Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So how do you get more butts in seats? We do that through marketing. When it comes to marketing restaurants, there are really only three channels. That's it. Just three channels that I want you to focus on. Of course, there are lots of other things we can do, lots of tools, lots of tactics. But if you're not doing these three, then you forget about all of them. What are those three? That's what this video is all about.
There's an old saying that goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown.
This is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast with answers for anyone who's looking.
Hey, everyone, My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a podcast dedicated solely to helping you build a more profitable restaurant. We cover everything from marketing to operations, whole bunch in between. Each week, I leverage my 20 plus years in the industry to help you build that more profitable and more sustainable business. I also work directly with owners and operators all over the world through my P3 mastermind program. We gather restaurant owners on a call for two hours every single week for a year. People join this program for a year, and we make a profound impact in their businesses. If you struggle to generate consistent, predictable 20% profits, if you were taught that 20% is. Is not possible, I am here to tell you you're absolutely wrong. And I want to show you how you can target consistent, predictable returns every single month. To get started, set up a free call with me or someone from my team. Visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule set up a free call. We'll learn more about you and your restaurant. You'll learn more about the program to see if you're a good fit for that program. There's absolutely no pressure to join, but just set up that call so we can get to know each other again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com schedul as always, that link is in the show notes.
Avi, you love to go out to eat. So, as a guest, what's your biggest pet peeve when you're trying to choose a place to eat?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, as the father of two children, I can't leave the house for less than $30 an hour. My wife has celiac. So when we're going to make a. A dining decision, I live and die by that menu. I'm in there researching what's available. What can my wife eat? What can we share? What do I get to eat off of her plate? Um, and so that menu is Just a crucial part of all decision making for me as a consumer. It's why at Marquee, we focus so much on our menus, our menu integration, so that as operators, your menu that lives in your point of sale that you want customers to see is available and up to date everywhere.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: To learn more about Marquee, go to marquee.com m a r q I I.com to learn more about this and all of the incredible features they have.
Okay, let's talk about the three marketing channels that actually move the needle. Before we do that, let's first talk about the marketing channels that don't move the needle. Let's talk about why most restaurant marketing doesn't work. What happens is, and I want to talk about this really, really quickly, what happens most of the time is somebody says, oh, are you on TikTok? Oh, well, you got to be on TikTok. Oh, are you sending emails? Oh, do you have a loyalty program? Oh, are you sending texts? Oh, are you doing this or that or the other thing? Right. Direct mailers and table tents and on and on and on. There are obvious lots of ways that we can and will market our restaurants to prospective diners. But without a plan, without a strategy, without focus, then all of them fall flat because we don't measure them. We're going to talk a lot about measurement over the course of this video, but we just do stuff because people tell us to do stuff, and then we don't do it regularly. So consistency is key with whatever you're doing and the three things that I'm going to give you today, you must have consistency. But most restaurant marketing falls short because it's a spray and pray approach. You're doing stuff that you heard about, you saw at some trade show, you watched on some YouTube video. Your friend down the street told you, whatever it is, this guy on this YouTube channel is going to tell you to just focus on these three. Cool. That's why they fall flat. You want to know what these three are? Okay, here we go. Number one, the number one marketing channel available to independent restaurant owners is. Is Google. So Google is where people go to find things, right? Google is famously a landing page with a search bar. You put words in the search bar, you click search, right? So Google is where people go to look for things. So it would be a good idea if you were found by the people who were looking for places like you. If you got great wings. If someone writes in great wings near me, man, they better find you. So how do we do it? The Way we do it, we look at what the pros do, what the big boys do do, right? What do the big boys do? They pay to be in the pole position. Paid Google search ads are the lowest, lowest investment, highest impact task you can do. In fact, something I tell all my clients over and over is Google money should be the first marketing dollars you spend before you do anything else. Before radio, before print, before direct mailers, before meta, before anything, the first thing you do is spend money on Google search ads. Now you can run performance max ads, display ads, all kinds of them. I actually don't care about any of that.
All I care about is you run Google search ads. If you don't know how to do it, Google it, find somebody who can walk you through it or look for another video. I'll put that up soon. So I show you actually how to step through it. But the number one, the biggest ROI you will spend is on Google search ads so that you land above the three pack or the map pack. You don't know what that is. Google it.
Local search is super important. The map pack, the three pack is crucial. Paid search is even more important because you pop all the way to the top, you go ahead of everybody else. And if you are in whatever city you're sitting in right now and you type in best seafood near me, best steakhouse in Austin, best barbecue in San Francisco, whatever you want to type in, I promise you, 99% of the markets, you have no competitors. There's nobody running Google search ads. Nobody's fighting, lobbying, or paying for that poll position. So the number $1 that you spend, the first money you spend should be on Google search ads so that you own the top of the page. Look at Nike, look at Apple, look at Canon, look at any of the big brands they pay to be in that top spot. And guess what? They wouldn't pay for it if it didn't work. I promise you, it very much does work when restaurants do this. The metric you're going to track. We talked a lot about measurement. The metric you're going to track are cost per click cpc. You should be below a dollar and ideally you get below 50 cents. Now what you're going to do is when you start running your ad, Google is going to scrape your website and say, hey, we scraped your website. We would recommend, or we're guessing that you'd want to target these 50 keywords. Here's the beauty of it. You can take out ones that you think aren't helpful and you can add your own in Google is trying to help you. They're trying to get you like half of the way there. So what you do is you do that, you pick 30, 40, 50 keywords and then you run it for a month and you check. And as long as your CPC is under a dollar and ideally under 50 cents, life is good. The idea says, hey, would you be willing to spend 41 cents to send someone to your website? Yep, as long as your website is optimized, as long as it's very clear what people are supposed to do when they get there, then yes, I want to send traffic there all day long. And restaurants are really bad about spending money on Google search ads. So right now you can pretty much own your keyword. Steakhouse, seafood, tacos, pancakes, whatever it is, you could probably own your keyword in your market. Best pancakes in Newark, Delaware. You will own it, you will win it. Wherever you are, whatever your concept is, run ads, Google search ads for that. It's the number one thing you can do. Positive ROI for your business. Number two, you want to dial in your email marketing, right? Number one metric you can measure that you should be measuring that smart marketers measure when it comes to marketing. Any company, but especially restaurants, are net new subscribers. How many email addresses are you adding to your list? If you just focused on this and sending consistent emails once a week, you will change the game. So if Google search ads are an acquisition tool, right? How do we acquire new customers, get people to discover us, then? Email is a retention tool. They work hand in hand, right? Let's talk about net new subscribers. Let's talk about how we capture new email addresses. If you take reservations, your reservation system is automatically capturing email addresses for you behind your back without you having to do anything special to do it. Congratulations. If you take online orders, your online ordering platform on your website is collecting email addresses. Congratulations. Those are two capture points. You should have at least one capture point on your website, on a contact page, on a pop up or down in the footer, right? That's your third one. If you run any sort of loyalty, there's your fourth one, gated wifi. Right? So when you go to a hotel, when you go to Starbucks, when you go to the airport, they gate the wifi, meaning it's free, but you got to put in your email address. So yes, the wifi does not cost money, but we do charge for it. We charge one email address. Thank you very much. If you put those five things into place, place online ordering, reservations on the website, loyalty and a gated wi fi, you will be capturing hundreds and hundreds of email addresses every single month. That's how you grow your list. Now the second piece to running a really good consistent, well run email marketing strategy is to send regular communications once a week minimum. The more casual you are, the more you can send. Meaning Taco Bell and Sweet Green and McDonald's can send 3, 4, 5 emails every single week. Maybe the fine dining restaurant down the street can only send once a week or you know twice a week during the holiday season. You are going to commit to sending at least one a week more if you are casual. Remember the one to one to one principle. What does that mean? You send one email with one single message with one simple call to action.
One email, one message one call to action. This is an email about this. Here's information about this. Here's the button to click if you are interested in buying this and being a part of this. For us, a call to action is usually order now or reserve your table right? Some combination of those things, right? So when you send emails, focus on your net new subscribers, how many email addresses you're capturing every single month and make sure you're sending consistent emails. Do not send an email with six messages. You, you know now taking reservations for Christmas Eve. Also don't forget our holiday party room. Also here's where you click to buy gift cards and all of that. Nope, if you get all these things to talk about, you got a whole bunch of emails to send. One to one to one. One email, one message one call to action. Dial that in. That is a marketing channel that will show positive ROI almost immediately.
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All of those links will be in the show notes.
The last one I want to talk about is another retention tactic, but it's a four walls marketing technique. I believe we are remarkably bad at engaging with our customers every time they're in our when we talk about engagement, I want to specifically talk about targeting first timers. I think this is One area where we are particularly bad targeting first timers. Now how many times you've been out to a restaurant, server comes over and says, hi, how you doing? My name's Lucy, I'll be taking care of you. Have you guys dined with us before? And you're like, no, it's our first time here. And they're like, oh, amazing. Congrats. Great, thanks for, thanks for coming in. Listen, well, you're in great hands. I'm gonna take great care of you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's it, right? You say, yes, this is my first time here. And Lucy just gives you a bigger smile, you a warmer greeting, which is fine, Lucy should smile more and give you a warmer greeting. But what Lucy should also do is go over to the manager because there should be a system in place for first timers. We identify first timers. That's the beginning of the system, meaning we ask every single table, hi, my name is Chip, I'll be taking care of you. Welcome, Tell me, have you guys dined with us before? And they'll say, yes, we've been here before. And you say, oh my God, welcome back, so glad to have you. Or they'll say, no, it's actually our first time. And you'll see, amazing. Thanks for choosing us. You're in great hands. I'm going to point out some of our signatures. I'm also also going to point out some of my favorites, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to give you great service. And then the server, in this case me, Chip, will walk over to the manager and say, hey, table 10 is a first time diner. And then what happens is the next part of the playbook goes into motion. The manager finds the appropriate time. I found right after the order's taken, before appetizers hit the table, we've got the biggest lull in the meal there and it's the most, most reliable amount of time that we can count on. So manager comes over and says, hi, I'm so sorry to interrupt the conversation, my name's Chip, I'm one of the manager and I just want to come over, introduce myself and welcome you. I understand this is your first time here, is that true? And they're going to say, yeah, it is because the server already told you it was true. So they say, yeah, it is. And then the manager is going to ask a couple of meaningful questions. This entire interaction will take anywhere between 30 and 45 seconds. So I'm not trying to annoy them, I'm just trying to ask A couple questions. So can I ask you a quick question? What made you choose us tonight? How did you hear about us? Are you new to the area? Are you just visiting the area? Do you live here?
Any combination of those will tell you something about your marketing, right? Oh, we saw your ad here. Oh, our friends Susie and John told us about you. Oh, whatever they tell you, you learn what of your marketing works. And when you do this to every single new table in the restaurant, which by the way, if you do the Math, it's about 40% of your nightly diners are first time diners. Crazy, right? 40% of your first time diet, 40% of your nightly reservation book are first time diners. So at scale, if you got a hundred seat restaurant, right? 40 people in the first seating, 40 people in the second seating, that's a meaningful amount of people. This scales pretty quickly. So you identify the first timers. Manager comes over, introduces himself, apologizes for interrupting, asks a couple of questions, and then at the end of the conversation, it's a great, amazing. Next time John and Susie are in, we'll have to thank them for spreading the good word about us. Listen, real quick before I go, I wanted to leave you with this. Now, this can be a postcard, a business card, a poker chip, something, right? And you say if you bring this back, this is good for anytime in the next 30 days. This gives you a free round of drinks, this gives you a free dessert. This gives you $20 off your next meal, whatever it is you say, you bring this back, my name's on the back. I signed it. I signed today's date. Bring it back, no questions asked, we'll give you $20 off or a free round of drinks or a free dessert, whatever it is you choose to give out. But when you. Again, when you scale this and you ask every single table if they're new and you send a manager over to every single first time diner and you give every single one of them these things, these things will start coming back. It is the number one thing identifying first timers, obviously making sure they have an exceptional experience, but then giving them something that would get them back. Now, this sounds like full service. It only works for full service, right? Wrong. Same thing. Somebody walks into a Chipotle, somebody walks into a sweetgreen, right? Hi, how you doing? Is this your first time here? Because you could tell when somebody's looking at the board like it's their first time. So when they look up at the board and they're trying to figure out what they want. Hi, how you doing today? Do you know what you want or have you been here before? You can say that in a personable way. And when they say, no, I've actually never been here, what's good, you guide them through the menu, help them pick really good stuff. And then again, either on their tray or in their bag, you say, hey, sir, I'm just gonna put this card in here. Read it later. But it gives you $5 off next time you visit. It's valid anytime in the next 30 days. We look forward to welcoming you back. Basically, I'm asking you to put something in their hands. Put something in the guest's hands that will get them back. You do that and your business will change. Those are the three things. Now, the last piece to this, what I said was the successful part of it, or how to measure success, is that you actually have to track this stuff. So you have to know, right? With Google, you've got to be measuring your spend. You got to see how many people you got to go to your website, you got to look at your cost per click. You got to see how many orders then came from that link, right? That's how you measure it. The second piece to it is on your email. You want to measure your open rates, you want to measure your click rates, and you want to measure your unsubscribes. I promise you, the thing I hear all the time is I don't send emails because I don't want people to unsubscribe. I don't want to annoy them. But you've basically unsubscribed them anyway because you're not emailing them at all or hardly ever. As long as your unsubscribe rate doesn't go above 2%, which when you look at it, you're going to see, it's like 0.1 or, or 0.2% of your list unsubscribes. But most of those people are just unsubscribing because they moved away or because now they're vegetarians and they're not gonna eat your food or whatever it is now. They're on a diet. They can't eat the junky burgers. Junky burgers are great, but I can't eat them anymore, right? Most of the unsubscribes are for totally natural reasons. They won't be or can't be a customer of yours anymore, so don't worry about that. But we still measure it. Measure the unsubscribes, measure the open rates. And measure the click rates and see if they go up as you bring more consistency to your and then the last thing, those first time diners, those bounce back cards, measure how many of those go out every week. Measure how many of them come back every week. That's how you will know. And here's the beauty of that last one is that it cost you $0. Same thing with an email. By the way, sending out another E blast to your list costs basically $0, right? Google has cost the $5 a day I'm gonna recommend, right? Which is. That's what it is. $5 a day will make a huge difference. And when it works, you can push it up a little bit, but you're never going to go above like 20 or 30 bucks a day. You just don't need it. Most small businesses don't need that. So big Olive Garden, Applebee's a giant hard rock, maybe more. Not you guys. So run your Google search ads. 5 to $10 a day. Start it off at $5 a day and get the numbers right. Your email marketing, get your five capture points. Make sure you're growing your list to make sure you're sending at least minimum one email every single week. And then those bounce back cards identify the first timers, then jam something in their hands that will get them back. That's it. You guys. My name is Chip Close. I'm the founder and CEO of Restaurant Strategy. If you want to learn more about how to work with me, go click in the comments in the captions. You can learn about how to do that. Appreciate you. Go check out other videos.
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