As a small restaurant chain competing in the heart of London's fantastic food scene getting the most from Marketing without spending thousands is key in delivering the business plan for Inamo Restaurants.
We are frequently approached by third parties with marketing opportunities and the initial push back is always the same - Demonstrate how you have delivered an achievable Return on Investment, and share how many covers this will drive in per week. We then review these numbers, halve them and calculate our own ROI.
As within any small business, budget is tight and yet without driving awareness of the restaurants sales are impacted, so how do we do it? Well, that’s top secret and if I shared all of our secrets then what would be our point of difference but let’s look at five cost-effective ways to drive awareness in a very crowded space.
Weekly newsletter to a database
Collect data from a number of sources to add to your database and send out a weekly call to arms newsletters, with awareness driving and offers. It’s not expensive to do this and it means you can communicate and drive repeat business.
Social Media
Let your guests manage this - tailor your menu to drive instagramable pictures and then sit back and watch them go viral.
Publicise your wins
Don’t be afraid to shout about award wins - you work hard for them after all.
Reviews
Drive and incentivise your team to deliver solid reviews - This can make a huge difference to your online footprint, for example, the better score you have on Google reviews and number of reviews makes a difference to when you feature on google maps
Talk to the third parties you work with
Can they offer support, can you collaborate? Can you put together special offers?
Hope these help
Please reach out if you like to discuss these further or if you think that I could be of any support.
For more restaurant marketing advice, check out our Restaurant Marketing Guide by clicking here!