Unless you have a packed restaurant/club every night, you should always conduct some form of marketing. The nicest venues, in a high traffic area of town, serving the best dish and providing the best service still needs marketing. Something or someone has to tell more customers that you exist. Word of mouth is one of the best forms of marketing and cheapest but to rely on it alone is not wise. In retrospect, word of mouth can also be your Achilles’ heal when service is poor.
If marketing dollars are strictly based on a numbers game, let us look at it this way. One thousand flyers cost about $300. If all of them were passed out and 500 people look at it, and out of that 500, 200 people considered it useful information and from that, 50 people came at least once, the marketing cost would have most likely paid for itself. According to www.restaurant.org average sales 2006 for one customer on low end is $15 per visit. http://www.restaurant.org/pressroom/pressrelease.cfm?ID=1573
My analogy may not be very persuasive but when your restaurant/club initial start up investment is in the range of $75K-$500K; budgeting annually 2%-7% to drive your business may be just as important as what concept you choose.
Various Marketing tactics:
- Flyers
- Website/email newsletter
- Social networking sites
- Card members points
- Promotional events
- Partner vendors/purveyors
- Newspaper ads
- Radio spots
- TV commercials
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