Restaurant Marketing
on Steroids by Jon Orana Photo by Vangelis Thomaidis
Restaurant Marketing on Steroids Restaurant Marketing on Steroids An information product creators guide to writing and marketing so that people with problems will buy Copyright Š 2009 Jon Orana EffiStrat Inc. 3505-111 Tarawood Lane N.E., Calgary, AB Canada T3J0G9 http://www.RestaurantMarketingZone.com Notice of rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents Page Part I: Marketing Foundation Three Ways to Increase Sales
1
Objectives of Marketing The Purpose of a Good Customer Relationship
2
Building Relationships and Restaurant Marketing
3
Part II: Email Marketing: Restaurant Marketing on Steroids The Power of E-mail Marketing How to Use E-mail More Effectively Part III: How to Make Your Customers Beg to Be on Your List Part IV: The Most Powerful and Inexpensive Marketing Tool Ever
4 7 11
Part V: How to Write a Hypnotic E-mail The Advantages of Plain Text Messages Four Elements of an E-mail
13
How to Create a Hypnotic E-mail
14
How to Write an Attention-Grabbing Subject Line
15
How to Write an Opening That Makes People Want to Read the Rest of Your E-mail
19
How to Write a Powerful Body Copy
22
How to Write a Call to Action
25
Mistakes to Avoid In Email Marketing
30
About the Author
32
Marketing Foundation Hi, my name is Jon Orana. In this book, I will teach you how to increase your sales dramatically even with limited budget using my marketing techniques for restaurants. Now, before we proceed to the actual details on how you can possibly do that, and how to apply the techniques to your restaurant business, we need to have a solid foundation first on what marketing really is.
There are three ways to increase your sales: 1.
Acquire new customers. New customers mean more money to your restaurant.
2.
Increase transaction value. Increasing transaction value means increasing the amount of money that your customer spends in your business. Here is an example of that: Whenever you go to McDonald’s, you will notice that the crew will always ask you if you would like to have a drink and fries on top of your order. If you are going to avail of the offer, you are increasing the transaction value of the business.
3.
Get more business. Basically, the more people visit your restaurant, the more people order through your catering business.You will make more money then. These really are pretty basic. However, whenever you do, or plan, any marketing strategy for your business, you should make sure that you will cover at least one of these three reasons.
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Marketing Foundation Objectives of Marketing Now, what is the goal of marketing? I believe there are different definitions or goals, depending on the business you are referring to. In my own opinion, the goal of marketing should be building good relationships with your prospects and customers. This is especially true in a business-to-consumer model like a restaurant, where you are directly serving and delivering your products or services. That should also be your goal whenever you apply or plan your marketing strategies.
The Purpose of a Good Customer Relationship A good relationship will increase your customer’s lifetime value. When we say customer lifetime value, this is actually referring to the business-to-business model. The value depends on your business, but you should know what the average is. For example, in my place, there is a nearby a pizza parlour. I would order at least $30 of pizza every month. In 12 months, we are spending about $360 in their shop. However, because of the business’s good relationship with me, my loyalty to them will remain not just for 12 months; it may go up to 24 or 36 months. I may then get to spend as much as $660. If they are going to stop building a good relationship with me or with their other customers, then I may stop within 12 months. Thus, they just make about $360 from me or from my household. Simply put, having a good relationship with your clients will increase the customer lifetime value--the more solid the foundation of the relationship is, the better. It also improves the rates of referral. This is pretty obvious. If I love your business, if I love your food, if we have a good relationship, then it is likely that I will refer you to my friends, my neighbours, and my family members. I will definitely talk about your food or your business.
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Marketing Foundation Having a good relationship gives you, the business owner, permission to continuously market to your customers and prospects. You can send brochures, flyers, e-mails, and other materials. This is actually related on how you can increase your sales. You can see here the connection between having good relationships and increasing your sales. The key here is follow-up. You cannot say you have a good relationship with someone if you do not have a continuous communication with him or her, am I right?
Building Relationships and Restaurant Marketing Restaurant marketing is really about building good relationships to your customers. You simply invest a small amount of money on marketing, and it gives you massive results. Well, let us face it, if you are a local independent restaurant owner, if you are a small business owner, you really have limited resources. Hence, you would like to maximize every cent on your marketing or advertising budget to give the highest return on your investment. In this book, I will outline to you how exactly you are going to do that. Note: Here is another thing that I really would like you to remember: money is in the list. Okay, what I mean is that the better your relationship is with your clients, the more you will increase your customer base. When you increase your customer base, you can make more money for your business.
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Email Marketing: Restaurant Marketing on Steroids The Power of E-mail Marketing The foundation of restaurant marketing on steroids is really e-mail marketing. You may have heard it. In fact, you may have already been applying it, but for some reason, you are not getting the results that you are expecting. There are a lot of benefits of using e-mail marketing. For one, it is cheap, simple, and effective. It will not cost you to send additional e-mail. This is in contrast with direct mail marketing. For every brochure or flyer you send to your customers, the more it will cost you. In e-mail marketing, it does not matter how many e-mails you send; the cost is the same. It is also simple. Well, who does not know how to use an e-mail in this generation, right? Moreover, it is still effective. Now, there are some people who are saying about lower response rates and other e-mail issues. Listen, if you do not know what you are going to do with e-mail marketing, then it will really be ineffective.
How to Use E-mail More Effectively Now, I will show you how you can maximize or use e-mail more effectively. I believe that as long as e-mail will remain as a communication tool, it will always be a marketing benefit to your business. If you only knew how you are going to use the e-mail, it will be very, very effective. On the average, 50% of your first-time customers will never buy from you again. Fifty percent. This is what I am talking about on the early part of the book; it is about the customer lifetime value. If you can lower that down to 40, 30, 20, even 10 percent, it will surely increase your sales. This is where e-mail marketing comes in. This is where the good relationship comes in. You would like to make your prospects to become customers, and you would like to turn your customers into a referral machine. Thus, you make the most amount of money for each customer who visits your restaurant.
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Email Marketing: Restaurant Marketing on Steroids Generally, restaurants have about 50 to 1,000 customers entering the establishments per day. Of course, the number may vary; it depends on how large your restaurant is (and, obviously, I have no idea how big your restaurant is). Let us do a simple math. For example, there are 50 people who visit your restaurant every day for 30 days. Out of 1,500, you captured 20% of the e-mail addresses. This will bring you 300 people to be added into your database or into your list. This also means that in just 60 days, you will have an estimate or average of 600 people on your list. Now, from 600 people, how much money can you expect if you are going to send a good offer? I would say you can make at least $500 to $2,500 for an e-mail offer. Again, the amount may vary. It depends, of course, on how much you charge your new customers; it also depends on how good your offer is. So you make sure you will have a good offer that people will really buy. Now, you may ask me, “Jon, how can you make some calculation on this?” or “How can you say they are going to buy the offer?” Here is the key: The 600 people in your database are not just anybodies. These are not just your prospects; these are proven buyers, which means they have tried you. They already know your business. They already like your business. They gave you permission to communicate to them, so you just have to build a relationship with them, month by month, for the next couple of years. These are the 600 people who took some time, visited your restaurant, tried your stuff, and bought from you. So these are proven buyers. This is the keyword here. They are buyers. So, going back to the previous line, a good e-mail marketing offer will make you $500 to $2,500. It is really not a far-fetched amount of money. This can really happen if you know how to effectively send an e-mail. I will give you the details on that later on. Now, another thing here is that you can send an e-mail like this every week without additional advertising costs. This is really restaurant marketing on steroids, guys. You can send the same or new offer to the same group of people every week, and you
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Email Marketing: Restaurant Marketing on Steroids will make the same amount of money without spending more on marketing. This is really powerful stuff. Let us say that we will just talk about the first two months. For the first 60 days, you have gathered 600 people. Imagine what would happen after 6 months, then 12 months. After 6 months, your buyer list grew to 1,800, and by 12 months, your buyer list grew by 3,600. Thus, after 12 months, you have a list of about 3,600 that can give you about $3,000 to $30,000 per e-mail offer. Again, you can send an offer to them every week. So just imagine the power of e-mail marketing. Again, after 12 months, your list grew, and every e-mail that you send will not cost you an additional amount of money for your marketing budget; it is a really powerful stuff.
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