Day 26 – The Puzzle

Take action today with the massive email list that’s sitting inside your restaurants Point Of Sale and your restaurants company email account.  

This week we are on the road visiting restaurant owners to talk about what they think they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.  Three owners in 48 hours told me they were not leveraging the emails currently sitting in their POS.  They acknowledged their fear of using it wrong and that’s whats stopping them from taking action.  In episode 589 of Restaurant Marketing Secrets I spend 15 minutes digging into the topic and dropping a few tips to make this easier.  

But I’ll say this, don’t wait!  Take action today.  You as a restaurant owner have a few levers you can pull every day to dryve sales and email marketing is one of them.  

Day 25 – The Puzzle

Day 1 is in the books of our road trip from Northern Kentucky to Las Vegas. 

We left NKY at 8am, stopped by a restaurant in Louisville Kentucky around 10am, then 2 more in St. Louis from  2pm-5pm Central time and finally a pizza joint at 9:30pm in Topeka Kansas. 

What a long and awesome day.  Talking to the owners and a few employees at these 4 restaurants was eye opening.  I heard a lot of things I already knew to be true, and also a few new twists.  The goal of this trip was to kill two birds with one stone. We had the 4th America’s Best Restaurants Roadshow van that needed to get delivered to the West Coast and I really wanted to get in front of more restaurant owners to find out what we can do better with our companies and the merger with Repeat Returns. I wanted to understand what owners need form the marketing side of things to get to their dream outcome and use that to help my team build the ultimate restaurant marketing platform that will dryve sales.  

Tomorrow we head from Topeka to Durango Colorado, stay tuned.

Day 24 – The Puzzle

Yesterday I talked about the two different restaurant catering campaigns I’ve encounter recently.  One that was from our company and another from a local coupon magazine that restaurants use incorrectly way too often.

I spoke about this in episode 586 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, have a listen.

Let’s break down these two different campaigns

First we dig into the print catering campaign

1st – There’s no way to no who sees it and when you want their attention again, you have to buy the exact ad from the exact company and pray the right people turn to your page in the 50 page coupon magazine.

2nd – There’s no way to retarget the people who looked at your page, tore it out or heck even showed it to their co-worker

These are really the two main points of weakness for a restaurant ad campaign like this in a coupon magazine.  I won’t go into how poorly the ad was designed, that’s another blog, but the biggest missed opportunity for this campaign was two prong.  They had a QR code in the ad which went to the catering page on their website, I love that…but this is where it all went downhill.  First there was not a tracking pixel installed on the webpage.  If there was, they could retarget people who visit the catering page with targeted ads, and these ads work GREAT!  Second, the page had no CTA (Call To Action) or form.  There was ZERO effort put into getting visitors to raise their hand and give you their information

Now, let’s dig into WHY the digital campaign is awesome.

1st – We are targeting local decision makers with a high value CTA, telling them to register to win a party.  These ads get a TON of clicks and engagements.  This means we can retarget those people for with other ads, like our catering ad.

2nd – When they engage with our ad via clicking the CTA or commenting, it takes these customers on a journey where the restaurant owner gains their contact information.  As the clients text message said, he’s received over 600 leads in a month.  

3rd – When we get a lead if does 4 things

– The owner gets a lead sent to them to contact.

– The customer gets put into a Facebook retargeting audience so we can nurture them to order.

– The customer is now put in an EXCLUSION audience so they don’t get the same ad again.

– And finally they get put into a multi step email and text nurture sequence that educates them on what the restaurant offers and entices them to place a catering order.

The differences between these two are night and day.  It’s honestly depressing as a marketer to see restaurants doing crappy ads like that in 2024.  How do they not have an expert in their corner and how is the print magazine not able to offer them digital solutions to go along with the ad?  There’s zero reason to spend your money on that ad in 2024, but if you are going to do it, at least make an effort to use the tools available today to optimize it.

Day 23 – The Puzzle

For many of you, the missing piece in your restaurant is catering sales.  The text message is one I received this week from a client who’d not really done catering in prior years.  He had never focused marketing and sales efforts on it until he added that service onto his program with us.  

This blog isn’t about showcasing how awesome my team is (but they are), it’s about showing you a missing piece of your sales puzzle.  Catering can allow you to walk into the restaurant every day and already have a few thousand dollars in sales, it’s a gold mine.  But, it’s not as simple as turning on a fancy advertising campaign. 

Chris worked the leads exactly how he should.  They are LONG TERM relationships just waiting to be built, and he’s taking full advantage of that.  

Tomorrow we’ll dig into the marketing funnel behind this and compare a traditional print catering ad I saw this week to this highly technical digital marketing campaign built to reach customers where they live in 2024, THEIR PHONES!

Day 22 – The Puzzle

Following an EXACT protocol EVERY TIME.

This week in our agency twice someone from our team has “skipped steps” to try and get a project done.  And both times, it caused major issues. 

I see it all the time in small business, whether someone is trying to help or simply being lazy, they alter the process and havoc ensues.  In three weeks I’ll be in Las Vegas for David Scott Peters, Restaurant Transformation Seminar, and this exact topic will be echoed there as well.  Restaurants deal with this every day.  Employees not cleaning the restaurant in the EXACT manner every day, not following a recipe EXACTLY or something “as simple” as not closing the bar 100%.  

Some people will say it’s not a big deal, but the ones who know understand how bad this is. 

I’ve been to boat and RV factories and I’ve followed the build from start to finish.  I’ve watched an RV make it’s way down a line and NEVER skip a step.  The factory workers carefully build the motorhome step by step and triple check their work and then and only then do they check the box and advance the unit to the next step.

Imagine if you will, if the assembly line at a car manufacturer didn’t follow the assembly line.  If it skipped around from the station station and “oh shit” it missed the brake installation station. 

Yeah, that wouldn’t be a very good situation.

I find explaining that scenario is easy for employees to follow.  Simply ask them how they’d feel driving their car home from the dealership if they thought for one second that someone might have “expedited the build” and possibly forgot something like the brakes, a brake line or a very important bolt.  

SOP’s and check lists are meant to be followed all the time, NOT SOMETIMES. 

So next time one of your team members goes off the path, I advise using that story to hammer home the importance of the customer getting exactly what they should EVERY TIME!

Has anyone ever gotten on social media to hear Papa John’s talk about how great their pizza is?

The answer is Hell NO!

Well, their CEO just jumped ship and is heading to Shake Shack… I wonder if he will take the lame social media campaigns with him or if he will embrace what Shake Shack has going on. What do you all think?

If you want to do social media the right way and engage your fan base with great content then check out the Restaurant Marketing Secrets podcast linked in my bio.
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#restaurantowner #restaurantmarketing #shorts

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Day 21 – The Puzzle

it’s funny, as I head out on this 5 day road trip from Northern Kentucky to Las Vegas I have the question in my head “why do you do this stuff.”

I’ve got to think it’s a question we as entrepreneurs all ask ourselves.  

Questions like:

 “why did I get myself into this?”
” what was I thinking starting a business?”

” why am I really doing this?”

I’ve heard others who are business owners echo these thoughts, but many of us don’t tell anyone else.  We tend to live a lonely life.  We live in our own heads and don’t want to tell others.  

I don’t know if it’s because we don’t want to show weakness, or lose the faith they have it us.  Maybe it’s because we think we have to be a one man/woman army.  Regardless of why we do this, it typically is short lived and we snap out of it and get to work. 

The facts are, doing what we are doing is freaking tough.  It’s hard.  It feels like some days are damn near impossible.  

And then we see someone from our team loving their job.  A team member having an absolute blast.  A client telling us how much we’ve helped their business.  

Like the image above, where a restaurant owner emailed me to tell me the impact America’s Best Restaurants and the ABR Roadshow has had on his business.  This is what makes it all worth it.  To see the result pay off for someone else, and to know that it’s a direct effort of the prior 15 years.  When I see things like this I saw WOW, we did that.  

And you should to.  Because someone out there is smiling from the food you served, from the service you gave them, from the bad day you helped erase.

And know this, what we’re doing is freaking hard and there’s a reason basically no one else is doing it!

Five Guys shares how they plan to fail by NOT advertising their restaurant… #restaurantindustry

Do you think that Five Guys not advertising is a good thing? Of course not! You need to stay top of mind with your customers!

What do Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and McDonalds all have in common? They spend MILLIONS on advertising their businesses!

If you’re not collecting customer data, building a segmented list, and targeting your customers with personalized ads then you will get dominated by chains.

Check out the Restaurant Marketing Secrets podcast to learn the ins and outs of advertising your restaurant the right way: https://www.youtube.com/@restaurantmarketingsecrets3580
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#restaurantowner #restaurantmarketing #FiveGuys #McDonaldsmarketing #proctorandgamble #CocaCola #socialmediamarketing #DigitalAdvertising

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Day 20 – The Puzzle

Next week I embark on a unique experience. 

Me and two of my team are hitting the road to tackle two tasks.  First to deliver the new van for America’s Best Restaurants ABR Roadshow to the West Coast.  Second, to talk to 30 or so restaurant owners about what they’re trying to accomplish with their restaurants.  

I feel like I know what most of our clients are aiming for and what they are struggling with, but it never hurts to go directly to the source.  So for three days, we will drive 32 hours from Northern Kentucky to Durango Colorado and then all to Las Vegas.  

As I type this I’m thinking about what I want to ask these owners.  We’re going to incorporate our travels into our new documentary series, The Hereo’s Of Hospitality.  This is a series we created to chronicle the journey of 2024 with my company.  The journey of how we plan to reinvent the restaurant marketing industry.  And this trip will give me a great opportunity to ask what restaurant owners need to help them accomplish their life goals.

So stay tuned, more to come. 

Day 19 – The Puzzle

Are we crazy, probably.

But is it not something worth trying, exactly!

On a daily basis I tell my vision of what America’s Best Restaurants will become.  Many times a new thought comes up that makes the dream even bigger and I surprise myself.  

And every time the people I tell it to that are hearing it for the first time are BLOWN away.  

Here’s the thing, if your dream isn’t being spoken weekly and if it’s not so crazy that people either question your sanity or don’t say DAMN, then you’re doing it wrong. 

What we put in the universe matters.  But for more reasons than you realize. 

#1 – YOU have to believe it and if you only bring it up occasionally then how can you convince yourself of it?  Seriously!  I think my self doubt comes from the fact that I don’t talk about these things often enough.  As an entrepreneur it can get lonely.  You spend a lot of time in your own head, in your own world and not enough with others.  So when you take time weekly to tell people the mountain you’re going to climb, you’re spending time convincing the most important person, YOU!

#2 – People want to be a part of something bad ass!  They want to be on a journey, not just doing another job.  So by you putting your vision out there, you can attract other big thinkers and assemble a team of people ready to ride the rocket with you.

#3 – It makes you think BIGGER.  When I tell the vision to people, I have a second conversation in my head and I’m like WOOO!  That’s a good idea, what about this! 

Let me give you an example.  Recently I was telling someone our vision.  One that I’ll tell to the world soon.  In my vision I’ve had this idea in the past about an annual publication to chronicle our journey with the ABR Roadshow.  But as of late, it’s vanished from the stories.  Then yesterday, as I was talking to someone it came up again.  And this time it was bigger and better.  “Matt, we are going to have a few different publications published annually on our travels, top foods, top appetizers, top burgers, etc.  This will give restaurants a chance to sell a book that features them to create excitement with their customers.  But on top of that, we’ll have our brand front and center on displays NATIONWIDE for consumers to see”.  

I’m not joking when I say this was a conversation I had with myself while telling my vision to someone yesterday.  I’d been thinking about this idea for a while, but I had not verbalized it lately and it kind of went away.  

And with this, I’ve decided to start writing a blog post weekly on a piece of my vision puzzle and spend more time thinking, writing and speaking about what we are GOING TO DO! 

FYI, I think todays puzzle piece drawing was one of my best.  My penmanship still sucks, but that’s a work in progress too.