Hospitality Marketing
Presentation by Anton Voltchok
Topics Covered
Traditional advertising mediums
Effectiveness
Target Market
Web advertising mediums
Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Optimization "SEO"
Content
Traditional
Out-Of-Home
Direct Mail
Flyers
Television
Radio
Billboards
Advertising
Television
TV commercials can be an effective medium
but only for the right type of business.
Best suited for this are large franchise chains who
are looking to further expand their
brand on a national level.
The Right Fit
But what about local restaurants and budding franchises?
? ? ?
Don't do it, if you can't do it right!
When done right, television remains a great way to build brand awareness, however for smaller businesses sometimes it does more harm then good.
TV commercials are likely to take up a huge portion of the marketing budget since investments must be made in both production and media. A restaurant will likely see greater return on investment by allocating those funds to a large variety of mediums for maximum exposure.
If the budget allows for a TV ad, don't do it if you can't do it right! Local network or cable provider produced spots may actually end up doing damage to your brand.
A popular form of "traditional" advertising because it's easy to execute.
But is it effective?
Really hard to tell... there is NO tracking via newspapers and magazines. They are trying to incorporate tracking currently (QR codes for example) but until there is a valid widely distributed solution, the majority of the marketing budget is best allocated elsewhere.
If you do print, save some money and design the ad yourself (or get a cheap freelancer on Craigslist) instead of letting the publication do it. This also gives you more control over brand consistency.
Radio
The rising popularity of satellite, cellphones, iPods, etc.. dwindles down the audience to hear your radio ad.
Rarely hear good radio spots
If you're set on doing radio, first maybe look into sponsoring traffic reports or news updates. This is a little more affordable way to see if this medium is for you.
Does this radio ad work? Why?
No? Why not?
Unique Selling Proposition:
Why should I give my money to you instead of one of your competitors.
Here's a hint, it's not the friendly knowledgeable staff, the convenient location, the senior citizen specials, and the wide variety of tasty menu items from only the freshest ingredients...
What differentiates your restaurant from every other restaurant in town, from the CUSTOMERS point of view, how will their experience be positive and different from all the other competitors?
The consumer only cares what you can do to add to his or her life. Focus on the listener, sell the "experience" people will have at your establishment.
Only have 1 core message, identify what is the 1 key point you want people to hear, to understand, and to remember.
Bill Boards
Overall useful medium for advertising restaurants.
Must have a concise message, keep number of words to a minimum.
Can be great for directions like from highways / interstates:
Digital Boards
Could be an option if the business is in a highly populated metropolitan area.
One of the best creative mediums.
A great idea that plays well with the surroundings can create traffic stopping advertising.
Bus Benches
Wallscapes / Murals
Sidewalk Design / Graffiti
Street Advertising
etc...
Out-Of-Home
Out-Of-Home
Out-Of-Home
Cost Effective.
Email loyalty program can be a good way to stay in touch with customer as long as it is not abused. A poorly done email campaign can quickly turn customers off and your IP address could permanently be placed in their spam folders.
Make sure you are providing value to your customers with the emails, run specific offers available only to your subscribers. However you want to avoid constant discounts as this will devalue your brand.
Direct Mail
Cost per piece can be expensive as postage costs continue to rise.
Direct mail is a lot more effective if partnered with a well maintained database. When purchasing databases make sure to pick the right demographics (geography, spending habits, etc...) to target customers who are a good fit.
Flyers
Extremely easy to implement
Very cost effective
Think where you are distributing them. Are you going to give them out at a University? Then include some type of student discount or late night special
Signage
Very important to have strong signage outside of your location. Use the space wisely to target car and foot traffic so everyone can read your name.
If you are a restaurant and a bar, try to incorporate that so customers can get an idea of what type of food they can expect inside. Also be sure to make space to clearly display the OPEN sign.
If your sign lights up, you have to keep a close eye on the light bulbs. Burnt out or dim lights reflect poorly on your brand.
Signage
Whether your signs are outside or inside, if they start looking old and weather, replace or refurbish them right away.
Do not let them reflect poorly on your brand.
Digital
Why it works
Website & Mobile
Search Engine Marketing
Benefits
"SEO"
Other
Marketing
- In a study conducted by Cornell University, approximately 50 percent of respondents stated they make restaurant reservations online, and about 40 percent of those, completed the reservation on the restaurant’s own website.
- 80-90% of diners research restaurants online before visiting in person
- When the researchers compared the difference in ROI performance between studies that have an online element and those that do not, the results were striking — adding online to the media mix has a positive impact on the campaign ROI for all media, from a delta of +4% for radio to +51% for outdoor and a whopping +70% for television. - BrandScience
Why it works
- According to Nielsen: 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family (“word of mouth”) over all forms of advertising, and there is little doubt that digital advertising turbo-charges this effective persuasion channel.
- Recommendations have more impact on a consumer’s purchase decision than both brand and price — 57% of decisions are based on this.
- Online shares are almost as valuable as in-person recommendations — a consumer is 9.5% more likely to buy a product with an excellent shared recommendation compared with 10.6% more likely via an excellent in-person recommendation. In contrast, a negative recommendation can reduce purchase intent by 11% for an online share and 11.2% for an in-person one.
Why it works
CPM stands for “cost per thousand impressions,” which is a measurement of how much money it costs you to reach 1,000 readers, viewers, visitors or listeners.
In 2013, time spent with digital media among U.S. adults surpassed time spent with TV, and this gap will likely continue to widen.
Digital Advertising Is Essential To
Reaching An Audience
U.S. adults are estimated to spend 4 hours, 28 minutes per day in front of their TV. Combining online and mobile devices, however, U.S. adults are expected to spend 5 hours, 46 minutes with digital media daily this year, increasing digital’s lead over television to well over one hour per day.
Website
- Provide Basic Info: Hours of Operation, Payment Methods, Location
- Customers like to comparison shop before going, without a site you won't even be considered as an option.
- You also miss out on being listed in local online directories which feature all of your competitors
- Can increase efficiency ( ex- staff gets bombarded by the same questions or requests over and over. A great way to cut down on this wasted time is by publicizing that information on the website)
Generate awareness, & exposure. Extend your brand
& Mobile
- Promote Products / Services - if your restaurant offers catering, this could be a great place to show that off. Chances are many customers may not even know that you provide those services.
- Publish timely content like events and promotions. Customers love a great deal or promotion, you can have a downloadable easily printable coupon. This keeps your restaurant at the top of the customers minds and keeps them coming back.
- Serve the press - making high quality imagery and text about your business can make life easier for the press and increase your chances of free media publicity
- Save you money! Having a 24/7 online presence is far less expensive than printed advertising, TV spots, mailers, and nearly any other form of promotion
Increase Business: despite economic difficulties, people are still going out to eat, they are just being more careful in their restaurant selection!
Website
& Mobile
Mobile Sites & Responsive Design
Mobile Sites
&
Responsive Design
Mobile Sites
&
Responsive Design
Mobile Sites
&
Responsive Design
Mobile Sites
&
Responsive Design
Before we go on to SEM and SEO let's get down to the basics, how does search work?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
&
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
SEO is essentially a component of the larger category, SEM
It's the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine.
- Incorporating selective keyword naturally into title tags, meta descriptions, heading tags, alt text, etc.
- Blog posts that are written and optimized with quality
- Mobile friendly
- Optimized page load speed
- Google authorship incorporated (+linking)
- Social sharing integration within your content, and more.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Off-Page SEO includes:
-
Creating a high quality, natural backlink profile (aka having other high quality/authoritative sites link to your site naturally)
-
Social sharing signals
-
Social bookmarking (Stumbleupon, Reddit)
-
List goes on!
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing is a form of Internet marketing that involved the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS) through optimization and advertising. SEM includes SEO tactics, as well as several other search marketing tactics.
The main difference between these two terms is that search engine optimization is simply a component of search engine marketing. As mentioned above, SEM includes components of paid search, such as PPC and also SMM (social media marketing).
It is important to note that you should never use the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably, because although they work hand in hand, they are not the same term.
Social
Media
Although social media strategies have become a critical part of marketing plans in a variety of different industries, the food industry continues to be one of the best fits for social media. Restaurants are a perfect match for social media for many reasons. They are inherently social environments, they rely on word-of-mouth, and they have the opportunity become “trendy.” All of these things make social media an obvious choice for restaurant marketing. Below are the top social networks that your restaurant should be on.
Facebook is the first choice for several industries, because facebook of its gigantic audience, and the frequency of the users. It also has lots of advertising opportunities at a very reasonably rate. But even if you aren’t looking to paid advertising, it is still an awesome choice for restaurants, because of the amazing opportunity for referrals among your followers. When someone likes your page or your post, facebook will show that post to a small number of that person’s friends, causing them to see your restaurant in their newsfeed, which gives them the opportunity to learn more about it. It also will show that person all of their friends that already like your page, which gives you credibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTCcKLkaaeA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFzsYNCaNvU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZSlaU6Zz4
If you have intagram downloaded on your phone, you know that you can barely go through three pictures without one of them being of food. Instagram is a great way to show off your product. People will take pictures of your product (especially if it is aesthetically pleasing or tastes good) and share it with their followers. This is every restaurant’s dream, to have people like your food so much that they share it! The problem is, if you don’t have an instagram, people can’t tag your restaurant in the photo. Make sure that you make an instagram so that you don’t miss out on this opportunity.
Twitter is the “real time” and “straight to the point” network. This works great if you are planning on having any special events at your restaurant, because you can encourage people to tweet about it as it happens. Twitter is also great for giving Twitter exclusive deals. This means that if you are having a slow day you can tweet a quick deal like “anyone who comes in until 2pm today gets a free appetizer if you say #GinosTwitterDeal.” This will cause people to retweet it to their friends and come your restaurant.