Many Restaurateurs Hate "Marketing"

To find out where your customers live in your trading area, put up a map on the wall.

Ask guests to put a colored push pin into the map, indicating where they reside. In time you'll find out where your best customers live. Now you know how to reach them with either direct mail or a local newspaper (check the paper's circulation and/or the direct mail's intended zip or postal codes to ensure that you are reaching the 'right' targeted prospects).

By the way, while you are asking them to help you with that colored push pin, ask them to 'opt-in' (knowingly join) to your list of email addresses. This is a good way to build your emailing list.

Just using this simple method of having the guest put a colored push pin into the map generates valuable information.  If you track and log in this data, you can also find out who they are; where they live; how much they spend with you on average, how often they visit (hence, you could also calculate the approximate or relative 'lifetime value' of each customer).

The key thing is that you are building a picture of who, what, where, when, how, and why your customers patronize your restaurant. This will help you do this; and assist in developing and adding to your database for this purpose.  You'll get the answers to questions such as:

·      Who are my customers? (describe everything you know about them)

·      Where do they live, drive from, work, play?

·      When do they patronize me: time of day, day of the week?

·      How do they hear about me? How do they feel about my quality, service,             menu prices?

·       How often to they come to eat?

·      Why do they patronize me?  What are the things I do well or they like the best   that keep them coming back for more?

Many restaurateurs hate 'marketing.'

They see it as strong-arm tactics, or hard-selling, or pushing themselves on folks.  They refer to it as the 'M-word'.

That is not marketing. Nobody wants to be sold; but people love to buy. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for your guests to buy from you.

Start seeing that 'marketing your restaurant' is just as – if not more - important than the physical restaurant itself.

Without it, you won't need to worry about the restaurant anyway.