The great conundrum of advertising
In the long term, I need to increase sales by 10%. This, probably more than anything, occupies my thoughts at present. How to accomplish this? It seems a modest amount but… Well, I don’t know. It may be a Herculean task? I do see that there are two ways to accomplish this — more customers and/or higher average sales per customer.
I am told by many that the restaurant industry in Ottawa is a little bit depressed this year. I am hearing that many restaurants are down as much as 30% year over year. I cannot testify as to the veracity of this as I have no year over year numbers. But, I have heard this a lot. There are some restaurants seeing increases, of course. And there are many which are thriving. I do find myself hoping that September and October will be strong months for us. September-October 2013 were our best months by a large margin. I think it’s likely that these will be our best months most years – the weather is still nice and the local neighborhood folk are all back from holiday. But, this was when we opened and I am guessing that some of those initial sales were our honeymoon period.
All this to say, I should not be waiting for sales to increase on their own. They may. But, they may not. So… where to advertise?
After twenty years in radio – starting as a copywriter – I can safely say that I saw A LOT of money wasted on advertising. This is not because it was radio – I love radio and think it’s a great advertising vehicle. No, this is because not enough care and attention was given to the content and purpose of the advertising. For instance, using a mass media like radio to advertise a neighbourhood restaurant means that some percentage of your dollars are buying advertising to people who will likely never visit your shop. Advertising to listeners in Kemptville, for instance, will not be cost effective.
My instinct is that all my efforts should focus on the immediate neighbourhood in the form of flyers of some kind. Raise your peaks and not your valleys as the saying goes. Remind my neighbours that we are here and then take good care of them when they come. This is the focus. Now… to figure out how to accomplish this.
I agree with your concept of advertising locally - flyers or local newspaper. Provide an incentive for people to visit first time or again. Try offering a cheesecake free when a meal and beverage are purchased. Use this for flyer option only. Walk around the hood and drop off flyers and speak with your neighbors/customers.
You already have a good social media presence, so a neighbourhood campaign based on different media makes a lot of sense. A well designed flyer will raise awareness and could bring in customers who don’t know about you or who avoid you because they don’t know enough about what you offer or the hours you keep. If awareness is already there, then maybe something creative that brings people through the door is what’s called for. I hate to say “coupon”, because it’s done to death and offering discounts devalues your brand. Say you put a fork in everybody’s mailbox, and attach it to a flyer that explains why the Flying Banzini is the best place to use it, something along those lines to give people a chuckle and let them get the hint. Or a promotion that they get a free takeout box with every takeout order, because everybody knows that takeout boxes are free anyway (unless they don’t think it’s funny, in which case you’ve just offended a bunch of your neighbours). See, that’s why you’re in the restaurant business and I’m not! Anyway, I’m sure you will come up with something imaginative and effective. Just sleep on it.
I would think any type of promotion to get people from Tunney’s back into your restaurant after work could be a place to start. Whenever I have been in, it seems it is packed with them at lunch so although it is not such a captive audience in the evening, I am sure many of them have already had a good lunch experience so a gentle push may make them consider it as an option after work as well.