I’ve been thinking recently how hard it must be to market a new restaurant in the Dallas area. I have the opportunity to possibly work with a local restaurant on some marketing ideas.
Here’s my foundation thought: in a crowded market, a restaurant needs to focus on:
- over-serving its best customers
- and helping its best customers find it.
Over-serving is a “simple” matter of exceeding initial expectations. The staff and management should bend over backward to make sure that every best customer leaves feeling welcomed, paid attention to, and impressed.
But notice I didn’t say they should over-serve the entire market. That’s just a way to lose money. No, they should over-serve their “best customers”. They need to clearly define the segment of the market that they will naturally appeal most to, and make sure those people’s expectations are exceeded.
The second part is helping the restaurant’s best customers find it. Initially, this will require some traditional marketing ploys to simply get the word out to anyplace the best customers might be: flyers, newspaper ads, well placed DART ads, ad buys in local arts programs, et cetera. But the ultimate goal is to begin generating word of mouth. The best way to find other “best customers” is to get the best customers you already have talking about you.
But how do you get that coveted word-of-mouth working for you? First of all, you can’t force it. You must truly provide a unique experience. Your brand must be worth talking about. You have to over-serve your current best customers to get them talking about you.
After you’ve got that down, your next best bet is to adequately reward those best customers who find you other best customers. I see some brands take this literally and give discounts to people who, say, forward an email or retweet a particular message. That’s fine if it works for your brand (if your best customers are “best” because they’re interested in % discounts), but the point is to reward your best customers in a way that they appreciate. It doesn’t have to be a discount. Many times, people just want to be publicly recognized for their contributions.
Some other ideas for rewards: have a chalkboard with handwritten names of all your best-of-the-best customers. Put up a photo wall. Give them a special mug or beer stein, with their name on it, that you keep for them at the restaurant. Throw a party once or twice a year only for your best customers and one guest each. Put some of their names in your ads, on your flyers. Tweet about them, by name. Put up stories about them on your blog. Put together a quarterly newsletter about and for your best customers.
If you over-serve your best customers, help them find you in a crowded market, and reward them appropriately for being the best, you’ll have a strong foundation for the kind of loyalty that breeds long-term growth and stability.