Does your website pay for its dinner or is it there just for decoration?

• Location: 

  South West, Exeter

• Posted: 15/10/2009 16:04

Why would a restaurant owner decide to spend money marketing his website when old media is the norm? Surely putting ads in a local newspaper would get a far better return? The restaurant business is no walk in the park but marketing it in the right way will produceyou a long term business.

Scenario No.1. You open your restaurant, you advertise in the local newspapers and it goes well for the first few months and then starts to dwindle and you notice some of your regulars aren’t there anymore. So you advertise more. Again business improves but the same thing happens again and then again and your advertising budget increases but your customers dwindle your home recipes just are not the success you thought they were.

Scenario No.2. Let’s take the restaurant who saw marketing over the internet as the answer to help create a great customer service and a long term business. After the 1st month in business the owners of the restaurant asked their customers what would they like to see more of there was a huge demand for an affordable/cheap but quality breakfast with all the works, 2 pieces of bacon, 2 ‘proper’ sausages, 2 free range eggs, toast, mushrooms and tomatoes, proper coffee or tea (who said the lettuce leaf breakfast was taking over??) They then asked their customers how much? The general consensus was £5.

What did they then do, you ask? When you enter “Breakfast Restaurant in Town in Google you find a small ad that tells people about the £5 Full On Breakfast on Google’s first page. 200 people a month click on that ad, 25 people a month bring the ad to their restaurant.. with their friends / colleagues!

They collect the names and email addresses of everyone who comes into their restaurant. They get a free pudding. Then they send them list emails, never selling them, just connecting on a personal basis. Their customers are now family, and family sticks with you no matter what, especially when you get a quality breakfast for £5.

By the way they’re opening a second location and, as we all know, it’s a recession.

Serving business in the South West.

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Location map: South West, Exeter