How to Market a Small Restaurant

How to market a small restaurant is not as difficult as it seems and in this day and age if your food is really good and the service is good to great, then your chances for success will most likely increase.

It all starts with the vision of the owner. If this is you and you aren’t skilled and experienced with marketing, then find someone (a solo-specialist) or a team to develop a plan and help implement it.

The restaurant business is tough as it is and you need every advantage to make your establishment grow and prosper. So the people that you surround yourself with are very important.

So here are the real basics of how to market a small restaurant:

1. Planning: You can wing it or you can plan it. I prefer the plan it method. Just like you plan your menu and the ingredients that you put in your food. Keep the plan simple while being flexible enough to adjust where and when necessary.

2. Operations: Always remember that you need a certain number of customers coming through the door every day that you open. Plus you need a certain income per day in order to keep the establishment open for business. Make sure you know what these numbers are including food costs and daily labor, otherwise it’s really hard to test and invest in marketing. Without tight controls all the marketing and promotion will go up in smoke.

3. Service: Once customers arrive in your world – treat them like friends and make their experience so enjoyable that they want to come back and will refer their sphere of influence your way. I call this ‘breaking into the sphere’ and it’s pretty easy to do if you have good to great service. This ‘BITS’ program builds repeat business and grows the small business clientele.

Ok – enough of the basics – now let’s get down to brass tacks:

Wanna know how to market a small restaurant? Here are a few out of the box ideas to help give you a boost:

1. The Bait: Do what this owner did and go around to all the local businesses and give away free sandwiches or whatever you offer on the menu. Along with the free food make sure to bring some menus and an incentive card that gives the prospect a reason to come visit your establishment. Now some will say that’s a lot of money, Dave! That’s the wrong attitude to have my friend. Remember, it’s all about getting to your customers stomach and there’s no better way to do this than through a personal visit with free food or beverages.

2. The Survey Method: If your small restaurant is located around other businesses, take a day or two and go meet and greet the owners, managers and employees. Take a survey with you and if possible some food samples. Ask simple, direct questions and be friendly. The idea here is to find out what your potential customer’s needs are and what they would be interested in. The survey is powerful and will tell you a lot if you line up the questions and keep it informal.

3. PR & The Local Media: Use your local media outlets to help promote your small establishment. Remember – everyone needs to eat, even the gal on TV and the guy who writes his column in your paper or news website. Make a connection. Get feedback. And customize a sandwich or appetizer just for the individual.

How you market your small restaurant doesn’t have to be through conventional methods or channels. The bottom line here is that the more you think outside the box and test, the more you’ll learn about your customers and be able to market to them.

Need more marketing food to bring those hungry customers into your small restaurant?
The SmallBiz Mechanic may have just what you need. Touch bases and see what he can cook up for you in his customized marketing kitchen.

To your small restaurant success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher

Increase Sales – The Soft Sell Way

In part one How to Increase Sales in small business I wrote about the existing customer side of the increasing sales equation. In this post I want to cover how you can increase sales using what I call the soft sell way.

This soft sell process is one that I started implementing many, many years ago, prior to the world wide web. You see, I was never really interested in sales per say, but it seemed that no matter what I did in small business, I always ended up being in sales and thrust into the biz dev role. So the soft selling process evolved over the years and I really believe that it contributed to my ability to increase sales and develop new business.

The thing is, there are many different ways that you can increase sales including hard driving tactics that many businesses still use today and maybe you’ll even see results and maybe you won’t.

It’s a sad state of affairs to see so many small businesses with no clue as to how they can drive more traffic and increase sales. They think they need to reinvent the wheel with some new ‘salesy’ tactic that will bring droves of prospects through the door, yet they continue to struggle and fail not knowing what to do next.

How did I increase sales using this so called soft sell approach? I simply worked hard and studied from the greats like Dale Carnegie, Frank Bettger and Og Mandino. I also attended live seminars and trainings and then I implemented, tweaked and adjusted over the years.

Notice I wrote implemented, which means action was taken and the information put to good use in my various businesses. If you study and learn but do not put the information to good use, then it’s wasted time and money.

One other thing to mention here – I still research, study and learn as much as I can about the topics that have to do with sales and marketing. I am continually in the hunt and keeping my eyes and ears open for anything that can help further my business and my client’s businesses.

Let’s get down to it:

The bottom line is that you have to sell something in order to have sales revenue come your way. Whether you are selling on the internet or selling offline, you are still selling.

To increase sales in your small business you don’t need to be pushy. A matter of fact, pushy will usually get you less sales and more un-subscribes, if you use email.

Think about it – do you like sales people who are pushy and over the top or the
sales person who takes the offer off the table or even let’s you make the decision when the time is right?

Maybe you’ve been subscribed to some marketer’s email lists that are all about sell, sell, sell and not a lot of content? Maybe you’ve been approached too many times by salespeople who are pushy, overly talkative or just plain rude?

You see most people will put up a wall and turn the opposite direction when these kind of salespeople enter their world. It’s a turn off and they feel kind of dirty.

By the way – what I’m writing about here also applies to online marketing and list building. Because the sales/persuasion tactics you use to attract people to your squeeze and landing pages directly reflect on you even though you’re not there in person.

Here’s my suggestion to you; instead of the hard sell, sell, sell – you take the soft sell approach, throw out the bait and then let the person warm up to you. This keeps them in your world until he or she decides to purchase, stay around or just plain exit at their leisure.

This way you have a higher retention rate and in the long-run you maintain credibility and close more business.

This is the way we did it at The TIny Store and how I still work with clients at SmallBiz Mechanix.

To your small business success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher 

Advertising Agencies – a Small Business Dilemma

What a day it is that I’m writing about the topic of Advertising Agencies and The Small Business Dilemma.

So if you own an ad agency, even if it’s you inc. or you employ an agency that works for your small business – here’s my take after 26 years of day in day out experience in the trenches, with two stints at small agencies and running an in-house agency for six years.

Whewwww…

I believe many small business owners make it tougher on themselves than it really has to be when it comes to advertising. Why is this?

There are many different reasons but the one that sticks his head out above the rest is S&W.

In my previous post Strengths and Weaknesses, I mentioned that working in ones area of strengths can lead to a more productive working environment and have many positive side effects. Weaknesses on the other hand need to be delegated and left to those that excel and enjoy working in the specific area or areas.

When it comes to advertising and marketing:

If one is working on and in advertising and this individual should really be focusing on a different area of the business, this can put a huge kink in the works and cost the business owner money.

This leads me to the other side of the dilemma where we have the small business owner who goes back and forth between in-house agency to outside agency.

Many small businesses I’ve worked with over the years have gone back and forth between outside advertising agencies and inside advertising agencies. They work with an agency for months to years and then for any number of reasons (or excuses) decide to go ‘in house’ and either hire a do it all person or split up the workload amongst existing staff and contractors.

Either way works but having an outside ad agency that understands today’s online and offline advertising arena is a huge benefit and feather in the client’s cap.

In my opinion it also comes down to ROI plus the owner’s knowledge and grasp of advertising, marketing and sales and how they interact with each other.

Let me further expand on this last sentence and say that it’s really deeper than that. It’s the owner’s understanding or lack of understanding of ‘Current advertising and marketing channels’ and how they impact and affect his or her particular business.

Let’s wrap it up…

Ad agencies in many cases are small businesses and sometimes even one person shops that also have overhead to meet. They need clients and sales just like their clients do. But what they forget (and I have seen this time and time again) is that ROI is really the key.

Yes, return on investment for the small business owner is very important and in this day and age even more so due to the tightening of the economy. If the small business is seeing ROI and it’s directly related to advertising, then all parties should be happy campers.

So for the small biz ad agency hunting for new clients I say -” Show your prospects how you can deliver ROI.” And once you do this, share the testimonial with all who will read, listen and view.

This is where SmallBiz Mechanix comes into play for the solo-preneur and small business owner who needs guidance and direction when it comes to driving new business, increasing sales and navigating the web. Whether you’re a one-person show or team of twenty, The SmallBiz Mechanic may be able to help you drive more business and increase sales.

But you’ll never know until you take the first step and make contact.

Dave Krygier
Publisher

 

 

 

 

What is Click and Mortar?

When asked what is Click and Mortar I say, “it’s where a business that still has a physical presence (meaning location) that serves the community or region and utilzes the web to drive traffic, connect, communicate and offer goods and services to people.

Click = The Web.

Mortar = The Physical Business  – retail, service, distribution and manufacturing.

Combine the two together and what do you get? Nothing! Unless you develop a plan and implement the plan.

As I’ve written about in past posts…I coined the phrase click and mortar in either 96′ or 97′ and used it when describing to others what we were doing at that time in our business, which I refer to today as The Tiny Store.

Back in the 90’s ‘the click’ was a static web presence that enabled our small business to expand and grow over a 6 year period.

You know what our simple plan for using the Internet back in the 1990’s?

It was this – create an online catalog so our prospects and customers could see all that we offered. This way we didn’t have to mail physical catalogs and brochures to those in Alaska and Eastern Washington.

In the beginning it was never about ‘driving traffic’ and increasing page rank, because the web was so new and so were we.

Now I caught on really quick and we did develop ways to capture, cultivate and communicate with the people who found us through the old search engines – Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Webcrawler and Lycos.

And we did have a huge advantage being first to the party and adding a ton of content to our site. We also utilized email, the phone and ye ole’ fax to get the job done. Had I had access to an email auto-responder, life would have been quite a bit different, but that wasn’t the case, so I dealt with the slew of email that crowded my inbox every week.

Auto-responders were just getting started and quite honestly I didn’t know they existed. My bad for not researching and looking into it.

The click for us was a great lead generating tool. The only problem was that the leads came from all over the world and we just really wanted to serve Washington and Alaska.

For some small businesses they still don’t understand how to use the click to drive business to the mortar.

Today’s web offers so many ways to drive traffic and you can target your market and be as creative as you want to. It’s a marketer and biz dev person’s dream, yet so many miss the boat and go another year without doing anything. Or they just add a couple of social media buttons thinking that this is what everyone else is doing and we need to be doing what they are doing.

I say that you do what’s best for your small business. Use the click so it benefits your company! Use the click so it does what you want it to do for your small business.

What is click and mortar? A smart way to do business combining the online with the offline.

If you are a retailer, service business, distributor or manufacturer and desire to develop and grow your business using the click so it can help your mortar based business; then get on over to SmallBiz Mechanix and waste not a moment more.

Dave Krygier
Publisher

How to Increase Sales in Your Restaurant

                                   Increase Sales in Your Restaurant Business
 

I was recently reviewing some stats about one of the article directories and one of the most reviewed articles had to do with bringing repeat business to a restaurant.

In my previous post about Surveying your way to Success I mentioned how this simple, yet effective tactic can help your business.

Why? Because surveying is one of the simplest ways to increase sales in a restaurant and develop repeat customers that continue to return again and again.

Today’s topic and about increasing sales not only applies to restaurants but all small businesses who want to grow and increase sales.

Providing good service is one thing…Providing great service is an entirely different story altogether.

The restaurant business is tough enough as it is, so don’t make it tougher on yourself and your staff by looking for short cuts to increase sales.

Do not make it complicated, because it’s really a very simple formula.

Here it is:

Great Food plus Great Service equals satisfied customers who will return if you continue to treat them right.

Notice I didn’t say anything about price in that equation. Price was not mentioned at all but is important so make sure to pay attention to it.

So let’s stop looking and searching for the magic bullet that is going to make our restaurant overflow with repeat customers. Use the formula above and keep it simple.

Now let’s talk about a few of the missing ingredients that you can add to your service menu and begin to increase sales.

1. Personalization. The missing ingredient in almost every restaurant I have continued to frequent in the last 20 years is personalization. Yes, personalization.

How many times have you been back to your favorite restaurant yet none of the people  remember your name? This is a tragedy, yet so many establishments just don’t understand that a person’s name is very important to him or her.

I happen to frequent many of the same restaurants ….

One in particular – the owner remembers my client’s name and he’s friendly to me but never once that I can remember has be called me by name. He also does the same thing to my client’s sister, who also happens to be part owner of their business.

2. Connection. Once you personalize you can connect. Connect with your customers. Connection is the key. The Great food + Great Service = happy, satisfied, returning customer. Yes – if you really want repeat business the food has to be good to great and the service just as great. But the connection must happen along the way to crank up the repeat business machine.

Very few restauranteurs that I’ve run across are taking advantage of building solid relationships with their customers. At least in my travels I have rarely ever seen this.

So let’s stop looking and searching for the magic bullet that is going to make our restaurant overflow with repeat customers. Use the formula above and keep it simple.

Remember it’s all about your customers. You make them feel great, they tell their friends. You make them feel bad with inconsistencies in your food and service and they’ll tell their friends and possibly not frequent your establishment ever again. This is not new news but with social media, reviews, citation sites, texting and email means word spreads faster than ever before.

So it’s more important now than ever before that you work on providing the best experience to your customers, new and old. That’s what we did at The Tiny Store.

After all, it’s not about what you want – it’s about what they want.

Dave Krygier
Publisher

The Entrepreneurial Quest

What better way to start Independence Day here in the USA than with a post about Entrepreneurialism and the Entrepreneurial Quest.

I love spending time with other small business owners who have the entrepreneurial spirit. They have that gleem in their eyes, are excited about life and their chosen adventure. There’s never a dull moment and they usually know where they are headed.

Having worked in small business for over 26 years and grown up in a household that was small business oriented I’ve had the entre-bug since I was a little kid. It’s a bug that attached itself when I was eight years old and has been a permanent resident ever since.

It doesn’t matter if you are just looking to start your first business or happen to be in the early stages, the entrepreneurial spirit is one that is hard to squash and it can be addictive.

You either have it or you don’t.

The entrepreneurial quest is one that many have chosen to take, yet there are some who just don’t make the journey and decide to head back to the safety of the corporate blanket or business that provides some sense of comfort and security.

Those that choose the path of The Entrepreneurial Quest may have to pave their own path, Think Outside the Box, beat their own drum and provide food and shelter while weathering multiple storms.

Freedom doesn’t come free and neither does The Entrepreneurial Quest. It is not a journey for all people as some are just not cut out to be in business for themselves.

For those that do choose the road to Independence from the corporate work a day world – The Entrepreneurial Quest might just be the journey worth looking into.

It won’t be easy and they’ll be ups and downs like a roller coaster, but the journey will be one that only you can take and make a difference should you choose to stay the course.

To your entrepreneurial quest, should you choose to venture out and start the journey.

Dave Krygier
“The Small Biz Mechanic”

 

Strengths and Weaknesses & Your Future

We all have strengths and weaknesses yet as small business owners it sometimes seems that the weaknesses can tend to get in the way and even distract us from what we do best.

When I first wrote about this topic a few years ago I myself was in the middle of yet another change and it was a change for the good. A change that allowed me to work in a strength area.

Over the years it had become apparent to me that working in areas that I was weak caused more pain and frustration. So I started to look at ways to work in my strength areas so I could be more productive and enjoy what I was doing.

While at The Tiny Store I was able to focus mostly on sales, marketing and business development, but still had to work on and oversee operations. We had a pretty small staff, usually under 10 people and thus I ended up wearing many different hats and became a plate spinner.

Now before I go on, credit needs to be given where credit is due. John Maxwell is the individual that really brought this whole idea to the surface – Working in ones strength areas versus working in thy weaknesses. At the time he used a scale and it made a lot of sense to me.

Working in your strength areas will take effort. I am the first one to admit that it’s really easy to get sucked back into the areas of your small business that are not strengths but weaknesses.

My suggestion to you is work in the areas or area that you really, truly enjoy.

If you are a marketing fanatic and are really great at it – work in marketing and grow as much as you can. If operations is your passion and you have a desire to grow in this area, then study, work and get busy at becoming the best you can be in small business operations.

To grow in your strength area(s) you’ll need to find help.

Here are a few suggestions: 

1. Outsource your weaknesses to people who specialize in them. It may take some time but you’ll be glad you did. Outsourcing isn’t for everybody but you won’t know if it’s for you until you investigate and see who’s out there.

2. Find an assistant to help with the details and tasks that are dragging you down. This person should be someone you can count on and be willing to teach and can do the work without having to be reminded or babysat.

3. Work and develop your strengths on a daily basis. Get stronger in one area at a time. This takes time and you will need to take the time and not rush it. It’s a daily process making new habits and breaking old ones.

Believe you me I understand how overwhelming it is when it’s You Inc. and everything rides on your shoulders. It’s not easy being self employed – running your own small business.

I’m not saying it’s going to be easy to grow and focus on your strength areas every day. Take baby steps at first and work at finding people to take care of the areas of your business that are not your strengths.

Your strengths are your future, so begin to focus on them and leave the weaknesses to others. If you need some guidance and help building your strengths – contact The Small Biz Mechanic and ask for the Small Business Strength and Conditioning Plan.

To your strengths,

Dave Krygier
Publisher

 

 

Advertising & The Salesperson

Advertising is salesmanship and today I’m gonna give it to you with both barrels.

At the last big System Seminar in 2011 I heard this mentioned again and it really rang home with me because so many ads I’ve come across never even hint of sales. They just don’t even come close, except to show some creative persons idea of brand awareness.

During a recent lunch meeting with a client we got on the topic of sales events and unscrupulous sales tactics and a firm that was continually using these to promote businesses that were having challenges during the last decade or so.

This brings me to a series of questions:

Are you seeing ROI in your advertising? Are you seeing an increase in sales due to the advertising expenditure that shows up on your books every month?

Are you testing, split testing and tracking your advertising?

These are tough questions, I know. But you should answer them sooner than later and make sure to keep the answers honest. 

Now back to our topic…

Many times I have found that the people in the small business who are wrapping their lives around advertising and marketing should be doing something else. 

What is it that draws the owner or employee to head up the advertising and marketing charge only to stumble and bloody their nose again and again?

This is not always the case because I’ve seen business owners and managers who really understand that advertising is salesmanship. But it’s somewhat rare.

In many cases the owner wants the influx of new business thus creating what I call ‘sale, sale, sale’ advertising – only to have the salesperson be trampled by bargain hunters and tire kickers. It’s frustrating for the salesperson because he or she makes a living based on what he or she sells!

Advertising is salesmanship. It’s not about who can do the best graphics and dish out a cool looking logo with a fancy background. It’s not about ego boosts and who has the biggest ad with the bells and whistles going bonkers.

For a small business it really means this – does the advertising message accomplish something and sell the product or service? Is it just cool looking or does it really sell and get the person to do something, like a direct response ad that has a call to action.

Now let’s take a turn and look at the the sales professional. You know, the salesman or saleswoman who has chosen to invest and spend their career in the trenches as a relationship building, customer service, prospecting, merchandising machine. Most salespeople wear multiple hats and sometimes only one hat is sales-oriented.

I’m talking about the sales professional who has worked and studied for hundreds and maybe thousands of hours only to have worthless advertising make their job or business that much more difficult.

The best advertising enables the sales professional to do his or her job, not prohibit them or interfere. 

If your sales team ( or person or yourself) is going to perform at peak levels and you are investing in advertising…Support with the best marketing that you and your team can produce and afford and make sure to back it up with stellar customer service and deliver on what you advertised.

Because in the end what really matters is ROI and profits in your pockets.

To your continued success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher

PS – Sometimes small business owners get overwhelmed and need help with sales and marketing. If this is you, I would suggest you contact The SmallBiz Mechanic and see if he can provide some assistance.

 

Restaurant Marketing – Survey to Success

When it comes to the business of food there’s no better way to success than through the stomachs of your customers. After all you want to retain as many customers as possible, right? You want them returning weekly or monthly, right? Then quit wasting time and find out what they really like to eat! Find out what they want and desire to eat and survey your way to a growing repeat customer base.

Survey your way to success in your restaurant business and do what few other restaurant owners are willing to do. How do I know this? Because I travel a lot and what I’m sharing with you is rarely done, at least in the many different establishments I’ve frequented in the last 20 plus years.

Survey you say! Yes, and it’s really simple to do.

It’s what I did at SOTS. Surveying and tracking were one of The Secrets of The Tiny Store and these two were what enabled me to do what so few other companies in our industry had done before.

When it comes to restaurant marketing, simple surveys can be what separates you from the pack.

Here’s what you do:

Survey – Yourself.  Yes, you the big boss does the actual yakkin’ and asking! Just be yourself, friendly and ask some questions. Then when you get done, go back to your office or tablet, or notepad and write down the questions, answers, date and name of the customer. It’s a simple solution, especially if you run a small establishment and need immediate feedback.

Survey – Have managers and supervisors talk to your customers and then document what they say. It can be casual and friendly like inquiring about the service and what they thought of the meal.

Survey – By having your best employees or managers doing the actual survey for you. These employees can become your best allies as they ask customers simple questions and get real time feedback. Make sure to set up a reward or incentive program for the employees so you receive the most accurate information and they look forward to doing the work.

Survey – Using social ignitors before, during and after the meal. These little gems can bring repeat business if you go about it the right way. Give your customer a free appetizer or drink or something of value that says you care. Even offer to deduct something from the existing bill if they fill out a survey card right there in the restaurant, go online by a certain time or simply answer a few questions if they are open to do this.

It’s a simple process to survey. Keep it that way and learn what your customers like to eat and provide great service. It’s not rocket science.

To your restaurant’s success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher

Secrets of The Tiny Store

PS – I have found that the email auto-responder can also be a great way to keep in touch with customers and do simple surveys just by asking a few questions at a time.

Best Email Software – Review

For any marketer who is building a list of subscribers or for the offline enterprise that is looking to attract new online leads and communicate with existing customers, email software is a critical component to the equation.

If you are new to the world of email marketing you might want to read through my post – What is an email auto-responder and also review a few of the other articles I’ve written about the topic of list building and email marketing.

Back in early 2010 I initially tested one other email auto-responder service and it was way to complicated even for my brother-in-law the computer expert, although I believe he could have dug in and figured it out.

I have also had experience with a few clients using one of the most popular email software programs which in itself is a pretty good program but doesn’t have all the bells and whistles.

So when it comes to the best email software I’m a little biased towards one company as I like simplicity, customer service and quick reference tutorials. In my expereince the best email software for the newbie and small business has been Aweber.

Aweber is a pretty robust, solid platform that has lots of features and is pretty simple to navigate. This along with their knowledge base and excellent customer service has made me a fan.

There’s also email software by Get Response. In my opinion their platform is a little more complex but still delivers and many top marketers continue to use their services.

There are other email software programs like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Infusionsoft and iContact. Each one has it’s own features and benefits, but when it comes down to a robust auto-responder and lead capture solution, I believe Aweber takes the cake.

From list management and settings to web form creation and installation – once you learn the software it’s pretty easy to manage and update.

Like any new software, it takes time to learn the ins and outs. Email software is no different.  But know this – if I can do it and learn how to use this software, so can you.

The best email software for small business is software that works and gets the job done with the least amount of headaches and stress.

So when it comes to email marketing campaigns and the ability to execute and manage these you need a simple solution and for small business I believe Aweber is a solid fit.

To your list building success,

Dave Krygier
Publisher