March 12 - by Andreas Breitfuss
Restaurant Management Center
Today I wanted to share with you how to Develop a “Sure Step Marketing Plan”.
There are many building blocks to developing a successful hospitality business, and one of the most important and least understood building blocks is marketing and promotions. Developing successful marketing promotions that consistently achieve the desired results is no mean feat. Rather than just doing a bit here and a bit there, a marketing system has to be developed to target consumer’s point of view with powerful persuasion that just cannot be ignored. To achieve this you need to plan all your marketing efforts.
The first step involved in developing a successful marketing plan is finding your businesses’ Unique Sales Proposition. I told you about this step in the first Business Tip email no. 1, hopefully you have started on this already.
The second and most important step that is often overlooked is finding out your breakeven on your business operations. By this I mean finding out how many customers and how much revenue you need to ‘breakeven’. Your breakeven point is the point in which neither a profit or a loss occurs because revenue will exactly equal costs. This is a step which involves some further calculations on your fixed and variable costs of your business. From a current or yearly profit & loss statement of your business find, and add up all your fixed costs of your business. Your fixed costs will be those costs which you will pay regardless if you have 10 customers or 200 in your venue eg. rent, salary staff, electricity etc. Now find out your variable costs, your variable costs will be all of those costs which increase as your revenue increases your most prominent amounts will be your food and beverage costs. Once your breakeven amount is calculated your marketing must be planned based around the required amount of customers you need to frequent your venue to make a profit.
The third step is to plan all your marketing activities over a 12 month period, what this will do is enable to spend your marketing budget when it is most needed ie. Over the lower revenue periods. Work out over the 12 month period when your business down times are so you can plan to promote your business during these times.
The Fourth step is to target your market, 80% of your customers will come within a 5 km radius of your café or restaurant provided that you are not a final destination resort or in a remote location. Do some research into the demographics of your area, the demographics relates to the age, sex, income and population details of your market. This can provide you with valuable information on how to attract customers to your venue.
The sixth step involves using direct response marketing strategies to increase your revenue base. Direct response marketing refers to the marketing format which enables you to make a customer act to purchase your goods or services within a specific timeframe. Direct response marketing allows you to measure the profit and response ratio that the promotion generates. The three types of direct response marketing is:
Internal marketing
External marketing
Database marketing
When developing your promotion follow these important steps to ensure you get the best bang for your dollar.
1. Use a headline – capture your customer with a killer headline
2. Use words that sell – make an emotional angle to your customer
3. Layout your copy and body correctly
4. Make an offer – get your customer to act
5. Put a time limit on the promotion eg. 30 days
6. Ensure that you execute the promotion correctly
The final and probably the most important step is to test and measure the promotion, what I mean by this is measure every part of the promotion to gauge if the promotion has been successful or not. The measurement parameters include working out the total cost of the promotion to include printing, staffing and artwork costs. Measure the number of responses you receive from the promotion. How will you know if it has made you any money or not if you have not measured it? Work out the promotional cost per person and the net profit of the promotion.
Follow these simple steps when you are looking to do any type of marketing to ensure what you do is going to be the most efficient, effective and most profitable.
Source: Restaurant Marketing
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