Right on Target
Low-cost marketing strategies that send the right message to the right customer build visibility and deliver significant return on your investment. Tom Koenigsberg, chief marketing officer of Coppell, Texas-based CiCi’s Pizza, offers these
suggestions for multi-unit franchisees and area developers to bolster what headquarters is already spending:
- Market for the cost of a handshake. Some consultants estimate restaurateurs devote 80 percent to 90 percent of their marketing budgets to reaching first-time customers. Koenigsberg says a back-to-basics approach is not only cheaper, but more effective. He advises area developers to make their restaurants “celebrities” in the local community. Catering for school nights and sponsorship of local teams can lead to single-digit sales increases, Koenigsberg says.
- Tap into cable. Local cable television is a good option for developers in small markets. Cable networks also offer solutions for developers in expensive media markets. “You couldn’t afford to buy all of Chicago, for example. Nor would you want to,” says Koenigsberg. “Unless you’ve saturated the entire city, you’d have a lot of waste. But you can buy time on one, two or six systems to trim out your area. Yes, it’s a little more expensive to trim in this way, but it’s a lot cheaper than buying the city.”
- Target newspaper advertising. With newspaper readership moving down the economic ladder and toward older adults, ads for restaurants seeking a young, family market “don’t have good return on investment,” says Koenigsberg. The smarter move is a four-color ad with coupons in the Sunday edition—again, not the lowest cost but less expensive than a direct-mail campaign. Another option is a free-standing insert that can run by market if the newspaper sells different zones.
- Reward loyalty. If you have a concentration of restaurants in and around a city, consider a loyalty program that rewards guests for visits to several different locations—those near their home, work and recreation.
“You have to find a way to gain trial,” Koenigsberg says. Not surprisingly, the richer the offer, the better the response. “You have to find the point of balance between the acquisition cost and the value that customer will bring to your business over the long term,” he says. Five dollars off at a casual-dining restaurant that serves $7 margaritas probably won’t have people standing in line.
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