Day 100 – The Puzzle – The Power Of Frequency In Your Marketing

Yesterday I teased you with this blog post about the Facebook ad above that I saw on Monday.

This is the second time this year a local restaurant has targeted me, which blows me away. 

This is a new franchise wing joint that just opened near me and I for sure will be going to visit. This a great example of how powerful these ads are and WHY you should be doing it.  A month ago I drove by this before it was open and texted my son.  He’s a big fan of their wings and I knew he’d be excited.  But guess what, I FORGOT about it. 

And then this Facebook post got my attention and I’m eating there this weekend.  

My friends, it’s not rocket science.  Consumers buy stuff based on impressions, whether that’s your sign or a Facebook ad.  The only issue is you can’t control traffic past your building, but you can control running a simple Facebook ad like this for your restaurant. 

Ironically, we catered Wing Stop at our office every Friday.  We call it “free lunch Friday” and we feed about 40 of our employees.  This week Kylie went to order from a solid local wing joint down the street, but they don’t allow for an order before they open, so Alex from our team recommended Wing Stop.  And just like that $215.11 was spent.  Now the BIG question moving forward will be if they market to us for catering.

 

Day 99 – The Puzzle – A Restaurant & Business Used Facebook To Get My Business

Well, companies in the big cities are finally waking up, when will you?

Since 2016 I’ve been traveling the country and scratching my head by the fact that NO ONE is targeting me when I arrive through the tourist marketing options inside of Facebook.

Equally perplexing is the fact that no local restaurants target me at home.

Well, I’m hoping that’s about to change.  Since around 2010 I’ve been helping restaurants run targeted ads on Facebook. By 2014 I figured out how to use Facebook ads to drive sales and by 2015 I created a solution to gather customer data and drive sales.  From 2014-2020 we spent millions for clients on Facebook ads and helped many restaurants grow.  

I’ve been waiting for the day to come for you all to wake up to this opportunity, and maybe it’s here.

WHY?

Well, because I’m now finally seeing tourist marketing on Facebook. In fact, I started getting more and more of it in 2023.  This past week I flew into New York to take a cruise with my family and right away I was hit with many offers to restaurants and attractions.  In fact, the coffee mug picture above is from one of those ads.   Edge NYC targeted me with an ad for their observation tower, and $190 later this video was created…CLICK TO WATCH.

So I’m excited because if these spots in big cities are finally jumping on board, then maybe, just maybe local restaurants won’t be far behind. 

CLICK HERE to listen to episode 667 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets where I discuss this topic.

Day 94 – The Puzzle – We All Have To Stand In Line – Part 1

For business owners waiting can be brutal, especially if you’re a vision-driven owner like me.  You know where you want to go and try to get there before you’ve earned it.  This was the case for me two years ago. It was the first quarter of 2022 and I saw it.  I saw where we were going.  And I thought, what if I can outwork time and get us there 5 years earlier?  BAD IDEA!

Sometimes you forget what you’ve seen others do that they shouldn’t have, and still do stupid shit.  I can’t tell you how many restaurant owners I’ve worked with over the years who had a decent restaurant and who were a few years away from the promised land..  Then they say “Let’s open a second location all of our problems will go away.”  

WRONG!  Now you have two average restaurants and maybe worse.

As I sat on the beach in Bermuda today I watched this line for way too long 🙂 As I watched the line it hit me, we all hate waiting in line.  And I watched the worker in the red shirt yell at a guy “Well you got out of line, so you’re in the back again.”  It was hot, the lines for beach chairs were long and that guy didn’t want to wait and Big Mike (that’s what his coworkers called him) pointed out the rules of the “line.” 

We are not built to wait in lines, but we must fix that if we want to win. 

The two examples that went through my head, are fitness and business.  

Weight loss is a line.

Business Success is a line.

For me, these two always seem to come front and center.  There are so many parallels and I’ve been around both for a long time. 

For Fitness I think about the show “The Biggest Loser” and how the contestants go hard for a few months and lose crazy amounts of weight.  But in a year they are right back where they started.  I also think about my fitness journey.  For the past five years, I tried many things to outrun a bad diet, and while I worked out and had small victories I always circled back around.  If someone is really out of shape, with 100 pounds or more to lose, that’s a long-ass line!  And it’s a line with many steps that can’t be skipped.  To do it right you’ve got 3-5 years of cardio, nutrition, stress control, sleep, and weight lifting to right the ship.  And unless you want it, you give up.

And then there’s business success.  

Take my company for example.  From 2008-2014 I thought “small.”  

I’d given up on building something special, something big.  I didn’t think I was that guy.  My company served 30-40 clients annually and did $300,000 to $400,000 in sales.  I was happy, but not fulfilled.  Then in 2015, I got a taste of what could take my company to the next level.  From 2015 to 2021 I ran hard and fast without looking backwards.  I didn’t focus a ton on where we could end up, I was 100% focused on week-to-week growth.  And, I also didn’t focus on what others were doing.   

On a flight back from Vegas in 2019 I recall showing a friend my plans to triple my company.  He was amazed and asked, “You can do that?”  Of course, I said, but honestly in the back of my head was a LOT OF DOUBT!  I’d never actually proven to myself that it was possible and that I was the person who could do it.  

By the end of 2022 that had all changed.  I knew I was that guy, I knew I had the idea and I knew the restaurant industry needed it. 

I saw where we could go.  I recall putting it on paper and realizing, SHIT I CAN DO THIS!  

WE CAN DO THIS!

I saw a path to a goal by 2030, it was wild to say the least, because I had belief and a plan. 

And that’s when I got stupid.  That’s when I also started watching a few other entrepreneurs and comparing my journey to theirs.  I started to convince myself we could do it faster.  I wanted it NOW.  I told myself I could go faster, and work harder. That lasted about 6 months and then I started to back off it.  It took me about 9 months to come back to reality.  

2024 has been a year of reflection for me. 

I’ve started to ask myself “Matt do you believe you will get there?”

“OK, what matters more?  Getting there faster or right?” 

RIGHT.  ALWAYS RIGHT!

I’ve had to change a lot.  I’ve had to change how I lead my team and how I think.  It’s been tough, but so damn rewarding.  At times the unneeded pressure I was putting on myself was forcing me to lead my team wrong.  And while we “may” have gotten there faster, it was going to be done wrong.  I’d say one of the biggest issues I created with my pushing was the perception of our company due to our marketing and sales strategies.  

There’s a very successful entrepreneur I follow named Grant Cardone.  Early on he would film himself coaching his sales team and there was a moment that hit home for me during this time.  He was telling his team to always be honest and pure when selling.  Don’t ever sell someone something they don’t need or can’t afford, because then they are going to be mad at ME, Grand Cardone.  He said, “I’m going to be here in 10 years, you might not, so I don’t want you burning my name for a short-term victory. They’ll forget you, but remember my brand.”

It really hit home.  I’d strayed from my roots and we’d become for a short time, what I despised.  

That was one of the big changes I made in myself and my business.  I told myself to go to the back of the line and do it right.

This experience has made me even more sensitive to what our clients, restaurant owners, are doing to shoot themselves in the foot.

So in part 2 of this blog, I’m going to tackle what I see that restaurants are doing to short-circuit their success.  How they are trying to skip line, and how to fix it.

MP OUT!

P.S. Oddly enough as I was finishing typing this blog the song below came on, “We will still come through, in the LONG RUN…”

Day 82 – The Puzzle – Seek Discomfort, Embrace Soreness

Seek discomfort.

Seek pain.

Seek soreness.

Seek stress.

Seek that will make you stronger as your journey takes you to bigger and better places.

The picture above is from a CrossFit competition at CrossFit The Tracks in June 2017.  From 2010 to 2020 I would put my body through some tough tests.  I was doing CrossFit, Olympic Lifting and Running every week.  And I had people pushing me all the time to become better.  Back then it was a hobby, but now it’s a life choice.  You see, then I was just doing it as a part of my free time and as a way to stay in shape.  I didn’t really understand the idea behind putting yourself in tough spots for the sole purpose of becoming better. 

Then around 2020 I put it on coast.  This wasn’t due to the pandemic, it was a combination of my business growing and CrossFit as a hobby taking a backseat.  I still worked out, but I stopped with the extra stuff I was doing like lifting sessions and races.  Over the next 4 years I’d go from 175 pounds to 201. I reasoned with myself that it was OK because during those tough CrossFit hobby years I was sore all of the time.  To me not being sore, was a sign I was in a better place.

WRONG!

It turned out it was simply an excuse to not work my ass off. On December 25th 2023 I looked in the mirror and saw what personal neglect had created.  I was the heaviest I’d been since 2010 weighing in at 201 pounds.  I looked in the mirror and said enough is enough, and as I type this I’m aprox 178 6 months later.  The weight loss has been a combo of nutrition (75%) and higher intensity workouts more often.  And guess what, I’m sore again!

SORE is what I now realize what was missing.

And at the same time, I look back at the Summer of 2023 as my company saw losses for the year mount to over $1 million and stress me out of my freaking mind!  I can’t start to tell you how tough last Summer and Fall was for me mentally, but I smile now.  I realized that I had to make those mistakes and learn those lessons to get to the next level as a CEO.  At the end of the day, if you don’t learn how to lose, you can’t learn how to win the RIGHT WAY!

All of this hit me this spring. I realized the more I accepted the shit was going to hit the fan often, that I was going to be SORE all over, not just my body, but my mind too.  When I accepted this reality and realized the only way I was going to become the CEO I was destined to be was to embrace the suck things became clear.

This is also when it hit me about working out, EMBRACE, screw it, FIND muscle soreness.  Otherwise, it simply means you’re not doing enough.

Check out todays podcast on this topic, episode 649 of Restaurant Marketing Secrets by yours truly…CLICK HERE to listen.

MP OUT!

P.S. Someone told me long ago…

Day 71 – The Puzzle – Do Not Ask For Restaurant Reviews Like This

This is a common mistake from restaurant software, it asks EVERYONE for a public review, NO!!!!

In this case the restaurant has two things happening here that I would correct.

#1 – I already got an email from Toast last night, their point of sale, asking me how my experience was, so now I have 2 different requests in 24 hours.

#2 – This email is from a company called Rev Local.  They must have an integration with Toast that sends this automated email to people who visited, ME.  Here’s the issue, what if my visit wasn’t good and you just gave me an invitation to leave bad reviews everywhere!

And now that I think about it, what if I responded poorly to the message from Toast that I got yesterday, would this one still have been sent?

A consumer should only be asked for a review when you know the answer.  In this case I would have had the review left in the platform, like Dryver (formerly Repeat Returns) does, and if they leave a great review THEN give them the google link.  You need to gate the surveys and only give people YOU reach out to via your marketing a link to give you private feedback and THEN you give them a link to Google, etc.

MP OUT!

Day 63 – The Puzzle – The $15 Small Pizza And WHY I Keep Going There

Friday night was pretty normal for me this week, I left the gym and headed home.  On the way home I did what I do most Fridays, swing by Strongs Brick Oven Pizza in Union Kentucky.  On this night I was rolling solo since my wife was out of town with my daughter and my son was at kick boxing.  I think that’s why the dollar amount of this pizza stuck out, it was simply a personal size pizza just for me, my bill came out to $15.85 or aprox $14.85 before tax.

Think about, $15 for a small 10 inch pizza, seems kind of high right?  After all a small pizza is selling between $7-10 at most places. 

But this is the important part, the price was a non factor.  I asked myself, what if it was $20…I’d still buy it.

WHY?  Because the pizza I was picking up was a ONE OF A KIND creation by the pizza geniuses there.  I get the Almost Famous Hot & Spicy.  It’s got bacon, a spicy sauce, peppers and then the dump crumbled up bbq chips on top.  IT’S UNREAL!  It’s so damn good, and it’s the ONLY place I can get this pizza.

It’s kind of like Doc Style wings at Barleycorns, no one else was them.

So why is this the subject of this blog?  Because all of you are trying really hard to get people to spend money with you and more importantly you’re trying to get MORE money when they do visit.  So when you offer a product like this pizza that no one else has, price is removed.  It’s my favorite pizza, so whether it cost me $10, $15, $20 or $25 I’D BUY IT!  

Now I will say, when we start talking about $25-35, it’s going to have me thinking.  But honestly, it’s so damn good 🙂

OK, but you’re thinking “Matt, what’s TJ’s LinkedIn message have to do with this?”

TJ pays attention and he’s heard me rail on this exact pizza restaurant for being bad at marketing.  As I think about it, I can’t say a whole lot that’s good about their email, text and social media.  In fact, they don’t even email or text me.  And I’d be willing to be a large sum of money that don’t have me in any type of marketing database.  They do exactly the opposite of what I believe it, which leads me back to TJ’s question.

WHY am I still eating there?

It’s 100% due to the location of the restaurant, not the pizza or anything else.  

I’d had this pizza at their Newport location a few times per year, and LOVED IT.  That’s how I knew about it when they opened up a mile from my house and that’s why I’ve eaten in hundreds of times since they opened here.  BUT I never went out of my way to visit the Newport location, even though they had my favorite pizza.  WHY?  Out of sight, out of mind.  They were an after thought and we only visited when we were in Newport for another reason.  

But now, I drive by it MANY TIMES per day.  I’m typing this on a Sunday, and I’ve drove by it twice on the way to run this morning and twice on my way to dinner tonight.  If this restaurant was located a few miles in one direction or the other my visit frequency would be 75% less.  

They are getting my business due to their restaurant being in my line of sight 40-50 times per week, and they happen to have my favorite pizza.  Stack on top of that great customer service and a clean restaurant and it’s a dangerous combination.  BUT remove from that the Union location and I’m a 2 times per year customer vs 40-50!  

TJ, your answer is PROXIMITY!  

And to hammer this point home even more, 9 out of 10 friends of mine from the region tell me when I drag them along “I love this place, but never come.”  I ask why and the answer is always the same, out of sight…out of mind!

But imagine if they were running marketing like I preach, oh SNAP, they’d be dangerous.

Imagine the possibilities….

If they were running marketing campaigns with a 3 mile radius to gather data

If they had servers asking for data.

If they had a tech stack when I called into order my pizza that got my info.

IF they had my info and used it how many more visits they could drive, the catering they could sell me, the appetizers they could sell, the desserts they could sell….

TJ, you’ve got me on my soap box and for that reason this is also topic of episode 630 of Restaurant Marketing Secrets, CLICK HERE to listen!

Day 62 – The Puzzle – Handling Customer Complaints Online For Your Restaurant…STAND YOUR GROUND!

SCREAM THIS WITH ME…

WE MUST PROTECT HIS HOUSE!

You and only you can be the gate keeper for your brand, so do exactly what Michelle did here.

Before you read any farther into this blog, CLICK HERE and read the post Michelle made to defend her restaurant, Case & Bucks, from some online shade.  It’s absolute gold and once you read it you’ll have the context you need for the rest of the blog.

Ok, now back to the action.

DAMN, didn’t she freaking DOMINATE that post!  

First, let’s get this out of the way and I’ll warn you, this will go against everything you’ve ever thought.

HOPE & PRAY for some negative posts like this monthly.  WHAT!?  Are you crazy Matt, well yes a little 🙂

Let me explain, here are my 5 reasons you want this stuff in your life:

#1 – If you don’t get hate, then you’re not taking enough action.

#2 – Hate and people throwing shade will EXCITE you and bring out that fire (like it did with Michelle).

#3 – It will force you to take action and put on paper how you REALLY feel.  Because I know none of you really “FEEL” how your social media looks.

#4 – It will prove to you how awesome you are because you’ll get 10x the love than the hate garnered.

#5 – And last but not least, it will show you the power of using social media to tell your story. Then HOPEFULLY it will get you away from posting lame ass food pictures every day and instead get you on team MP and using the written word and videos from your heart.  The power of properly crafted content NOT around your food will draw in more and more people and help you finally market your restaurant correctly. 

Great job Michelle, now that I know what you have in the tank I’m going to be on the lookout for some more heartfelt content to connect you, your brand, your team and your food with your community.

The Puzzle – Day 61 – Opening A New Restaurant? Bring Locals On the Journey Like Bri And Jonathon Did

How should you market opening a new restaurant is a question I get all the time.  

My advise is ALWAYS bring the community along for the ride.  Show them them the construction, the craziness that is building out a new restaurant.  

You can do this pretty easily with a smart phone and Facebook live.  

OR you can go next level like Bri and Jonathon of Wooden Paddle did.  WOW is all I had to say when I watched this.  

I really don’t have much to tell you, I think you’ll get your biggest bang for your buck by simply watching their video and thinking “how can I do this.”

CLICK HERE to watch the video.

FYI there’s NOTHING holding you back from doing videos like this EVERY WEEK even if you’ve been open for 30 years.  It’s freaking free to create your own reality show online, JUST DO IT!

Day 60 – The Puzzle – Time Is On Your Side

Forget the picture above for a minute and read below before you look up.

We all have bad days.

We all have bad weeks.

We all CAN have bad months, if we allow bad weeks to add up and bring us down.

And I suppose we can have a bad year with what I mentioned above and with life events that wreak havoc. 

But right now I want you to focus on the big picture.  Whether we are talking about the sales in your business, the traction in your marketing or your weight loss journey, NOTHING worth doing happens fast and easy. 

Now LOOK UP!  Look at the picture and no it’s not an eye test but now that I look at it I’m getting dizzy 🙂

Each row is 1 year, 52 dots, 1 for each week (at least it should be, but I could have designed it wrong).

There are 15 rows, each representing a year. 

The rows are black, blue and orange to point out a 3 year increment.

FIRST = I like viewing any goal in a 3 year increment.  After reading the book Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold in 2019 I realized that was the right path for me.  WHY?  A lot can happen in 5 years, and don’t get me started on 10 or 15!  So when I look at a path to finishing a goal I know can picture what it looks like in 3 years.  Especially once you get 6 months to a year into it., you’re like “ok, 2 more of these”.  Today I’m going to run a hill twice, it’s 4.5 miles total.  When I get back up the hill after round one I’m always like “ok, 1 more time.”  I view looking at 3 year plans the same way.

SECOND = Each dot is 1 week to show you have insignificant a bad week, heck a back 5-10 weeks, REALLY IS!  Look how small of a sample size a few weeks is in 1 year, then 3 years and then 15 years!

THIRD & FINAL POINT = 15 years!  As an adult and entrepreneur I think we all have to be able to DREAM!  And I don’t know about you, but no dream I want is reachable in 3 years.  A goal, yes.  A DREAM, NO!!!!  So as I sit here at 48 years and say “I want this” I know it’s a big lift.  I know it’s a long road, but I also know I have a lot of DOTS that I can screw up on in route to this dream.  There are 52 weeks in a year, 156 weeks in 3 years and 780 weeks in 15 years.

So when I have a bad week I start to think, WHO GIVES A SHIT, it’s .0012 of the time it’s going to take me to get to my dream, it’s really really insignificant. 

FYI, go by the book Vivid Vision and READ IT ASAP!

Day 59 – The Puzzle – Rule Of 1/3’s With Restaurant Customer Acquisition & Conversion

It’s hard not to ask the question.

It’s hard not to question peoples sanity.

And it’s impossible NOT TO WONDER “where would my sales be every week IF everyone walked in?”

I get it, trust me, I REALLY REALLY get it!.  As a company we have 500 or so conversations with restaurant owners every week.  About 150 of those owners schedule a meeting.  About 100 of those owners SHOW UP (yes 50 of you skip the meeting without notice, the meeting you scheduled). And about 40% of the restaurant owners say YES.

It’s in our nature to wonder WHAT IF all 150 showed and all 150 became clients.  It’s our opportunistic side.

So when I say I can relate to you in this matter, I can.  

Restaurants that run customer acquisition marketing campaigns know my pain.  This past week I was in Virginia Beach meeting with a long time client, Dean of Firebrew Bar & Grill, and the question came up “where are the other 65% Matt ?! ”  

Dean is like you, a restaurant owner wanting to drive sales and grow his top line sales and of course net profit.  But when he looks at the prior 4 years of working with us he can’t help but think “what if the other 8,000 customers who opted into our marketing program walked into my restaurant for JUST 1 visit.  Heck, what if 4,000 of them walked in for 10 to 15 visits.  His restaurant would be double, maybe triple the size it is now and his sales problem would be GONE!

So the question comes up, why are those customers engaging in a marketing ad for the restaurant, giving us their contact information and NOT doing business with us?

At a basic level, it’s the rule of 1/3’s.  

Meaning, 1/3 of these people will NEVER be your customers, 1/3 are your best opportunity and 1/3 are stuck in the middle. 

Below is a link to a podcast I did on the topic that digs deeper into WHY, but in this blog I want to focus on another side of the equation.  I want to discuss what makes that main 1/3 easier or harder to get.

It all comes down to 3 factors:

– Type Of Food

– Level Of Service

– Location

In episode 629 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, we dig into this topic a little more, CLICK HERE and have a listen to the other side of this conversation

 

 

We’ve run over 100,000 restaurant marketing campaigns around customer acquisition.  I’d challenge more than ANYONE ELSE and what I’m about to cover is based on those results.  

This example requires to you think a little different about the bullseye.  Normally I’d show a bullseye and talk about how we are trying to build a marketing campaign to target our exact customer.  But in this example I’m going to talk about how the closer you get to the center the MORE to exclude people and the harder or more expensive it becomes to acquire customers for your restaurant.  

First is your type of food.  If you’re a burger, chicken or pizza concept then you fit to EVERYONE!  If you’re a Thai restaurant, your fit a lot less peoples taste buds.  And on top of that, the Thai eater (me) still will eat at the widely accepted food categories on the outside of the bullseye.  Think about it in the terms of 100 people:

– 80 to 90 of those people would eat anything in the orange area (burgers, pizza and chicken)

– 60 to 70 of those people would eat anything in the white area (Mexican, hot chicken)

– 30 to 40 of those people would eat in the blue area (Thai, Asian and other ethnic foods)

So if you’re running a marketing campaign for a Thai concept, you’re only relating to a fraction of the audience which leads to less opportunity and lower conversion rates.

Next, let’s dig into the type of service.  This also ties into the price of service too.  I don’t think we have to go to far into this.  Based on the economics, types of service and price point knocks people out. If you’re a fast food joint everyone is a potential client, whereas a fine dining establishment is probably only going to appeal to 10-20% of consumers.

Now let’s look at location.  I’ll use two examples here.

First is Shaheen’s restaurants.  Shaheen works for me, but before that he was a restaurant owner for 28 years.  From 2013 to 2020 when he was a client of ours he had 2 restaurants in downtown Cincinnati.  Both restaurants catered to the office workers. In fact one restaurant, Simply Grand Cafe, was on the 1st floor of Great American Insurance’s global HQ.  So 95% of his customers were always going to come from that company.  His other restaurant was Burrito Joe’s one block away.  That business had a broader range of office workers to choose from since his location was more central to other office buildings.  

BUT with a location that appeals to only office workers, you lose a lot of people, which is why Shaheen was closed from dinner and on the weekends. 

My second example is a former client of ours that had a fast food chicken tender concept off the expressway ramp where consumers live.  This location was EASY to get to and was off the exit people take to go home, in fact it was on the right side where you turned to head home, so they had the best of both worlds.  And they are located in a place where there’s also a decent amount of commerce and business traffic.  PLUS people who didn’t work near the location were passing it twice per day.  

Shaheen only has a chance at lunch for his downtown location typically once per week.  But the chicken tender spot has a captive audience all week.  Here’s the breakdown on 100 people:

– 80 to 90 of those people are around the chicken tender brand every day because they live in the area

– 50 to 60 of those people are around the chicken tender brand 5 days per week because they work there PLUS it’s an easy “take home to the family product for dinner”

– 20 to 30 of those people are around Shaheens downtown spot when he’s open. 

SOOOOO with the breakdown out of the way here’s an easy way to wrap a bow around this.

If you are advertising for customers and you are a restaurant with an appealing food type, service/price point and location you are RELATING to 80-90% of those people seeing your ads.  Whereas, if you’re a restaurant with a more specific type of food, with a higher price point in an urban area you are only going to appeal to 30-40% of the customers seeing your marketing. 

This does two things.  First, it costs you more to get the right people since you have waste on your ads.  Second, you have lower redemption rates on your offers since people don’t make it to your location as often or don’t dine in that segment as often as others.