Marketing a Restaurant Calls For Innovation

Those who seek to run their own business are by definition very adventurous. When someone is called "entrepreneur," it means that they are willing to take risks and to think outside of the box. Marketing a restaurant can take a lot of your time but you must allocate some of this to creativity to make sure that you do not become one of the approximately 3/4 of people who enter the industry but fail to make it.

By thinking outside the box when you are marketing a restaurant, you should try and come up with some ideas that have never been tried before, at least within your market area or restaurant concept. You might like to think that everything has been tried once before and this may or may not be the case, but spend a significant period of time every week to devote just to brainstorming.

Get in touch with your local television, newspapers and radio stations and don't worry about them being traditionally the most expensive forms of media available. These media providers are being pressurized by new forms of media and this means that times are rather different. When marketing a restaurant you will likely have quite a lot of room to negotiate now.

You can often achieve the goal of hitting two birds with one stone, by approaching a radio station and suggesting that you provide them with expert knowledge related to your business. Not only will you be marketing a restaurant in this way, but you will be helping to establish yourself as the expert and this additional aura will likely bring additional people to your eatery to put a face to the voice.

If you work together with your competitors, you can all win. Many entrepreneurs do not consider this example as they think it is nonsense to work with them, but coming up with a program to include all your restaurants could be a winning formula. For example, starting off with a return to a significant local charity, establish a prix fixe menu with a set price for the next month or so.

Try and think of businesses in your area that you could approach for a mutually beneficial marketing program. Just let your mind be creative once again and see how you could devise a good fit. You could be marketing a restaurant and another local business at the same time by forging a relationship. For example, what if there is an Italian automobile dealer nearby -- wouldn't this make a good match with your Italian themed restaurant?

Use every opportunity to build up your brand and to refer to yourself as the expert, even though you might not think this is appropriate. A good entrepreneur will always project himself in a positive light and eventually both media and consumers will come to trust your enthusiasm and experience and drive traffic to your door.

Fundamentals must be taken care of before anything else is done and you must focus on menu selections, customer service and brand image, etc. when marketing a restaurant. Your ability to think outside the box, however should never be underestimated as your ability to innovate will eventually carry you to the top.

About the Author

Jose L. Riesco is a restaurant marketing and consulting expert who has just published a book: Restaurant Marketing Strategies (available at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com). His site Restaurant Marketing Strategies contains lots of free restaurant marketing information and ideas to help you improve your restaurant marketing.

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