Day 57 – The Puzzle – Restaurant Customers Lifetime Values…A Missing Puzzle Piece

It’s not always what you expect.

Late last night David, Peter and myself flew to Virginia Beach to film episode 4 of The Heroes Of Hospitality, link below.

I had a picture in my mind how the 2 days of filming would go.

To me it was a pretty simple task, sit down and have a conversation with a client of 4 years about where this marketing relationship started in June 2020, where we are now in June 2024 and where we MUST get to for all future Junes 🙂

Dean is by far one of our most analytical clients.

You see, a few years ago Dean was the subject of a VERY in depth team meeting. He’d made some observations about the marketing we were doing together that some of us didn’t agree with.

Had this been a few years earlier I would have thought “WHAT, how does he not see what we are doing. Why’s he questioning these results.”

But I’d evolved as a marketer, entrepreneur and CEO. “This Matt” said AWESOME, this is exactly what we need. We need clients questioning our results, our theories and ideas. We need clients to push us to new limits and ones to FORCE us to make constant improvement.”

Flash forward to 2024 and we’re in a meeting planning out the Docu Series and the ideal clients to use as case studies for each side of the company. Dean was #1 on my list!

WHY?

You see, one of Dean’s major questions of us has always been “what’s the LTV of these customers? I’m sure many of them are coming back, but how often and what are the sales..”

For 4 years we’ve helped Dean drive $408,538 in sales through our restaurant customer acquisition marketing program. This program has accumulated over 3,000,000 (YES MILLION ) Facebook impressions that have lead to 43,006 post engagements.

But more importantly those engagements have built a database of 13,113 for his restaurant.

AND those customers are the ones who drove the $408,538 from 7,723 visits.

So yes AWESOME results, but WHAT ABOUT after those first visits?

Think about it, those 7,723 visits could have generated 1 visit more in 4 years or 70,000 visits?

That was the issue Dean had, HE DID NOT KNOW!

And this my friends is why we acquired Repeat Returns, a restaurant marketing software that follows your customers AFTER those initial visits (which is what we specialize in).

NOW WE CAN ANSWER THAT and that’s why we flew to Virginia Beach, to meet with Dean and see how his first two months on the Repeat Returns software was going and if it was answering his questions.

What he did next BLEW ME AWAY and it’s in this video,CLICK HERE to watch!

Day 56 – The Puzzle – How A Local TV Station Got DOMINATED By A Mom & Pop Restaurant

Local 12, the CBS TV station in Cincinnati has 746,000 followers.  Biggins Diggins a one location independent restaurant in Massachusetts has 5,200 followers.

So how did this small Mom & Pop restaurant with following 143 X smaller kick their ass on the posts below?

Well it’s actually quite simple, but let’s break down why I think this happened with my top 5 reasons…

1st – TV is DEAD!  Channel 12 may be a big bad media company backed with big bucks, but their time is past them.  

2nd – Channel 12 and other new channels are not the primary news source online for consumers.  They get some attention, but much.  While big media companies were busy ignoring the internet in the 2000’s, consumers and online media outlets became the leader in supplying news.

3rd – The story they posted is about a cable show.  First I’ve gotta say, I love Guy Fieri, the show and what he’s done for the restaurant industry, but CABLE was dead 5 years ago.  Triple D is a badass show, but it’s on a medium that people simply don’t watch anymore and with each day that passes they become more and more irrelevant.

4th – Consumers now have direct access to the news source.  Like I mentioned in point #2 above, WE have become today’s news outlet.  You and I, our business pages and online companies like America’s Best Restaurants.  We have more of an influence over people that TV and Cable TV.

5th – The source.  People LOVE other people and they want to see you win.  The video by Biggins Diggins shows 2 people that are a part of that community and they will get behind that more than they will posts like Channel 12 made.

 

Now let’s examine one big factor that many restaurants don’t seem to take into account.

It’s 2024, what you have in your MIND of what a “TV” station is, IS NO MORE!

TV and Cable are dead, and this thing called Social Media is the new TV station. 

Let me give you an example.  There’s a friend of mine that is for some reason fixated with being featured on Triple D.  He’s always talking about it in videos and making posts about getting people to tag Guy so he can get on the show. The funny thing is, his videos about Guy will get more local views that being on DDD 🙂

Is DDD a badass show, yes.  

Is Guy THE MAN, yes.

Is one of my goals to get Guy as a spokesperson for the ABR Roadshow and America’s Best Restaurants, YES!

But, that doesn’t take away from the facts.  

WE DON’T WATCH CABLE TV ANY LONGER!

Now will being on DDD hurt this restaurant, of course not, there will be a lot of benefits, but NO WHERE close to what he thinks.

Show’s like DDD are easy, really easy to beat at a local level with viewers that are LOCAL!  A show like DDD might have big nationwide #’s, but when you break it down it’s literally a few hundred around your restaurant. 

Now take a video like the one below from Biggins Diggins, that sits with 13,000 plays in less than 24 hours.  Videos like that get 75-85% local views, meaning the reach of this 1 live Facebook video on the restaurants Facebook page will reach 10x+ more than if the appeared on a national televised TV show.  

And the video doesn’t go away, in fact it can and will get better.  

A TV episode only gets seen when it airs, which might be 1-2 times per year.  A video on your restaurants Facebook page doesn’t go away.  It has what we call in the marketing world “evergreen” opportunity.  A video like this on Facebook will gain viewers over a few weeks, Instagram over a few months and YouTube over years.  Plus, you can and SHOULD put a small advertising budget behind it and make it stick around longer. 

And if I didn’t make a big enough point there, let me give you my experience.  

On March 5th 2023 at 9pm I was a guest on one of my favorite all time shows on the History Channel, The Food That Built America.  I was featured in the show 21 times I believe and got a TON of camera time. I was IMPOSSIBLE to miss.  It was a blast and an honor.  They replay the prior weeks episodes every Sunday, so for 6 months on Sundays my episode aired with all the others. 

This was a big honor to be invovled in a show like this.  I was in the company of rockstars like Adam Richmond, who wouldn’t be proud.  

But I quietly wondered if it would do anything or our business.  My team and I were curious how much this national exposure benefit for our company.

It’s been 15 months since the show aired and it’s aired no less than 50 times on the History Channel and it’s done NOTHING for us 🙁

I’m being dead serious when I say nothing.  I’ve had aprox 20 people text or tag me on Social Medai regarding the show.  I get an occasional text with a picture of me on the TV and a friend saying “I know Matt Plapp”.  

And all of this makes complete sense, the show airs on Cable TV and NOBODY WATCHES CABLE TV!

Now let’s take the fight ONLINE vs on TV, since we’ve already established we no longer watch TV.

As you can see above, this HUGE well funded media company can’t beat out the local restaurants video :). Heck, even on their video in the bottom middle with is a PAID feature, they only have 1,600 video views 🙂

They have a Facebook audience that’s 143X larger and a TV presence EVERY DAY hyping their socials.  Yet a local restaurant with an audience a fraction of their size is DOMINATING THEM!

My friends, you have to update your thinking.  You have to think about where we are TODAY.  We are not on sofas watching tv.  When we are on a sofa it’s on a streaming service and our phones.  And the vast majority of the content we consume now is on our phone and away from the home.  

I’ll leave you with this.  

As I mentioned in episode 622 of my podcast, you can get MASSIVE attention, when you mix in some excitement.  And in the video that sparked this conversation, linked below, they are announcing something exciting to their fans.  The owners are giving great news to the people that support them the most and more importantly THEY control the story and get all of the engagement on their platform.

If they can beat the TV and Cable stations, so can you!

 

Day 55 – The Puzzle – Why Does Your Restaurants Marketing Suck?

This is the “STAT” line from a Facebook post made 24 hours ago by a LEGACY awesome restaurant in Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky.

They have 23,000 fans and yet only 6 engaged.

That’s .00026% of their fan base.  

Not 1%

Not a tenth of .1%

Not a tenth of a tenth .01%

Heck not event a tenth of a tenth of a tenth .001%

Now, I don’t claim to know math but I think what I typed above is correct, and if not I think you get the point.  

Basically NO BODY engaged with this post.  

And the bigger reason for that is due to more than likely NO BODY seeing the post.

And the major faction in that, is they’ve not only lost the attention of their fan base on Facebook, but they’ve lost the algorithm. 

In Episode 622 of my podcast Restaurant Marketing Secrets I talk about this and how a local restaurant uncovered PART of the secret sauce, CLICK HERE to listen.

Now Facebook is simply one part of the equation and just because you suck at Facebook doesn’t mean you suck at marketing, BUT it’s a very telling peak into how you market.  

So back to the question, “Why does your restaurants marketing suck?”

In my opinion the answer is found in education and implementation.  

Think about it.  

Why is someone massively overweight?  They’ve not educated themselves on nutrition and exercise.  And over and above that, if they have, then they have failed to take the proper action.  

Why is someone broke, AKA has NO MONEY?  It’s the exact thing, they’ve not taken the time to either figure out why and how, or taken the steps to get UN…BROKE.

People who know and don’t take action, that’s beyond me. I simply don’t understand that, but that’s for another blog post.

So with regards to your restaurants marketing, I simply think you don’t know.  

Restaurant owners are some of the hardest working people I’ve seen in my entire life. I think the root of the problem is that many of you still think of marketing from the 1990’s as marketing.  Back then you bought commercial space from a media company.  And then they helped you design an advertisement. 

That’s not how it works today.  Todays platforms like Facebook are not advertising companies first, they are social platforms first.  Email marketing was not built for you to sell shit, it was built for you to COMMUNICATE.

I could go on and on, but the core issues is that you think every place you can put your message is a radio station or newspaper and IT”S NOT!  

Marketing in 2024 is night and day from 1994.  Back most of what you did within your “marketing plan” was paid advertising and YES that’s how you should have used those platforms.  

But in 2024 your marketing can’t always be advertising, that’s just not how the world works now. And you, as a restaurant owner have to pick up books like the one below and RETRAIN your brain.

Day 54 – The Puzzle – You Must Demand THIS From Your Restaurants Marketing Plan

Marketing isn’t just making a Facebook post every day.

It’s not just sending an email to send an email.

It’s not waking up on February 10th and saying “what are we doing for Valentine’s Day this year, how about this?”

And more importantly it’s not something you do and don’t have expectations, DEMANDS actually. 

I’m of the opinion that anything worth doing, is worth measuring and when I see the state of restaurant marketing today it’s apparent I don’t share that mindset with most restauants.

First, you must have a goal for your business.  Next you must have a marketing plan to help with that goal.  And finally you must have some DEMANDS from that marketing plan

As an example, one of those demands should be a trackable path, AKA restaurant marketing funnel, for the marketing efforts.

I went down a rabbit hole the other day of looking at what restaurants do on Facebook on VERY EASY “marketing holidays” to get attention.  But more importantly I wanted to know what their FUNNEL was. 

As I suspected, most just make a post with a weak call to action.  No tools to take advantage of engagement and no way to measure if it was effective.  In fact the only measuring stick they have is seeing it got NO engagement.  

AND GOD FORBID they have a funnel that leads to trackable sales.

THEN I looked at another marketing campaign that was planned, executed at a high level and measured.

It was a restaurants post for “National Pet Day” on April 11th.  The post was made on April 8th, but planned well in advance.  Planning this allowed for amazing graphics to be created, a solid CTA and a traffic driving strategy to be put in place. 

Over the next week I’m going to talk about my “Restaurant Marketing Demands” and today we’ll start with my FIRST DEMAND…

MEASUREMENT OF SUCCESS!

Let’s talk about what you should DEMAND from a simple 1 off marketing campaign like this and what happened.

#1 – You should demand it get attention, eyeballs!

#2 – You should demand it get’s engagement!

#3 – You should demand a path where that engagement equals customers opting into your restaurants marketing program

#4 – You should demand your restaurants marketing program have trackable systems in place to know who’s in your funnel, when they visit, when they don’t visit, etc. (more on that on the next blog).

SOOOOOO, what happened with this campaign?

But first, here’s how we build our campaigns

We make an organic Facebook post, then we put a $25 ad behind it targeting one of their custom audiences.  Next we send either a text, email or messenger campaign.  In this one we used Facebook Messenger.

No onto the stats (some images below.

#1 – EYEBALLS = It had 3,753 impressions and 2,605 people reached on the post.  It was aprox a 50/50 split between organic and paid traffic.  Now keep in mind, 2,605 LOCAL CUSTOMERS is a solid solid number.  Too many times we think posts need a HUGE audience, but I think you’d all welcome 2,605 customers walking through your doors soon :). The Messenger broadcast (pictured below) had a 76% open rate and reached 2,034 people.  We don’t have anyway to cross reference the audience from each, so I can’t even guess what the duplication would be.

#2 – FINGERS…AKA clicks, comments, shares AKA ENGAGEMENTS = 521 Facebook post engagements including 218 comments and 226 clicks.  The messenger broadcast had a 7% click through rate, which is HUGE.  Emails commonly get under a 1% click through rate.  This one had 191 clicks!!!

#3 – DATA = Aprox 53 people joined their restaurants customer marketing program through these engagements.  Now a single social media campaign takes some WORK to drill down to sales in our system right now.  WHY?  Because many of these campaigns are bulked together since they are all part of a bigger picture.  We are working on a better tracking solution for our new platform, so stay tuned.  BUT as I’m typing this I did a little leg work to simply grab a little data for you, plus it’s LATE at night and I’m tired.  In the week around the promo aprox 15 NEW customers walked into restaurant as a result of this post and spent around $525.  

$500 FREAKING DOLLARS IN SALES FROM A PET CAMPAIGN!

DEMAND RESULTS!

A simple 1-off campaign reached a few thousand people, got around 800 people to engage and drove 15 BRAND NEW customers in to spend $525.  

HMMMMM, what if they did that EVERY WEEK?

But more importantly, what if they are like many of you and don’t have a plan set up to KNOW that happened, then they’d never know if they should do these more often.

Day 52 – The Puzzle – Do You Want To Be The Songs Or The Commercial Break?

The irony of situations in life makes you smile.

This morning it took me changing the station 3 times to land on my 4th pick, 103.5 WGRR to find a song.  Why’s this ironic?  WGRR is where I started my career in marketing back in 1999.

Here’s why I’m telling you this.

While driving to the office today my blue tooth was off, so I reverted to good ole fashioned radio vs messing with hooking it up while driving. When I it the “band” button it started me off on 700 WLW.  That station was on commercial break, so I hit 550 WRKC, again commercial break.  Next I thought, let’s listen to some sports radio, maybe they’ll be talking about the Celtics game last night….COMMERCIAL.  Ok, maybe, just maybe WGRR is playing music.  

BINGO!  They’re playing Prince, turn it up and keep driving. 

BUT THEN IT HITS ME!

This is the problem with restaurants and how they use Social Media.  They are the commercial EVERY POST!

Let me ask you a question, how many likes, comments and shares do your Facebook posts get, basically NONE right?  Most restaurants get under 1% engagement on all of their Facebook posts.  WHY IS THAT?  

First, it’s because your customers tuned you out a while ago

Second, it’s because the algorithm saw that your customers tuned you out and did the same.

Meaning, by you treating every social media post like a radio commercial EVERY POST, you’ve effectively ruined the your Facebook following.

BUT there’s hope!!!!

You can easily reverse this, you just need to start using Social Media correctly and we teach exactly that in the ABR U RGA Guide.  This is a paid DIY course and 400 page guide that will help you learn how to take your social media, email and text marketing to a whole new level.

CLICK HERE to buy your guide today.

In episode 618 of my podcast, Restaurant Marketing Secrets, I talk about the journey in my car from my house to the office, HAVE A LISTEN, CLICK HERE!


Day 51 – The Puzzle – I Was Wrong About Building Your Brand…Kind Of

The fact is BRAND drives sales.  

Brand makes customer acquisition 1,000,000 times easier, but most of us never make it to the level of brand that we need for that. Especially local restaurants. 

Think about it this way.  When Apple announces a new iPhone there’s ZERO sales pitch and in many case no info, yet their customers FLOCK to buy it.  When Nike rolls out a new Air Jordan shoe, same thing.  People line-up to buy the shoes sight unseen.  When Tesla showcased an insane cybertruck to it’s fans, they had 1 million pre-orders in year one and 2 million by year two!  NONE of that happens without a BRAND that people love and support, and building a brand takes a LOT of marketing.

And I know what you’ll say along with that “Matt we are not Apple, Nike or Tesla”, we’re a small independent restaurant. I get that, but honestly you have it much easier.  You don’t need to sell people worldwide, you just need to dominate a few miles around your restaurant.  Y

S0 why aren’t customers rushing to try your new dish, your new trivia night, etc?  It’s because your brand is not big enough and you don’t command the level of respect you need to get those lines.   You’ve never consistently done the leg work on the streets, through digital marketing and in your store.  Yes, you’ve had spurts of hustle, but it can’t happen occasionally, it has to happen ALL THE TIME and when you see traction you go HARDER!  You never stop!

For years I’ve been preaching the reasons you need to build a brand and I’m here today with my tail between my legs to tell you I was wrong.  You don’t need to focus on building a brand, you need to focus on DRIVING SALES and then allow the marketing that drives sales to slowly build your brand.  What I know is possible for all of you, simply isn’t on your priority list and it took me 9 years to realize that. 

I’ve been wasting my time with so many restaurant owners, trying to get them to do what I want with regards to social media.  Every 10th client will listen and see massive results and that’s what I would always lean into.  But then one day I thought “Matt, that means 9 are not listening, or don’t give a shit.”

So that forced me to sit back and re-evaluate our company goals. It made me ask myself a deep question, WHY don’t restaurant owners care about building a brand.

The answer, you need sales now.  They need relief from the pressure of not having money to pay themselves and their bills.  The restaurants that have taken my advice to heart are in a much different financial position.  They have the room to breathe, and that gives them the patience to focus on building the brand.  

David Scott Peters always says in his seminars when asked what owners should focus on first, marketing or operations “BOTH.  It’s the chicken and the egg.  You have to do both.”  And as I sat in Las Vegas at his most recent Restaurant Transformation Seminar I thought about what he said and realized that when owners ask that question they are talking about marketing that drives sales NOW, not in 3-5 years like branding will do.  

So with that we changed our company tag line to “Drive Sales & Build Brand.”  We decided to go all in on creating a restaurant marketing platform that is focused 100% on driving sales. 

But the good news is, that when done right (how we’ll show you), you’ll also be slowly building your brand.  And my hope is that after a few years of consistent sales growth and a renewed belief in marketing that you’ll say “I get it, I have the time and breathing room and NOW I’m going on all in on my brand.”

See you tomorrow,

Matt

Day 50 – The Puzzle – Building A Platform That Drives Predictable Restaurant Sales

This was a note I made in my journal:

“We need your help to build a product that helps you drive predictable sales on demand while you accidently build a brand” … at least that’s what I meant to write 🙂

I made this note as the headline of the video I want to make for a survey to send to our restaurant clients.  The goal is to find out what they love, like, don’t like and hate about our services.  But it was to also give them a vision for the changes we want to make.  We are taking Repeat Returns Software and Restaurant Marketing That Works, my restaurant agency, and combining them into the Ultimate Restaurant Marketing Platform.

I want a platform that allows restaurants to plug in their current sales and their sales goal in 24-36 months and have numbers spit back at them of what it will take to get there.  As in “you need 3,546 more loyalty members to hit that number.” 

I want a platform where a restaurant can go in and create a campaign that will drive a predictable result every day, you know “I need $1,000 more in dinner sales today…CLICK.”

I want a platform that automatically creates a marketing plan every day for 50% of your database, so they are on a specific path based on their use of your restaurant.

I want a platform that is easy for you to see your ROI in every funnel.

I want. a platform that you trust, one that creates massive belief in your eyes for the power of marketing.

I want a platform that when the clock strikes MIDNIGHT your marketing dashboard creates a plan for the next day where 7% the customers in your database are in a funnel for that day.  That would leave 51% to be marketed to that week with a unique one off program and you’d have your bases covered 52 weeks per year FOR YOU!

I could go on and on about what I want, but at the end of the day I’ll need to merge that with what YOU WANT!  What restaurant owners want in order to get what they need, SALES!

Day 46 – The Puzzle – Another 48 Years, That’s How Long

HOW LONG WILL I WORK?

That was the question that hit me this morning as I was leaving a business meeting and observed an older gentleman jogging through Loveland.

When I saw him jogging, weights in hand, I thought “I wonder how old he is?  Probably 70-75, he looks good.  But I wonder, what’s he do all day…what would I want to do all day then?”

And with that the thought popped into my head “how long will I work and what’s possible?” 

I just turned 48 last week and I can see the effects of not working, not thinking, not grinding has on people.  When you stop or even slow down YOU GET OLD!  And I don’t want to get OLD like that.  

Plus I freaking love the conversations I get to have with restaurant owners and other entrepreneurs. Just yesterday I got to spend some time with a good friend of mine, Jim, who was in town for a conference.  We spent about 90 minutes together and the conversation was amazing. The insights he gave me, the energy I pulled from him, ALL TOP NOTCH!

Then later in the afternoon I hopped on a call with my team and two restaurant owners.  During that call I got the exact same feeling.  I WAS ALIVE!  Talking about what I love, restaurant marketing, and helping small business owners get what they want out of it.  Plus, the collaborative conversation we had is what really fuels me.  

So with that thought this morning it instantly hit me “How old is Warren Buffet?  That dude is a freaking rockstar and he’s got to be pushing 90.  If he can be that damn sharp and impactful at that age, so can I.”

So off to Google and BOOM, he’s 93…according to Google (sidebar, crazy how we instantly trust one source these days right).

Now the question some people will have is “why would you want to work until you are in your 90’s?”  My answer, TO STAY SHARP!  To keep my brain running full speed and squeeze every ounce out of life.  Now will I be putting in 60-80 hour weeks and traveling all the time at that point, of course not.  But I will be contributing to the vision of this company, YES YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT, this company!  Selling to the highest bidder doesn’t appeal to me, building a legacy like Warren and Charlie did DOES!  I want to drive down streets and see campuses with our company brands on them.  I want to fly to conferences that we own. I want to see millionaires come out of our companies, and I want to do it for the next 48 yerars.

See you tomorrow. 

Day 45- The Puzzle – My Biggest Puzzle Piece EVER, Employee #1 Ashley

12 years and 11 months ago the plan CHANGED!

In 2008 when I decided to start this company I was adamant on being a “one man show” and have NO EMPLOYEES!  At our boat dealership the prior 9 years I’d seen first hand how hard it was to manage people and more than that, how bad I was at hiring the right people.  So when I started the goal was simple, just me.

WELLLL within 2 years I could see how that was a terrible idea.  I could start to see the cracks forming, the work piling up and wall that I was about to hit.  So in early 2011 I decided Batman needed a Robin.  I knew that in order to over deliver to clients and help more small business owners that I needed someone by my side, someone that could keep up with me and honestly, PUT UP WITH ME 🙂

One of the big reasons I dreaded hiring an employee was from my prior bad experiences of hiring at our Boat Dealership.  Everyone I’d ever hired, basically got FIRED…literally.  I don’t know what it was about my past of hiring, but I seemed to not be too good at it.

That was until NOW!  

Or maybe I got damn lucky.

In the Spring of 2011 I stood up at weekly BNI meeting at asked for what would become the MOST VALUABLE REFERRAL EVER!  The ask was simple “I’m looking for someone who’s computer savy, understands Facebook, learns fast and who would like to work 5-10 hours per week starting off and work towards full-time.”

As luck would have it Peggy Sparks, who was one of the top members in our group and a rockstar referrer said “I’ve got a referral for you, it’s my daughter Ashley.”

And like that, I had a lead.  I had someone who might end up being my Robin, but could she keep up and handle my interesting nuances 🙂

The meeting was set, Tuesday May 31st, Panera Bread in Crestview Hills Town Center. 

The meeting was simple, she was actually on her way to the pool to relax for the day and the meeting went great.  I wasn’t concerned with resumes or past experience, the proof would be in the pudding as they say.  I emailed Ashley logins for a few clients Constant Contact email accounts and instructed her to look at what I’d created in the past and give it her best shot.  

I figured it would take a few days and didn’t expect a lot, to be quite honest I wasn’t really sure what I was going to get back from her.  Up to that point I controlled everything and delegating the marketing of our clients seemed like an impossible task. Then a few short hours later BAM, an email arrives and DAMN is it good.  Actually, it was AMAZING!

It was better than anything I would have done and I DIDN’T have to do the work!  

And with that, Ashley was hired!

She started off at 5-10 hours, then quickly moved to 20-30 hours and by the end of the year she was FULL TIME!  

How I got so lucky with my first ever hire for this company is beyond me, but I’m damn glad I did.  As I sit here today, 12 years and 11 months after she started June 22nd 20211 I am beyond thankful for what she’s done for me, this company, our clients and her co-workers.

To say Ashley is a ROCK STAR would be an understatement.  What she’s become within our company is what building a business is all about.  

And she did this without much direction from me. I’ve never been an overbearing micro manager, I’m quite the opposite.  Which, ironically has caused our only two flare ups in 13 years.  

As I was typing yesterdays blog about what’s happened since the NRA show in 2015 to now, I can’t help but think NONE OF IT would have been possible without Ashley. 

I can still remember my excitement in 2016 when I figured out the ROI Engine and Ashley and I met at the gym office to review it.  I sat down with her to show her the marketing automation I’d built in Zapier and what the future was going to be for our company.  She would later tell me on her drive home she called her husband crying that scared she’d be fired because what I just showed her was not something she understood. 

Well, that was short lived.  Within weeks she was crushing it and that allowed me to put my energy in other places.  And ever since that day, that’s how it’s been.  Matt creates something, Ashley makes it happen and Matt moves onto the next idea.  

Today Ashley leads the entire marketing company and software.  She’s the driving force behind what will become the ultimate restaurant marketing platform.  One that drives sales to restaurants where they need it the most.  

Peggy (Ashley’s mom) THANK YOU.  Your referral that day in BNI is easily the most valuable referral EVER in the history of BNI.

Ashley, THANK YOU. 

Thank you for being a rock star.

Thank you for putting up with my lack of leadership and directions.

Thank you for staying by my side as we’ve navigated rocky waters the past few years.

And thank you for always being willing to learn something new and run full steam ahead.

 

Day 44 – The Puzzle – My Dream For Restaurant Marketing And What We Are Building

The journey of building this company and the services we offer to restaurants has been quite a journey.

Back in 2015 when I realized I’d created something unique for restaurant marketing, I thought “what if I had a brewery in every state using my system.”  You see, back then I had 9 restaurants as clients, 3 breweries and 6 others.  We had 1 deli style restaurant, a 4 casual dining restaurants, 3 breweries and 1 fast casual concept that we were helping to market.  I was their “at large marketing director” and Ashley was my team member who helped me carry out their ENTIRE marketing plan (my 1st employee and only one then).  I bought their mass media, spending North of $1.3 million annually for them, I created the marketing strategy, I kept them ahead of the technology curve, we did their graphic design, sent their emails, managed their social media and at the end of the day IMPLEMENTED EVERYTHING!

You could say that Ashley and I were their marketing department, and we loved it.  

When I say we did EVERYTHING for these restaurants that would be an understatement.  

CLICK BELOW to check out a Facebook Live in did for them in March 2014, yes we were doing LIVES and video 10 years ago for restaurants:)

 I would do every month for each of the 3 Hobrauhaus Breweries we worked with.  I knew the importance of video marketing back then (you know the stuff most restaurants STILL are not doing) and I also saw the power of using Facebook Live to own our own “media outlet.  So every opportunity I had, I did live and recorded videos for our 9 restaurant clients.  This was the Newport location who had a Keg Tapping the last Wednesday of every month.  I would show up and broadcast it live on their Facebook page from my iPad and then download the file and make a quick video in the restaurant that night to post the next day to hype of the new beer and use as the post for a paid ad that month.   And yes it’s grainy, nowhere close to perfect and it’s really poor editing by todays standards.  BUT we were the only ones doing it and these videos would DRIVE sales and customer traffic.

And on April 26th 2015 all of that changed. 

It all changed with one promotion.

That day was national pretzel day and up until that point I’d never had a promotion that gained such TRACKABLE traction.  Meaning, we could 100% see that it drove traffic and sales.  We saw $18,000 in incresed sales only from that lame “show this Facebook post or email” to get this offer promo.

When I saw how well it did and realized “what if I knew who all of those 500 or customers were?”  

Meaning:

– what if I knew their name

– how often they visited

– when they were 1st time customers

– when they went missing AKA stopped coming to the restaurant

– when were their birthdays

– why they came to the restaurant (bier, music, food, etc)

– And WHAT IF I could use social media to gain the customer data needed to build this program….

The ideas started to flood in.  And I wondered HOW could I take this promo to the next level with all of our restaurant clients.  But more importantly I also realized that much of what worked for my restaurant clients was due to massive insights we were gaining every week by having 9 total.  You see, at this time I was a local marketing firm with 34 clients who had 200 or so locations across 31 industries.  So many times, we were re-creating the wheel for each client every new promotion since what worked for a restaurant did not necessarily work for a car dealership.

But when I did something for 1 of the restaurants, it typically worked for all 9 of them.  

So with this idea I figured there was only one place to go to find the solution I needed, the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago in mid May, just a few weeks away.  I thought that a show dedicated to the restaurant business boasting 4,000 exhibitors and close to 400 marketing/technology booths surely the software I needed build this marketing program.

Below is a picture of my very first NRA show on my Birthday in 2015!

As I walked the show floor I was AMAZED!  

The marketing companies and marketing technology were so far behind.  I had booths bragging to me about their direct mail strategies, ones we were doing 7 years earlier when I started my company.  

There was NO ONE there for Social Media! 

NO ONE talking about customer engagement online!

NO ONE talking about how to gain customer data!

 NO ONE talking about customer acquisition and ROI.

In fact when I mentioned marketing ROI they looked a me like a dog when it turns it’s head sideways. 

I’ll never forget the conversation I had with the only loyalty and technology booth that impressed me.  I told him I was looking for software that could be triggered through a comment on Facebook, which took the customer to SOMEWHERE and we would get them to give us their name, phone number, birthday and email address.  Then we would put them into an email and text marketing campaign that had trackable promotions they could redeem.  Then I could segment the database and funnel the best customers into a loyalty program and the others would be in a marketing funnel based on their frequency.  The guy looked at me like I was on drugs and said “that doesn’t exist and it’s not possible.”  In fact most of the marketers I spoke with at the show could not figure out why I’d want to have a program that showed the sales that came from the marketing campaigns.  They were honestly scared to have their clients understand the ROI.  

I guess the big difference between me and them was the fact that I looked at marketing success and failure the same.  If we were not getting the ROI we needed on a campaign, we optimized it.  They looked at it as “oh shit, this client is going to fire us.”  And now 9 years later I get it, I understand why they were scared to have that level of marketing transparency with their restaurant clients. Restaurants simply did not understand marketing at this level.

So as I headed home to NKY from Chicago I called everyone I knew in the business, excited and bummed by what I’d found out.  First I was bummed since what I went to the show for apparently did not exist. But next I was excited to prove these people wrong and create what I knew could exist.  

It took me 2 years to create it and I called it the ROI Engine. The ROI Engine was a one of kind restaurant marketing customer acquisition took leveraging Facebook and Instagram to build a customer database and then drive them into the restaurant with trackable marketing promotions.  The idea was simple, we’ll leverage the front-end advertising restaurants should be doing anyways (like Facebook ads) to “double dip” and gain customers contact information.  Then we’ll use that to email and text them one off promotions to gain the sales needed on the frontend to recoup our advertising spend and second to prove we had the right customers on our email and text list.  

In fact, my first book, Don’t 86 Your Restaurant Sales, was based on the entire program.  I spent 1st Quarter of 2018 writing the book, 2nd Quarter proofing and tweaking and then it was launched in August of 2018. 

By the time the book was published we had restaurant clients from all over the USA.  From 2015 to 2018 I spent 3 years building a new company 100% dedicated to helping restaurants and winding down my highly successful local marketing firm. It was a crazy tough decision.  I’d become such good friends with my local clients like Evans Auto Care and Jeff Wyler Automotive Group that I didn’t know how to end these relationships and walk away.  Slowly but surely we did it and It was nerve racking. 

And the crazy part was, I found out along the way why all the marketing and tech firms from the 2015 NRA show wanted NOTHING to do with showing proof.  

Since 2008 every local client we helped with marketing viewed us much differently than the restaurants who hired us for the “ROI Engine Program.”  Our local clients viewed us as their marketing partner.  The bad results were not a reflection on us, just the result of trial and error.  And we used good and bad to optimize the marketing plan.  We were a part of their teams and we NEVER LOST A CLIENT!  Firing Matt Plapp wasn’t an option, we were too valuable. 

But that was the exact opposite with our nationwide restaurant marketing program.  You see, these restaurants only viewed us as a vendor, not a partner.  And if there was a bump in the road, YOU’RE FIRED!  In fact we lost all 19 of our first 19 restaurant clients within 6 months.  And what was even crazier about that was their results were great.  

The issue was, restaurant owners did not understand the type of marketing we were doing.  They were so accustomed to either seeing no form of tracking with their marketing or massive shot in the arm results like Groupon.  They were only comfortable with knowing nothing, or seeing crazy results from one of marketing campaigns like Groupon that did not help the restaurant long term, but drove cash in today.  

It was scary as shit for me.  To think that I’d just stopped working with 30 clients that understood our vision and goals to go all in with restaurants that didn’t grasp what it takes to drive sales long term with their marketing.  

In 2020 I got smacked in the face with this harder than ever.  I had a client in Washington who was spending $6,000 per month on radio ads for their multi location pizza chain with zero proof it was working, yet when we showed them how the $30,000 they spent with us and Facebook in prior 12 months turned into $400,000 in sales THEY FIRED US!

Have a look for yourself below at their customer acquisition dashboard.  1 MILLION social media impressions in a year that gained a database of 17,000 and drove 11,000 visits and $400,000 in sales, and that was ONLY THE FRONT END!  I was blown away…sorry the image is kind of dull, it was a screenshot from when the client did a testimonial video on our marketing program while we were in Washington meeting with them after working together for 12 months.  A month after this video they cancelled and my mind WAS BLOWN!  

To be 100% honest with you, it was the biggest gut punch ever.  But not because we lost them as a client. It was tough because I could not grasp how someone would see these results and not think the glass is HALF EMPTY.

The sales we’d driven while also growing a massive database AND getting them the most social media exposure they’d ever had.  CLICK HERE to watch a case study video on their program, it’s WILD.  But like all failures, this was a learning lesson.  This showed me that no matter how awesome our front-end marketing was, we had to be able to show the ENTIRE story, which is why we acquired Repeat Returns in November 2023.  We had to be able to show the customers lifetime journey. 

This was when I truly understood what was wrong with restaurant owners and the industry.  They were so scorn from marketing of the past, so behind the times and so committed to todays results, that they could not understand how to create a long term marketing relationship with a vendor like us.  

Now, here we are in 2024 and my company has grown from Ashley and myself to 64 team members.  And I once again find myself at the NRA Show in Chicago.  It’s 9 years late and the same is true, the marketing companies here DO NOT GET IT!

Yes, there are some badass loyalty programs here.  

There are some POS companies that are highly advanced.  

And yet, no one is talking about customer acquisition.  No one is talking about customer ATTENTION retention, you know NOT being forgotten.  No one is talking about how to leverage social media, email, text and messenger marketing.  

Then it hit me, we are just that far ahead and what comes next from our company will SHOCK the industry.  But honestly they won’t truly even understand that for another 9 years.  

In July we are going to roll out our new company, new brand and crazy new platform.  It will be the product of merging Repeat Returns restaurant marketing software with our marketing services firm Restaurant Marketing That Works. 

We will create an industry first restaurant marketing platform that gives restaurant owners predictable marketing funnels that drive sales EVERY DAY.  They will wake up every morning and have a daily marketing plan built for them that takes customers on a journey to visit more often, spend more when they visit and COME BACK when they forget about the restaurant. 

And maybe in 9 more years in 2033 when I visit the National Restaurant Association Show there will be 10 booths knocking of what we’ve built and restaurants will FNALLY understand what I figured out in 2015.