After the buzz from opening dies down a restaurant is left scrambling to keep in the forefront of the market’s mind. More often than not, restauranteurs revert to knee-jerk reactionary methods from advertising to poor social media and even down to discount programs like Groupon, Living Social, etc. The results speak for themselves: Highly expensive and minimally effective.
Vigor approaches ongoing marketing with a multifaceted approach:
- Loyalty marketing
- New trial marketing
- Public relations
Loyalty Marketing
The best way to keep people interested and maintain (often times increase) buzz about a restaurant is through loyalty marketing tactics. This goes beyond a simple buy 5 get one free deal and delves deeper into the inner workings of a restaurant.
At Vigor, we look into the restaurant’s operations to pinpoint any potential faults in service and experience. Then we fix them so they increase repeat visitors and word of mouth. With that underway, we begin developing new campaigns based on limited time offerings, fun interactive promotions, and other strategies focused on engagement. These fuel stronger bonds with current customers and leads to New Trials.
New Trial Marketing
New trial marketing is by far the most expensive endeavor a restaurant can engage in. The theory is that a single consumer must encounter a brand’s message over 7 times before making a decision to dine. That’s a lot of media that comes with a large price tag.
With that in mind, we like to think of new trial marketing as a residual result of strong loyalty/repeat marketing. As we engage in marketing, advertising and social media for restaurants, new trials will be a probable result with a lesser investment of time and money.
Vigor uses similar tactics as found in our loyalty marketing and does everything in our power to stay away from knee-jerk, discount marketing. That said, in some cases, discounts can be used wisely to boost traffic and new trials through engaging campaigns, direct mail blasts, and other techniques.
We do everything in our power to stay away from Groupon and other deal sites of the same format. In our experience, we’ve seen these do more harm than good costing countless dollars and resulting in loss in revenue.
Public Relations
Public Relations isn’t just important for opening. That’s the easiest time for PR. A real public relations expert will be integral in brand development, marketing strategy and operations meetings. Vigor does not directly provide public relations services. We, instead, lean on proven partners with whom we’ve worked in the past.
Okay, okay, we get it. You really like bullet points. Here are our restaurant marketing services in a neat, concise bullet pointed list:
- Restaurant marketing strategy
- Restaurant marketing campaign
- Restaurant marketing collateral design
- Restaurant advertising
- Restaurant advertising design
- Restaurant brand development
- Restaurant operations consulting
- Restaurant public relations support
