What is your belief about the barriers to effective restaurant marketing? If the belief is that business is poor because times are "bad", there are always bad times, During the worst of times, restaurant companies born and achieve great success.
If you believe business is down because of "bad" food, you might be right. If business is down because your team is unresponsive and unable to perform well. This is fairly easy to identify and with a little perserverance, you can turn it around.
Here are common reasons people say they have a "barrier" to restaurant marketing.
- Not enought time
- how much is needed?
- Money
- there are low cost guerrilla marketing methods available
- Skill / Expertise
- experts are available
- Risk
- how do you calculate this? With your gut?
- Belief that marketing won't work
- there is no guarantee
- Cooperation from staff
- is there a vision, the right leadership, processes, communication in place?
- Don't want to be "too busy"
- how busy is "too busy"? --- More business = hire more staff.
- Takes too much effort
- technology makes things easier
- Does not pay off
- what are the measures of success you use?
- Happy with things as they are
- congratulations!
- Resources low
- are you chasing suppliers? is it time for a change?
- Equipment
- you will appreciate trade shows and maybe eBay
- Bad Community
- its time for a market analysis?
- Poor management
- is "poor" a result of "skill" or "will"? Train for the first.
- Bad operation, don't want to do marketing until execution is excellent
- how good does it need to be before implementing a marketing plan?
- Costs too much
- is marketing a cost or an investment which drives business and pays for itself?
Which barrier(s) you can relate to? Whichever the barrier might be, I can promise you: There are more solutions than you can imagine.
If sales and profits are declining, you can review the basics of:
- Leadership
- Team
- Products (Menu)
- Service
- Processes
- Community awareness
- Marketplace
Too many times a community shifts without a restaurant team knowing. The changes are subtle. A quick marketplace review along with an operation assessment can be done quickly. If you can be objective, get it done.
