Restaurateurs have been working for their Restaurant Marketing Plans, Forecasts, and Budgets Plans months before entering 2020, and with the start of the pandemic outbreak, all of those plans are disregarded and dropped. Though it has taken the whole world by surprise and somehow forced everyone to take a pause and re-evaluate operations, restaurant businesses are trying to work their way back on track.
As a pillar of the economy, the Restaurant Industry expects restaurateurs to continue with their operations. It is now time to devise a Restaurant Marketing Plan that would help you to adjust with the new normal giving consideration to all the restrictions.
With all the uncertainty going, we want to lend a hand that’s why we’ve come up with this easy guide that should help you adapt with this transition smoothly.
RESTAURANT MARKETING
Restaurant Marketing is the marketing efforts you’ve implemented to your restaurant business. It helps your business to gain market visibility, increase in profitability, and continuously attract repeat and new customers.
MARKETING PLAN
A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines an advertising strategy that an organization will implement to generate leads and reach its target market. A marketing plan details the outreach and PR campaigns to be undertaken over a period, including how the company will measure the effect of these initiatives. The functions and components of a marketing plan include the following:
- Market research to support pricing decisions and new market entries
- Tailored messaging that targets certain demographics and geographic areas
- Platform selection for product and service promotion—digital, radio, Internet, trade magazines, and the mix of those platforms for each campaign
- Metrics that measure the results of marketing efforts and their reporting timelines
It can be constructed for monthly, quarterly, or yearly forecasts.
It serves as your blueprint for success. Your plan should focus on how to deliver customer delight. A Marketing Plan should be customer-centric as food quality and outstanding service still remain as your foundation for your restaurant success. With the Restaurant Industry, satisfied customers are still the best ambassadors for your restaurant business.
A Restaurant Marketing Plan gives you access to the restaurant’s operation and workflow. You’ll be able to observe the statistics and analytics behind your restaurant business and this leads you to do better with the management of your restaurant business.
MARKETING RESEARCH
Before you work with your Restaurant Marketing and making a plan for your restaurant, it is important to do a thorough Marketing Research. A restaurateur should have a substantial amount of data and information about their business and the current market.
Know which audience to target. Restaurant Marketing Plan will be in its highest potential if it reaches the right customers. Look into your POS and check on to which demographic you’re most appealing, what time is the busiest, and what dish is the most ordered.
And since there are changes now within the market and the habits of your customers, you may opt to create customer or buyer personas. You should have a good understanding and knowledge about your previous customers in order to formulate the best customer persona that will benefit your Restaurant Marketing Plan.
Another crucial step on a Marketing Research is doing a Competitor check. If you have an analysis and study about the competitors that’s present in the market, you can position your Restaurant Marketing Plan ahead of the game as you already have knowledge about their process and strategies. This could lead you to anticipate what could be their future step and you can draw up a plan that’ll beat that.
Make sure you also look into their digital presence. Remember that the competition was already brought into the social media channels and other online platforms. Observe on how they’re doing with their Digital Marketing, and work on something better for your restaurant.
BRANDING
In order to formulate an effective Restaurant Marketing Plan, it is important to know what you’re working on. Identify how you want your restaurant to be known and what concept you want to associate with your brand.
To support your branding, it is wise to share your restaurant’s story, mission and values. You should communicate with your customers, staff, suppliers, and vendors what your business intends to achieve and what path it’ll take. This will give them a better understanding of what your business stands for.
Tip : Make it short and genuine. Customers tend to engage more with brands that they can connect to. Let your statement and story help you build a connection, it should not appear too pushy or pretentious.
Restaurant Marketing also requires you to work your branding with the concept of your restaurant. The placement of every visual aspect should be aligned, starting from your logo, color palette, furniture, ambiance, wall art, to your utensils, staff’s uniform, and packaging.
All customer touch points should be treated as critical interactions, maximize it by making sure you’ve worked well enough for every touch point to represent your brand accordingly. It should help your customers to familiarize with your brand.
UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION
Without proper Restaurant Marketing, you don’t have a good insight inside your restaurant business. And no good insight means you have no enough information about the status of your restaurant business in the Restaurant Industry and you don’t know what you should work on in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Unique Selling Proposition or USP is what makes you different. If you want to stay ahead of the game, it is not enough to just offer the usual and casual. Make use of the data that you’ve collected from your Marketing Research and come up with a USP.
As if winning a customer’s attention is not hard enough these days, you also have to make sure that you’ll retain their interest with your restaurant. That’s why it is crucial for every restaurateur to have a USP.
Your USP can be in a form of a distinct dish, your concept, or the customer experience you’re delivering. Be creative and step right into your customer’s shoes to know what could keep them excited.
DIGITAL MARKETING
A branch of Restaurant Marketing that’s taking the whole industry by storm. In order for your Restaurant Marketing Plan to work, you also have to set measures on how you’ll build and intensify your online presence.
If your website is not updated, or you have no social media accounts for your restaurant, you have to make things up and work on it right away! This is pivotal as modern consumers are now mostly relying on what they see online.
Here are some of the factors you also have to check for your Restaurant Marketing to prosper digitally :
- SEO Optimization
- Producing the appropriate content
- Social Media Presence
- Loyalty and Reward Programs
Make sure you have a good online presence on all the main social media channels namely Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are also online platforms where you can reach out to other niche markets, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, Zomato, and OpenTable.
Keep in mind that before you start with your Restaurant Marketing Plan, you have to conduct a business check-up first and find out what’s working and not working for your restaurant. From cutting the unnecessary, you can now formulate a plan that will drive your restaurant business to success.
source https://www.etakeawaymax.co.uk/guide-to-an-effective-restaurant-marketing-plan/
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