New Year's Restaurant Marketing Resolutions

First of all, Happy 2010 to all of you.

As the new year starts, many of you are making resolutions. Perhaps your restaurant is not very full, business is slow and you could do with many more customers, or perhaps you just want to improve your business: streamline operations, reduce expenses and improve your marketing.

Here are some ideas for your new year's resolutions:

√ Do you have a restaurant website? If not, this is the time to create one. More than 70% of your potential customers are looking for restaurants online and they will miss yours if you are not there.

√ If you have a website, this is a good time to check that all your information is updated. Do all your links work? (You'll be surprised how many times I wanted to get in touch with a restaurant via the Contact Us menu just to find that it does't work.) Do you accept online reservations? Do you capture your client's email to follow up with your list? Is your site easy to navigate and without annoying music and flash animations? Are your menus and prices up to date? Are you still promoting last year's events?

√ Are you using Social Media to promote your business? Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are free to use and can keep your place fresh in your customer's and potential customer's minds.

√ Do you have a way to capture your customers birthdays and anniversaries? If you don't, you should. Birthdays are very special for most people and they usually never celebrate them alone. If you do, are you doing your homework and sending them a special invitation to celebrate these special occasions with their friends and families at your restaurant?

√ Are you tracking the results of all your marketing investments? If not, this is a great time to start doing this. If you can't track the result of a marketing investment, then cancel it. You don't want to be wasting money in something that you don't know even if it works. Typical examples of wasted marketing investments are ads in newspapers and magazines (at least that you can track how many customers do they bring to your place), Yellow Pages (who uses the Yellow Pages anymore?, and specially who uses them to decide the restaurants where they should go?, Yes, that's right, nobody. People are searching online nonadays), radio ads, etc.

√ Do you have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? Something that identifies your restaurant and differentiates it from any other restaurant. If you don't, you should think about creating one. If you do, are you using it in all your marketing materials? Is your staff aware of your USP?

√ Are you training your staff to be client-centric? Your clients are your most important asset. Not you, not your place, not even your delicious food. If you don't have clients coming to your place, nothing else matters. Make sure that your staff is fully trained to deal with all kinds of customers so that they become clients, love your place and write rave reviews about your restaurant in all the restaurant directories and social media places. Happy clients are the best marketing that you can have. Unhappy clients will be very willing to talk bad about your place and will have an impact on hundreds, perhaps thousands of people reading their reviews. Never argue with your clients and think of any complementary food to make them happy as a marketing investment, not a loss.

√ Are you reading what people say about your restaurant in directories like Yelp.com, UrbanSpoon.com, CitySearch.com, etc.? Even if sometimes it is difficult to swallow all the negative reviews (and most people only bother to write when they are angry or they had a bad experience), they can help you identify areas for improvement. For example, if you have many people complaining about your service, then obviously you have a problem with your servers; same thing with your food, ambience, music, etc. Try to be positive and use the feedback as a way to improve your restaurant business. A continuos improvement process will gradually eliminate the bad reviews and bring the good ones. This will bring more people to your place.

There are many other resolutions that you can set for this year, but the most important resolution of all is to take some action. Many times, restaurateurs know that they need to change or improve things but they are so caught up in the daily operations that they don't have the time to change anything.

Remember, if you keep on working the same way, you will get the same results. Only changing and improving your marketing and operations will bring more customers to your place. Complaining about the economy could make you feel better but, believe me, even in this poor market conditions many restaurants are thriving. Is yours one of them?

You can find many free ideas and information about marketing restaurant in my website.

Happy 2010.

Jose L Riesco

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com