Restaurant Marketing

When using the internet to market your restaurant, this tool will help quickly to check your on line

Restaurant Branding

brand and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) using the checklist provided below.

Objective of this Tool

This tool can be used as a final basic checklist to help you review your finished site to find or discover areas where you might improve and enhance the site. Following are the basic ideas. These are two focuses for the check lists. These are really act as a guide to build your future pages for your sites, and will be a tool to helpful in moving your business forward. This is also a great time to check the load speed using http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com/wso this tool also gives you some feedback and recommendations. The two checklists we are going to check is your Brand and On-Site SEO.

Your pages should load within 3 seconds yes the faster the better, but slower then 3 secs is definitely way to slow. www.truckeconomy.com is .08 seconds. However there is not much content of photos on the site. Follow the recommendations to help improve your site load speed. Remember you have 3 seconds to capture a customer you will lose them for sure if your site takes that long to load.

Branding and Brand Concept

Branding
• Check your unique position
• Do you have relevant page headings incorporating your best keywords for the page?
• Does your content incorporate your USP?
• Are your Headings (Headlines) incorporating H1,H2,H3 tags?
• Do your page Headings (title) incorporate your pages best keywords?
• Are you using Call to Actions on each page?

Site Usability
• Is the navigation bars down the left side or across the top, or both?
• Do you have a site map in the footer section on each page?

• Are your pages using the same layout from page to page?
• Is your theme and message easily identified from page to page?

Layout and Design

Screen Real Estate
• Have you optimized above the fold?

Scanabilaty
• Can the visitor easily scan the page for useful information / benefits / solutions

Readability
• Does your page title act as a headline to grab the visitors attention?
• Are you using an easily read Font Type?
• Is the Font Color a color and background that is easy on the eyes and easy to read, simple and

non distracting?
• Is there useful information USP?
• Spelling and Grammar seem obvious however most cases another set of eyes (have someone else read it) will help with identifying any possible errors

Graphics and Multi-Media
• Are the graphics small and fast loading?
• Are Graphics used where color and text would work?
• Is Multi media forced on the user? Or can it be controlled?

Links
• Are links the standard color and underlining
• Are there title tags for the links
• Are they easily found?

Cross Platform
• Does the Site look right in Internet Explorer / Firefox / Safari?

Professional
• Does the site look professionally built?
• Do people like the look and feel?

Search Engine Optimization Checklist
This List will help us to gain ground and is the foundation to increase our sites natural search engine rankings.

Keywords
• Number one Are your Keywords the best (search volume verses competition) for each Page?
• Are they displayed in your sites title tags? (minimum of 6 maximum of 10)

Homepage
• Your Homepage should be focused on the two to three most important phrases you want your

page to be found for
• Sub-pages should be targeted on the rest of your relevant phrases
• Do not try and pack every site keyword into your homepage
• Does the pages use friendly urls? i.e. www.truckeconomy.com/truck_fuel_economy.html

Meta Data
• Is your page optimized Using title tags that incorporates your best page keywords incorporated into the meta section of the site?
• Are your title tags approx 6 to 10 words long? (the title tag is the most important part of the site form the search engines point of view)
• Have your maximized your Meta Tag sections with relevant keywords used in the page content headlines?
• Is your page content full of relevant keywords
• Do you have at least 100 words of content per page
• Is the content readable useful information not just a list of keywords (some directories will not allow pages that are just a list of keywords
• Does each and every keyword on each page have alt least one link to another page?

Page Content Guidelines

Four Concepts to keep in mind
• Keyword Prominence; The best area of the page to place your keywords is at:
*As close to the top of the page or the start of a sentence the better.
*Also at the bottom of the page linked to other pages (footer navigation)

• Keyword Proximity; Some search engines use the concept of keyword proximity or how close your keywords are to each other, the key is to ensure readability. (Resist the desire to saturate with keywords just for the sake of having keywords in the content)

• Keyword Density; (weighting) measures the relationship of keywords to the total amount of text on the page. The higher the better to a point. The recommended density is 3%-7%. (3-7 for every 100 words of content) For each keyword you are wanting the page optimized for.
• Keyword Frequency; is related to density which means that the search engines want to see the keyword phrase at least 3 to ensure it was not an isolated case of repetition which also ties into the minimum of 100 words of content per page. (On page Optimization Content is King)

Navigation
• Make sure there at least two forms of navigation on each page
• At least a set of internal links that are text based and not graphic based

Site, Site map
• Create a site, Site Map for your entire web site
• There should be links to every major page within your site.
• Incorporate a short description next to the name of each page with hyperlinks for key phrases in the description
FAQ page
• This is a great way to add additional content and links from the category page key phrases.

Contact Page
• Essential to link page call to actions to the contact us page should be optimized and incorporate content and gratitude to the visitor for visiting your site using action words to capture emails for future campaigns

Google Site Map
• Essential to tell the search engines which pages to index when spidered
• This is different from a Site, Site Map. This is code that you get from your google webmaster tools if site builder does not offer the code

Google Analytics
• Essential to track traffic and visitors

Wrap Up
Using a final Check list will help to reduce errors for each page of the site
• Check to see if you are communicating your brand
• Check to see if your site is set up for the search engines

Creating Raving Fans

“A Raving Fan, Means That Your Business Owns That Customer”…

..that customer will not buy from any of your competitors. This book like other Ken Blanchard classics is written in a story form Mr. Blanchard also uses several real businesses examples that have actually created real raving fans. If these companies have created raving fans then it must be possible right? In 22 years working the restaurant industry sometimes it seemed it was all I could do to manage the ranting fans let alone feeling that any effort applied to the corporate management program of the month would be successful. I was confident that it surely would be forgotten within the next couple of months. Then we could just get back to business as usual. I’ll admit ranting is sometimes much more fun then raving, however how much nicer would your work environment be if we all heard a few more raves throughout the day from our employees and customers?

Employees well honestly this truly was the reason that drew me to building e-commerce businesses. The fact that you are in total control, you decide how you operate your business, who you do business with and what you get in return from your customers.

The main point that Mr. Blanchard makes in the creation of Raving Fans

“…That customer satisfaction is not enough, actual service is so bad in our society that people expect mediocrity.”

For instance in my former industry guests have come to expect a non-attentive hostess, a sign that says please wait to be seated, food that is served warm and bathrooms that are dirty. Sounds like your favorite restaurant? What would you change if you owned your favorite restaurant? What kind of experience do you want to create for your customers that visit your web site? Yes you are in control

When you own your own business you control your thoughts and behaviors, you do not need to work with employees that may have negative attitudes, attitudes such as these I am to busy, that is not my job, that is not my section. Mr. Blanchard expands upon this concept when he wrote this customers only comeback because their expectations are so low, not because they are satisfied with your product or service.” We assume they are satisfied because they do not complain. Most people hate confrontation, they will just not come back. These theories have been preached for years from all of the gurus, yet the level of service continues on its steady decline. No, I do not have studies of customer satisfaction I have my own over observant self to notice these trends.

Creating a raving fan is a multi-step process…

Creating raving fans requires 3 steps.

1. First you have to identify what you want to create and

2. then model your vision for your business

3. Then implement your vision in 1% increments

Yes that means you need to set goals for your business, then and only then can you create the business of your dreams. The second secret is to create a vision of perfection centered on the customer. Sounds like a no-brainer however finding out what each and every customer needs and wants is not so easy, once identified then begin to deliver that raving fan service. Third is the rule of 1%. That means you improve 1% at a time until you create raving fan service. Then go 1% beyond that service.

All successful businesses offline and online have three things in common

1. .systems,

2. accountabilities,

3. 3.training/continuous education.

The systems are the guidelines for the basic required service standard that is acceptable to create raving fan service. The accountabilities are how you inspect what you expect, the training is just that, relevant focused, targeted. It is necessary to apply the other two requirements.

Ken Blanchard also identifies two very important barriers to creating Raving Fans. These barriers I have witnesses not only in a corporate environment but also surprisingly in small mom and pop business. They are relevant to your ecommerce business, if you have employees, and act as a great reminder for managing the growth of your business.

The first barrier is described in this quote from Ken Blanchard

“most customer service hopes have been wrecked on the rigid shoes of immobile bureaucratic minds with in the corporate structure.”

This means the new CFO, COO, Vice President, or who ever the company just hired has to justify his high rate of pay. Thus 86ing most start up efforts based upon short term maximum bottom line improvement. Yes the customer gets shorted for the sake of the investor/owner. This sounds logical and is normal management philosophy right. I myself have been there done that. I applied the same justification and strategy to fixing broken restaurants. Yes this philosophy does create a conflict between doing what is necessary to create raving fans and the short term return on investment for the share holder. Again making the case for beginning and running your own ecommerce business eliminates the levels of managers that would kill you ideas. By eliminating these barriers you will have more opportunity to find and create more raving fans. However if you decide to contiue on with the crazy life of restaurant owner then remember this advice. Successful restaurants implemt the three step restaurant training program.

Train From the Start

Train Often

Train Always

Creating your brand is creating your identity for your business. Who are you are in the marketplace?

Restaurant Branding

First and foremost you need to know what you are promising to your customers. To do this you need to Create your brand and message. We do this through a series of steps.

1. SWOT Analysis
2. USP
3. USP Analysis

These are the first three steps we are going to address in creating a brand.

SWOT Analysis

What it is:A simple system for identifying a company’s strategic growth opportunities in the marketplace: also suggests strategies to increase competitive advantage.
Where it comes from: The 1969 book Business Policy, Text and Cases by Edmund P. Learned and others (Irwin).
Summary:
An organization conducting a SWOT analysis will list its:

1. Internal factors, such as proprietary brands, company culture, distribution systems, exclusive access to natural resources, image, market share, patents, and personnel. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are strengths and which are weaknesses.

2. External factors, such as competitors, economic trends, partners, regulatory concerns and suppliers. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are Opportunities and which are Threats.

Analysts then create separate lists for each of the SWOT categories (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and compare them to uncover strategic insights. Example: Could a sagging brand image (a weakness) be reduced by a strong marketing department (a strength)? Your opportunities are then backed by your keyword research! Your keyword research helps identify the high demand, low competition phrases that position our business idea not only into the niche but also helps us to identify and move our brand into its future position.
What else you need to know:

SWOT’s usefulness depends on management creativity and vision. Example: A new technology might look like a threat in the hands of a competitor, but become an opportunity when you get the rights to use it.

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

What it does:
Defines what makes an organization’s products successful in the marketplace; also pinpoints the most effective way to market products to consumers.

Where it comes from:

The term USP was coined by the legendary advertising copywriter Rosser Reeves, who explained it in his 1961 book Reality in Advertising (Knopf, now out of print). Reeves was known as a no-nonsense advertising copywriter who rejected the notion, popular in the 1950s, that people bought products because of deeper Freudian needs. Reeves wrote, “If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail.”
Summary:
The USP is the unique trait or feature of a product that differentiates it from competing products. It is the one predominant thing about a product that causes a consumer to choose that product over others.
USP’s are broken down into 3 parts
• Features
• Benefits
• Solutions

A great example of this is the Energy Star web site under Home Improvement

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_index

The page is broken down into 3 sections
• What Energy star is solving
• The Benefits of the energy Star Program
• The Solutions that Energy Star offers

USP in Advertising

These are really Slogans or Taglines these are the result of going through the branding process
Domino Pizza’s “Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” No claims are made about the pizza being delicious. Speed of delivery is the USP.
Fedex’s “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” There is no talk about nice-looking trucks or careful handling of packages. Overnight delivery is the USP.
Because the concept of USP has become widely used and misunderstood in marketing circles, it is worth returning to the definition that Rosser Reeves first gave for it in Reality in Advertising:
- Each advertisement must say to each reader “Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.”
- The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique.
- The proposition must be so strong that it can “move the mass millions,” as Reeves put it. In other words, it must be unique enough to attract new customers to the product.
What else you need to know
It can be a worthwhile exercise to weigh your products and services against the USP concept. Does your product have some critical feature that differentiates it from all its competitors? If not, can you develop one and use it to drive your marketing and advertising? In short, do your products have one compelling feature that causes consumers to make an immediate buying decision?

Create your Brand (Identity) Then Tell the World!! (or at least your 3-5 mile radius)

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and

Feeling a bit Lost?

sells itself
Peter F. Drucker
The objective is to identify and break down the process of writing ad copy for your web presence and or other advertising campaigns. We are going to break the process down into 3 steps

Step 1 Create your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Step 2 Optimize your Content
Step 3 Convert to Ad Copy

When creating content for your web pages, or other advertising media you are not only writing content but you are also refining your brand and communicating it to your customer. The Content on your web site is actually written as Ad Copy (this is the type of writing specific to the advertising industry). The basic principle behind writing ad copy is to attract your customer’s attention and then persuade them to take action.

The foundation to writing ad copy is to first know your customer (Market Research) and second know your service (USP) Ad copy follows a structure that incorporates a headline to attract attention, text content that clarifies the facts and claims of the headline. Then a lead up to a natural call to action, in other words what do you precisely want your reader to do? Buy something sign up for an e-mail, etc. We are bombarded of with headlines and data on a daily basis from all types of media. Ultimately we have a lot of competition.

Step 1; Write your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
The Unique Selling Proposition (also Unique Selling Point) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company. Today the term is used in other fields or just casually to refer to any aspect of an object that differentiates it from similar objects.
Today, a number of businesses and corporations currently use USPs as a basis for their marketing campaigns.
In Reality in Advertising (Reeves 1961, pp. 46–48) Reeves laments that the U.S.P. is widely misunderstood and gives a precise definition in three parts:
1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”
2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.
“If the product does not meet some existing desire or need of the consumer, the advertising will ultimately fail”

Rosser Reeves

Your USP is broken down into 3 parts
• Feature (what are you solving for the customer, Identify their pain)
• Benefits of your product or service
• Solutions you offer for their problem or desire.

Step 2; Use your business USP for the home page and then optimize the content with the most relevant Keywords for the individual page.
•
Each page needs to have some text based content (between 200- 400 words) describing what you offer on that page.
• Make sure you utilize the keywords for that page.
• Use your BEST keywords (Title tags) in the opening, first few sentences including the headline using H1, H2, H3 this not only helps with the search engines but also grabs the attention of the customer searching for those words.
• The search engines look from top to bottom, left to right, therefore if you can bring them in at the top left (introduction) of each page, you will get better placement with the search engines.
• Make EACH keyword anchored text if the to the page that deals with that product, even if you’re linking to the same page you’re on.
• Incorporate the best keywords at a saturation rate of 3-7% for each keyword on that page (I usually shoot for 5% keyword density for each keyword phrase).

You can check keyword density at http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Keyword-Density-Analyzer.php . Then repeat the process using your business USP as a guide for all of your subpages.

Step 3; Convert the content to Ad copy using the AIDA model of writing ad copy.

The acronym AIDA is a handy tool for ensuring that your copy, or other writing, grabs attention. The acronym stands for:
• Attention (or Attract)
• Interest
• Desire
• Action.
These are the four steps you need to take your audience through if you want them to buy your product or visit your website and we need to do it in approximately 30 seconds.
1. Attention/Attract
In our media-filled world, you need to be quick and direct to grab people’s attention. Use powerful words, headlines or a picture that will catch the reader’s eye and make them stop and read what you have to say next. Remember you are fighting the backspace button as your biggest enemy.
2. Interest
Building interest is one of the most challenging stages: You’ve got the attention of a chunk of your target audience, but can you engage with them enough so that they’ll want to spend their precious time understanding your message in more detail? This means helping them to pick out the messages that are relevant to them quickly. So use bullets and subheadings, and break up the text to make your points stand out.
3. Desire
Interest and desire parts of AIDA go hand-in-hand: As you’re building the reader’s interest, you also need to help them understand how what you’re offering can help them in a real way. The main way of doing this is by appealing to their personal needs and wants. How? By communicating your business benefits and solutions that you offer

4. Action
Finally, be very clear about what action you want your readers to take; for example, the stock standard, “buy now”, “download now” “sign up now” etc. rather than just leaving people to work out what to do for themselves. We need to get them to where they want to go with in a few pages or our message is for not.

Review;
1. The 3 steps to writing ad copy begin with identifying who are in the marketplace. If you do not know your unique position, or who you are in the marketplace how can you communicate it?
2. The next step is then to take your USP and then optimize it. This process will then enable you to adjust your content specifically for each category page.
3. Then convert to Ad Copy, this means to ad optimized headlines and calls to action for each page.
4. Incorporate plenty of white space bullet pointed content and easy to skim and scan benefits for the reader to see quickly, painlessly, effortlessly.
Recommended Books
Content Rich “Writing Your Way to Wealth on The Internet” By Jon Wuebber
Words that Sell By Richard Bayan

Who are you? a song from a band in the 1960's, This however may be true it needs to be taken a bit more seriously. This question will help us identify our vision and is the first step in creating your brand or rebrand your current business. Before we can communicate (advertise) our business It makes sense to identify our business.  The SWOT analysis (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats) is really the first step in creating our Brand. This step (branding) is also one of the most overlooked aspects in creating a restaurant marketing plan / restaurant strategy. SWOT Analysis What it is: A simple system for identifying a company's strategic growth opportunities in the marketplace: also suggests strategies to increase competitive advantage. Its other names: TOWS Analysis; Strength/Weakness/Opportunities/Threats Analysis. Where it comes from: The 1969 book Business Policy, Text and Cases by Edmund P. Learned and others (Irwin). Summary: An organization conducting a SWOT analysis will list its: 1. Internal factors, such as proprietary brands, company culture, distribution systems, exclusive access to natural resources, image, market share, patents, and personnel. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are strengths and which are weaknesses. 2. External factors, such as competitors, economic trends, partners, regulatory concerns and suppliers. The analysts will then decide which of these factors are Opportunities and which are Threats. Analysts then create separate lists for each of the SWOT categories (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and compare them to uncover strategic insights. Example: Could a sagging brand image (a weakness) be reduced by a strong marketing department (a strength)? What else you need to know: SWOT's usefulness depends on management creativity and vision. Example: A new technology might look like a threat in the hands of a competitor, but become an opportunity when you get the rights to use it. If you do not know who you are how will you know what your customers need “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Peter F. Drucker

The movie Ratatouille was just released and as always My wife had to run out and buy it asap. No, I do not mind, these new Disney/Pixar movies are great to occupy my children’’s attention for sometimes days. Ok this got my attention also. I do recommend the movie it reminds us why we gravitated to the industry to

cheers factor Restaurant marketing

begin with. The story went through the regular I am an oddball of my clan scenario, (we know, this story line, we are all cut from this cloth). I don”t want to analyse the socio-economic position of the characters but lets just say they are close to the bottom of the food chain. Sound familiar? The movie does a nice job revealing the snobbery and stupidity of the so called up and coming elites in the business. This include the negative bullshit tossed around by these so-called critics. Just like sports writers that have never played the sports they criticize. The Hospitality Industry has seemingly gone to far from its roots. It seems it is no longer about the food, it is about the marketing, customer loyalty, butt’’s in seats, repeat visits, check averages, add-ons, up-selling, bounce back coupons, larger portions, unlimited refills of flavored sugar, overpriced water, and deserts the size of Rhode Island, ticket times, cross-utilization, answer the phone on the third ring or talk to the guests, table touches, guest visits, screwing managers on their bonuses, work harder do more! (sorry, corporate food came up on me again). Chain food serves a purpose and serves a market that is necessary. But the true foodies that ones that work in the industry for the love of wowing people with their artistic creations is hopefully growing. I at this time only remember a few of them they seem tireless, motivated and some how they keep getting better. They will never have an article written about them in Gourmet, Food & Wine or Food & Art magazine. These select few work in a “secondary market” That is chain speak for fewer people. It seems that I have gotten off of the topic of Ratatouille, the wonderful movie from Pixar Studios. With the number of operating food service outlets topping 900,000 it seems the growth is not stopping. So why is this a bad thing? Many of us started in the industry in a Mom and Pop restaurant that amplified the so called “Cheers Factor”. They were small homey quaint environments where all of the customers become a kind of family, a simple concept but hard to create. Ratatouille pulled off the feeling. The stress, pressure and cost of conceptualizing, building and designing the next Olive Garden concepts drives thousands of entrepreneurs into the industry annually. Yet they always seem to forget one thing. It is about the food and beverage, not the franchise deal. “Gusteau’’s” ( the restaurant in the movie) survives the onslaught of corporatization from a talentless chef that once worked for the famed Chef Gusteau. The genius behind the cookbook entitled “Anyone can Cook”. I have seen amazing creations from the most unsuspecting sources proving Chef Gusteau’’s theory. The restaurant industry has become to complex it is no longer about the food. I hope you keep searching I know I will, let us know when you find your “la Ratatouille” in your town.