and how you can use it to place website banner ads directly in front of the types of customers you want to go after and do this in a way where you eliminate wasted marketing dollars.
What Is Geo Targeting?
So what exactly is banner ad geo targeting? This is where you can place your ads, your promotions, your offers in front of people based on age, gender, their interests, and where they live.
Instead of putting your ad in a newspaper where their ad reps try to sell you on a number of readers or circulation, (which only a small fraction of those readers are your perfect type of customer) geo targeting eliminates everyone who isn’t your ideal customer and only targets who you want. Keeping reading as I’ll show you proof of a campaign I recently did.
I want to be up front about this. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know my #1 marketing strategy is using Facebook’s power editor platform to target people based on their purchase behavior. Targeting people based on their purchasing behavior means you can target people who are actively buying beer, wine, liquor, and meals at other bars and restaurants.
This is the #1 most profitable way to target new customers. I’ll leave a link below this video to show you how to do this. However, geo targeting with banners is my second marketing strategy because it’s very inexpensive and highly targeted. Just to make it clear. Facebook first and geo targeting banner ads second.
How To Set Up Geo Targeting Ads
Now that you know what geo marketing is I’m going to explain how to set up these ads. The way I do this is with Google Adwords. I don’t personally set up these campaigns because it is a little confusing. I outsource this work to a Google Adwords specialist and I suggest you do the same thing. We have enough to worry about in our bars and restaurants then learning Google Adwords.
Here’s a recent campaign I just ran. While my stats could have done better it was a very inexpensive way to test the market. I targeted males from 27 to 55 years old who lived within 2 miles of my bar. This means no one would see my ads on the internet besides this group of people.
You’ll see that my banner ads were shown nearly 40,000 times and we had 118 guys click over to get the offer. I ended up paying .29 for each click, which was a total of $33.84.
The Goal Of This Campaign
My goal was to get brand new customers who were males over to a lead capture site to capture their information and put them through my New Customer To Loyal Customer Marketing system. (If you not familiar with what a lead capture website is it’s a one page website that states an offer and in order to get that offer, they have to enter their information to receive it. Kind of like a “Sign up for our newsletter type of widget on your website but this is a page on your website that actually offers some kind of offer / value to your business.)
We’ve had about 35 or 38 who signed up so far and now waiting to see the results of them walking in the door.
Since I don’t have stats on that yet, let’s play with some numbers. On a conservative side, let’s say only 10 of them come in, this means I only paid on the high side $3.80 for each of them. However, my restrictions of buying 2 beverages will cover some of those food costs.
Where The Money Is Made
But this isn’t where the money is made. When I structure new customer marketing campaigns, it’s not to make money on the first time sale. The money is made in the follow-up marketing I do to get them back in using e-mail or texting or retargeting. When I provide them with a great experience and I get them coming back a few times a month I will then start to see the real results.
The ultimate goal is to turn them into one of my loyal regulars who’s there 5 times a week spending $20-$25. It’s nearly impossible to make that happen unless I have a follow-up marketing system in place.
The Power Of “Re-Targeting”
The money is also made with retargeting ads. Retargeting is where you can target banner ads directly to people who have been to your website. Think about this. I had 118 guys click over to my site but only 35 to 38 took action. What do I know about these guys?
I know they live within 2 miles of my bar, I know what age range they are in, and I know they like to eat out at bars or they wouldn’t have wasted their time clicking on my ad right. So what I can do now is re-target all these guys with ads for other specials and promotions.
Just because someone doesn’t sign up the first time, doesn’t mean they won’t sign up the second or third time. This is where the money is always made. It’s not the first time sale or the first time they see your ad. It’s going to be in the follow-up.
I’ll leave another link below this video to a recent article I wrote called 5 Easy Ways To Go About Marketing Your Restaurant, this will show you some stats of another recent re-targeting campaign we just launched. Once you see that, you’ll want to instantly put this to work in your bar or restaurant.
Conclusion
This is the wave of strategic bar and restaurant marketing. Every kid is growing up with tablets and consumption of information is now going digital. It’s now time you start putting your ads and promotions where your customer’s eyes and ears are. The good news is, it’s affordable and profitable.
Article mentioned in this video: 5 Ways To Go About Marketing Your Restaurant
