Last Minute Holiday Marketing
Any operator worth his or her salt already has a holiday marketing plan up and running. Hopefully you’ll keep pulling in the profits you anticipated. But, are there any last-minute opportunities that may have been overlooked during the busy holiday rush? Here are some ideas that may add a few dollars to your bottom line.
Christmas:
- Book office parties for small to medium offices with staff between 10-20. Most large companies book their holiday parties six months out, but smaller offices often wait till the last minute. Start your marketing efforts by talking to your regulars and V.I.P’s.
- Give companies an incentive to come in on a light traffic night. You may be booked up Thursday through Sunday, and still have openings the rest of the week. Run a promotion for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday offering 10% off a meal or perhaps complimentary wine with dinner.
- Market to you local area — lofts, condominiums and apartments present great opportunities. Contact the activity coordinator and offer your restaurant’s services to host the building holiday party. Consider offering free appetizers to sweeten the deal.
- Never overlook telephone marketing. Train hosts and hostesses to mention your party services when answering the phone.
- Make sure you call and confirm reservations. A no-show can throw a kink in your schedule. It’s better to find out about it early — and fill that spot with another reservation.
New Years:
- Offer a complimentary split of champagne to those who make reservations before 6:00 or after 9:30 New Year’s Eve evening. If you’re feeling generous, offer all your guests that complimentary split of champagne.
- Train hosts and hostesses to mention New Year’s Reservations when answering the phone and talking with guests who are dining throughout December.
- Provide party favors for your guests so that they stay at the bar after dinner to bring in the New Year with you.
- Make sure you call and confirm reservations. If you’ve overbooked, start a wait list to fill any cancellations.
Have a happy, safe and profitable holiday season. One last word, don’t let anyone drink and drive. It’s money well spent to offer free cab fare to any guests who shouldn’t be driving or would just like to take you up on your offer.
Plan Ahead for Holiday Marketing Success
We all know that the holidays are coming, so why does it seem to surprise us when they’re suddenly “here” each year? Because like any shopper who’s found himself in the mall on Christmas Eve, the immediacy of the moment tends to take precedence over pre-planning.
But this year, why don’t you make an early resolution to start planning – and marketing – your holiday restaurant promotions now… before you’re consumed with just getting through the next shift?
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Make the most of October. Forget Halloween. October is also National Wine Month, National Restaurant Month and the time for the World Series. Those “holidays” are perfect ways to create fun promotions that bring in new customers. Then, while they’re in your operation, be sure to train your servers to ask customers if they’re planning any holiday parties. Create materials that feature all of your holiday party services (catering for the corporate lunch, banquet facilities, family gatherings, etc.) and train servers how to present the materials and seal the deal (“You’ll need to reserve your date as soon as possible. Should I have our catering director call you on Monday?”). Then, motivate servers to fit this sales dialogue into their everyday routine by rewarding them with cash incentives for each event that closes or even for every lead they generate.
- Start the holiday season sooner. Many corporations are now planning holiday parties in January or February when they can get lower prices and more availability after the holidays are over. Why not present your operation as a kickoff to the holiday season with pre-Thanksgiving holiday parties? Create marketing materials that present your operation as the perfect place to begin holiday celebrations and stress parties may be more fun before we’re all hit with the “holiday have-to’s.”
- Remember that celebrators like to splurge. When you plan your holiday promotions, include specialty items each week that will boost add-on sales. Be sure you’re stocked with enough items and that you’ve created internal marketing materials to assist your servers. Then, run weekly contests with your servers and see how many “go ahead… it’s the holidays!” sales your team can inspire.
Marketing Tip: Co-Branding Menu Items
Would Starbucks coffee ice cream add to your dessert list? Would Billy Bob’s local barbeque sauce boost the sales of your ribs? Would an Oreo crust make your cheesecake sound more appealing? Many restaurant managers find that co-branding menu items leads to increased sales and stronger and more beneficial relationships between suppliers. Customers have an increased awareness of your product and may be more likely to try new items.
Before you meet with suppliers to brainstorm product uses—and to find out legal requirements for including product names on your menu and in your recipes—meet with your chef, food and beverage managers and other core employees. Pull up sales reports and look at menu items that fail to get selected. Then, brainstorm products that might improve the sales on these items or replace them with new items.
After you’ve decided to co-brand (or multi-brand), be sure to ask suppliers about marketing assistance. Many will provide signage and other marketing tools to bump sales for these products.
Back to School: Make Sales This Season
Some parents will celebrate – and some will cry – but all will prepare for the back-to -school season. Here are a few ideas that will help you maximize sales in your operation as the summer comes to an end:
- Hit the ground running. The start of a new school year is a positive and important milestone for any student. Run a promotion where you invite customers to “start the year right” with a celebratory dinner at your restaurant. Offer catering discounts or free appetizers to large parties.
- Go local. If you have a college near you, market to parents a “Feed Me” fund. For the punch card of ten paid meals (courtesy of Mom and Dad), you provide one free. You’ll gain new customers – and their friends – while easing Mom’s worry that junior will eat right while he’s gone. Market to these parents by purchasing a mailing list (often available at universities) or contacting the school’s promotions department. Often there are opportunities to insert ads in outgoing materials or sponsor (and even cater!) parent-student orientation events.
- Be kind. Back to school supplies are a drain on many parents’ budgets. Offer discounts — free appetizer or drink or 25 percent off the entire check — for parents or students who bring in the receipts for their school supplies.
- Set up signage. Promote your business at colleges and universities near you as well as high schools. Offer job interviews and lunch discounts. You’ll attract new customers – and they may become regulars if they’re new to town – and you may even gain new employees.
Restaurant Marketing Success Comes as a One-Two Punch
The mistake many restaurant managers make is to view a particular promotion as an end in itself. Effective restaurant marketing, however, isn’t a one-shot deal. Think of a one-two combination of punches in boxing when developing your restaurant marketing strategies. Don’t be satisfied with just getting guests inside your restaurant. You have to sell them something while they’re there — and do it in a way that enhances their experience. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Waitstaff training on add-on sales and upselling are key components of generating “One-Two Traffic.” In a restaurant environment, it’s important to train front-of-the house employees, especially greeters, servers and bartenders, to suggest appetizers to go along with the beverage orders, upgrade cocktail orders to include premium spirits, and recommend extras that complement entrees. Also called suggestive selling, the practice is perceived by guests as attentive and better service. Remember: If customers don’t know the special deals you offer, they can’t participate.
- When adding on and upselling, salespeople should always be polite, not pushy. Their goal isn’t to clean out the wallets and purses of customers. It’s to enhance the perceived quality of their purchase, whether it’s sautéed mushrooms on a strip steak or, in a retail-furniture outlet, matching brass lamps to go along with the end tables.
- It’s better to execute a mediocre idea properly than to botch a promising idea. To get the most out of your servers and bartenders, you have to train them daily, especially in areas that support your marketing endeavors.
- Once you’ve attracted new customers and trained your staff to maximize its service and sales potential, consider using bouncebacks to generate repeat business. Bouncebacks are promotional offerings that are good the next time guests come in. Make them compelling and create a sense of urgency to redeem by making them good for only a short time.
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New Spin on Value Cards to Market Your Restaurant
The most expensive thing in a restaurant is an empty chair. To spread the word about your restaurant and increase restaurant staff morale at the same time, consider the Value Cards contest. It’s easy!
- Print up Value Cards that entitle the bearer to savings in your bar or restaurant. Include an expiration date and place for an employee signature. The cards can be buy-one-get-one offers, offers for a free dessert or appetizer, invitations to a special event, or whatever works for you.
- Distribute an equal amount of cards to your staff members and encourage them to hand them out to friends, family, and anyone except people they know are current customers.
- Run a contest based on the most cards redeemed over a certain period of time. Take it to a higher level by tracking guest check averages when the cards are redeemed and awarding prizes based on those numbers, too.
- Give this promotion an e-spin by creating an electronic version of the value card that staff members can customize with their names and send to their contacts via email or Facebook. Let it go viral, and see what happens!
Want more ideas to train your waitstaff with rewards programs, build staff morale, increase check averages, and improve service? We have an easy-to-implement idea for every week of the year. Check it out!
Quick Marketing Idea: A Reward that Pays You Back
At a recent blood drive, a donor received a coupon for a half-price admission to a theme park, a certificate for 20 percent off at a grocery store and a punch card that promised a free meal after five blood donations. The donor was only hoping for the cookie and juice (and maybe a thank you).
Many of the traveling buses that park outside churches, businesses and fairs are open to ways that they can add benefits to those who give blood. These blood drives see thousands of people and your “gifts” create goodwill while generating new (or at least repeat) business.
So what can you do? Call the marketing department of your local blood bank and offer coupons for free side items, like fries, a bagel or a soft drink. Print special flyers that acknowledge their donation and when customers redeem them, train team members to acknowledge their “gift of life.”
Once you have new customers from the blood drive come in, make sure you treat them like royalty and convert them into to regular customers. For ideas on how to improve service and guest loyalty, give your training program a boost with our special Service That Sells! offer. Save $167! Click for details.
Customer Contests: Wanna be a Winner?
Summer is the perfect time to host a contest in your operation that’s sure to get people talking… and visiting your operation!
- Poetry contest: Ask kids and other writer wannabes to write a review of your restaurant or a specialty menu item in the format of a poem. “Publish” the winner on your website, in your next ad campaign, or in an updated menu. For musically-inclined guests, ask participants to write and perform a jingle for your restaurant and run the winner on air or post it to your YouTube channel.
- Eating contest: Instead of encouraging diners to turn themselves into gluttons, ask them to “name that dish” and blindfold contestants. Or ask all guests to name the top three ingredients in a dish they ordered.
- Recipe contest: Involve at-home chefs to enter their own recipes. The winners have their items placed on your menu, complete with their name and bragging rights!
When running a contest, remember that the prize has to be as fun as the contest. Here are some ideas:
- Eat free for a year (or once a month for a year)
- Private party for 20 (in your operation, of course)
- Entertainment package – Partner with your suppliers as well as local manufacturers or nearby businesses for trade ideas or ways they can join in on the contest. Be open to all ideas, but remember the better the prize, the greater the participation.
For any contest that you run, be sure to keep the entry forms and turn those names and addresses into a valuable e-mail and mailing list for your next promotion.
Want more strategies to build your base of repeat customers? Click to learn more.
Great Marketing Can Kill a Bad Business
Far too many companies spend millions of dollars marketing an inferior product and average service. But if you promote a dud, guess what? More people will know it’s a dud. Great marketing (“We’re committed to excellence!”) can kill a bad business! (“Sorry, not my section.”)
Marketing campaigns are important, of course, but they can backfire if your staff isn’t trained to provide exemplary service. And, even if your staff is trained to provide great service, if they aren’t trained to sell effectively, your marketing ROI isn’t living up to its potential.
Once your restaurant is running at the desired levels of service, you can unleash the marketing beast. Until then, it makes no sense to attract more guests into a restaurant that doesn’t sizzle. In fact, many marketing ideas — clever ones, too — have bitten the dust because the service supporting them was merely average or OK. The best sequence? Fix the product, make it outstanding, then market it. You can call on numerous marketing strategies such as TV commercials, radio advertising, remotes, coupons in the local paper, newspaper advertising — even an “Under New Management” banner. These external methods, however, aren’t nearly as important as what you do internally to get guests to come back.
Based on Now That’s Service That Sells! The Art of Managing the Sizzle, sequel to the best-selling book in foodservice history, Service That Sells! Click the book titles to read excerpts and learn more.
Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Keys to a Profitable Happy Hour
Bar patrons everywhere look forward to sipping a cold one in a lively atmosphere as a wrap-up to their hectic work day. Everyone loves a good happy hour — except, usually, the bar or restaurant operator.
Competition has gotten fierce in the industry as operators have been forced to compete for those happy hour patrons, continually trying to offer a better deal than the operator next door. Of course you want your place to be “the place to be” after work. But as you lower prices to offer unbeatable deals, you have to wonder if the extra traffic makes up for the low margins.
Don’t worry. Your happy hour promotions can be as profitable as you want them to be. You’ll just need to train your staff to maximize their sales during that happy hour while providing a great experience so guests will want to stick around — or come back during regular hours. The key is to set realistic goals for your happy hour promotions. Don’t just arbitrarily lower prices to beat the competition. Offer specials that provide a server with an easy upsell opportunity. A lot of bar patrons have come to expect two-for-one drink specials. Train servers to attach an appetizer sale to the deal. For example, “You folks want the two-for-one draft deal? Great! Tonight we’re also offering a heaping plate of our Macho Nachos with our two-for-one drafts for just $6.95 more.”
Or offer regular drafts at “happy hour” price, but offer an upgrade to a large draft for just a dollar more. The same goes for well drinks: “Would you like to try Bombay in that Gin and Tonic? During happy hour it’s just an extra buck!”
Run server incentives to provide extra motivation. For example, reward a lotto ticket to the server who’s able to upgrade the most well-drink orders to premium brands or regular drafts to larges. Another effective way to maximize happy hour profits is to convince those guests to stick around for dinner, a game of pool or a big football game. Just train servers to engage customers in casual conversation and invite them to stick around.
Then reinforce your training by offering a five dollar bill to the server who’s able to convince the most happy hour patrons to stay for dinner. Just have bar servers count the cocktail-order tabs that they turn over to servers in the dining room.
Excerpted from Pour It On: 52 Ways to Maximize Your Bar Profits. This innovative book is part of the 52 Ways series of restaurant management books that offer one idea a week to increase profits, improve staff morale, reduce turnover, and make more money! Buy four 52 Ways books, get one free!
