For the sake of argument, I am going to assume you run a good to great operation. People love your food. Your staff is tidy and friendly. Your place is clean. Overall you deliver or over deliver on your value proposition.
This is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself. My favorite saying is, “A pig in a dress is still a pig.”
One of my first travel consulting jobs was over ten years ago to a place in Florida. All of my great marketing advice was a waste. The place was dirty, the food was mediocre and the staff was so, so.
Great marketing accelerates what is already happening.
If you suck, marketing will let more people know quicker that you suck. If you are doing a great job, marketing will speed up your success.
It is very difficult for business owners to look at their “child” and call it ugly.
If your restaurant or catering business is “ugly”, you’d better find yourself a good plastic surgeon and Mary Kay rep and get busy with an extreme makeover.
Now assuming you are ready to go to market, what’s the next step?
Four walls marketing, catering lead generation, cookie drops and niche marketing are all great marketing vehicles…but only if you have the time.
January ushers in a wave of people temporarily motivated to get in shape and lose weight. Health clubs and gyms are counting on record sign ups with a small percentage of clients actually motivated past February 1.
If there is one word you need to use in your 2015 goals it is consistency!
Hitting the gym hard for three weeks will not help you fit into your holiday dress in December. It’s the person who dedicates three workouts a week and gives up soda who will end up in shape.
Marketing your catering is exactly the same. At our December Catering Coaching Call, we had members of all types from newbies to those more experienced with varying degrees of catering sales success.
Newbies aside; the number one difference between the people who hit marketing home runs and those who don’t is consistency in action.
Take Mark Rogers with Smoke and Spice. To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t have a sales and marketing background. He definitely puts out great food with flair.
What Mark did perfect in the last fourteen months was consistently follow our system. Using the same techniques we share with our members, Mark increased drop off catering sales by over $100,000. This past December was three times busier than the last.
Assuming you can deliver on your promise, the answer to a great 2015 lies within you.
As I coached a newbie who is the general manager of a cupcake store that caters for all sorts of occasions...
Give me an hour per afternoon at least four days a week…week in…week out…
And you will see results.
Simple? Yes.
Will you take action?
If so, then please register for the webinar below.
NOTE: To help you get 2015 headed in the right direction, you are invited to a one time only webinar entitled:
How To Make 2015 Your Best Year with Catering Profits
To grab one of the hundred spots, please click on the link below:
Well, that’s all for this issue.
To Your Restaurant's Marketing & Catering Success,
Michael Attias
Restaurant Catering Software