Get ready to learn the time-proven
marketing tactics that will grab your prospect’s attention and grow your
business fast, even if you’re on a shoestring budget… Guaranteed!
These days, the biggest
challenge facing you, the hospitality professional, is getting prospects to pay
attention to your marketing pieces, then getting them to respond to what you
have to say.
You see, hospitality
professionals leave the essential part of their business to someone else. They entrust the entire asset value of their
company to an advertising agency or, worse yet, to a salesperson from a media
or advertising publication. But if you’re
like most, it’s not your fault. While
you were concentrating on perfecting your restaurant …in other words,
struggling to grow your business…you didn’t have the time to learn how to
market, and market successfully. And I
don’t mean just placing ads in magazines or Yellow Pages, or signing up for a
magazine.
Don’t get me wrong, all of
those are important. But who is guiding
your marketing process? Most times,
you’ve given that awesome responsibility to someone who, quite frankly, doesn’t
stay up late at night worrying about growing your business or writing the copy
that will pull more prospects to your business. That’s because it’s someone whose job it is to sell ads, not to
write the best, most effective, most compelling marketing plan that will bring
you a pipeline of new leads, prospects and customers.
However, this report is
designed to do just that - to teach you, the hospitality professional, how to create a marketing
strategy that will draw more guests to you, and do it better, than anything you
have ever done before…Guaranteed!
During the time we are about
to share together, you are going to take a giant leap forward in the way you
think about marketing and writing your marketing pieces. I promise you, you will change your attitude
about yourself, your marketing strategies, your ability to design and write
marketing pieces that sell, and your ability to keep more net profits from
every marketing campaign you launch.
The
words you write are worth money, lots of money, to you. Plain and simple. So, you can’t afford to waste your marketing dollars on
ineffective words and lackluster pieces.
Once
you learn how to develop an effective marketing strategy, you will be able to
utilize many inexpensive, effective and targeted strategies available to
you. The easy, step-by-step
instructions contained in this report were designed to do just that.
How To Grow Your Business and Thrive
Even in Economically Troubled Times
Think
about what you are competing against to gain the attention of your guests…
…Your
competitors and other vendors. You are also facing other challenges to gain the
prospect’s attention: television, magazines, the Internet, other mail,
commercials, radio, signs, billboards and phone calls…not to mention work,
stress, family challenges, and a myriad of other messages bombarding them on a
daily basis.
You
see, the problem is getting worse out
there when it comes to the prospect’s
attention span. The solution?…You have
to be smarter and more creative to get and hold that attention.
Just
look at the Internet, for example. Type
in one word and get millions of choices.
Go
to the supermarket. Every shelf, every
product, every circular, every in-store announcement is screaming at you, “Buy,
buy, buy!”
Turn
on the TV. Every commercial is working
to convince you to use ABC product because you need it.
What
are you supposed to do in order to break the pattern? Should you interrupt the prospect, and say…
“Hey,
here I am…come eat in my restaurant …pay attention now! You have to read this because it’s going to give
you good food and experience and I’m the one to do it…and I will do it now.”
Yes! That’s exactly what you have to do. Or the Energizer Bunny will beat you to get their
attention.
So,
now I ask you, what do you have in your marketing arsenal…what do you have
that’s strong enough to break through the defensive “ignore pattern” prospects
have developed to immune themselves against all those thousands of messages and
interruptions?
Do
you think it’s your outdated marketing letter, your ineffective postcard, or
your black and white photocopied ad? Or
better yet, the expensive, glossy color brochure that your printer created and
charged you lots of money for, so you could show off your picture and list all
your “stuff”?
No,
no and no! All you have is your
marketing strategy. And by the time you
finish reading this report, you will realize that that marketing strategy is
your hardest-working salesperson. It
never calls in sick, never asks for a raise, never whines or complains, and
works day and night for you 24/7.
Look
at this example: You place an ad in a newspaper that is read by, let’s say, 100,000
people. The ad costs you $1,000 and you get 10 guests to respond to you. That’s
a cost to you of $100 per response.
I
don’t think you would consider that a good response…actually pretty poor by
industry standards, if you ask my opinion.
But
on the other hand, let’s suppose that that ad was properly crafted, compelling,
and attention-getting, and was followed up with a killer direct marketing
campaign which increases your response to 1,000 guests…Now the cost to you is
only $1.00 per guest.
Which
would you rather have…the 10 guests or the 1,000 guests? Sorry, that was a rhetorical question. We all know the answer.
The
cost of the ad did not change. The only
thing that changed was the effectiveness of the words you used to pull those guests
to you.
You
have to make the experience of reading your ad so much different and so much
better for the guest than reading those of your competitors that they are forced
to respond to yours. And it is
essential that you get them to respond to you before your competitors get to them.
The dining
experience you create with the guest must begin with the first contact you make
with them. That experience must continue to be enhanced throughout the sales
procedure, the follow-up and later to future sales you have with them. You must make doing business with you so
easy and so enjoyable they couldn’t even think of doing business with anyone
else…no matter what! And all future visits
will be easier because all the preliminary initial contact steps will not need
to be repeated.
So,
the buying experience has begun with your ad.
But it had better not be the same old ad telling all about your stuff,
just like all your competitors do or you will be perceived as just like all the
rest of them.
A
little bit of homework, please. Flip
through a magazine or newspaper where you currently advertise or look at your
competitors’ brochures or letters or postcards. Are yours much different than theirs? Do yours speak to the guest or do they brag about you and your
stuff?
Understand
first and foremost that the guest, or any prospect for that matter, has
problems, so what you must do is develop solutions, advantages and benefits
that will solve these problems.
Creating such an experience will permit you to out-market, out-pull and
out-sell your competition. That I
guarantee!
The
easiest way to increase the pulling-power of your marketing pieces is to write
copy that is so compelling, so powerful, so irresistible, that the reading prospects
have no choice but to stop what they are doing and read about what you can do
for them.
And
why will they do that?…
Because
your copy speaks to their thoughts and to their situation. Because your copy
will evoke the reaction: “How did they know what I was thinking (or
feeling or going through)?”
Your
business will constantly grow when you use marketing the right way.
Your Best Friend Is The Key To Building
Your Business
Your
best friend was once a complete and total stranger. Isn’t that right?…You didn’t just walk up to him/her the first
time and become instant buddies, did you?…Then why would you expect to approach
prospects or any prospects for the first time and expect them to jump at your
offer, to become your client, and come to your restaurant …when they don’t even
know you, don’t trust you, and most importantly, don’t know what you can do for
them.
Yet
most restaurateurs approach prospects with that very attitude, that very
mindset. “Hi there, I’m Joe Business
and I have this stuff and these products, and you should come to my restaurant
and buy from me. My stuff costs this
much,” or “I have this great special (or deal) for you, so call me and
buy from me.”
Yes,
that’s the way most of you are writing your marketing pieces. But rest assured, we’re going to change that
really fast by giving you a way to develop the relationship with your guests and
prospects so effectively that they become your cash-paying customers.
The
information I am going to share with you will enable you to jumpstart your
marketing pieces so that they focus exclusively on the bride or prospect. You will have the option of becoming a savvy
marketer or an expert in locating and hiring a great copywriter who knows how
to skyrocket your business.
It’s
the only way for you to compete with the billion-dollar giants who can afford
to fly blimps and have pretty rock stars dancing with and singing about their
product.
When
Your Message Is Unclear, Something Terrible Happens…NOTHING!
I can barely count on one
hand the number of decent marketing pieces I have received over the years. Out of the hundreds that arrive from restaurants,
I found maybe one or two that are decent...and that’s pushing it. Most of them are a waste of paper, ink and
postage, and are destined for the garbage before anyone, much less the guest or
intended prospect, reads them!
The reason?…As you will come
to understand, few restaurateurs understand the process of sitting down and
really focusing their attention on the guests and their needs, preferring
instead to focus their marketing pieces on themselves and their stuff.
And
as you are hopefully learning by now, the buying prospect does not care about
your stuff. No matter what you think or
what you were taught, (or what they might be too polite to say) they just
doesn’t care about you or your product or service. They care about one thing - what you can and will you do for them.
Our goal in putting together
this report on “The 8 Steps To Successfully Market Your Restaurant” is to help
you do just that, SELL.
Your mission and purpose
statement describes who you are, what you do, why you do it, how you are
different from the competition, and most importantly, what you will do for the guest. Making money by providing great food and
beverages is not a mission statement that will help you sell yourself to the guest. Your mission and purpose must be based on
the answers to the following questions:
* What does the prospect want to accomplish coming to
your restaurant?
* Why is this important to the prospect?
* What will the prospect get out of doing business with
you?
* How will their life be better as a result of doing
business with you?
Your mission and purpose,
even though it is your statement, should have the prospect as its
focus. If you can tell them how their
life will gain benefits, advantages and solutions, you will gain their
attention. Gaining this attention is
the first step in successfully selling to guests or any prospects.
Using a Steak House as an
example, just saying: “We serve the finest steaks available and provide the
best service” doesn’t do it. It is
moving towards the mark, but not close enough.
You have to speak to the prospect’s “listening,” which means tuning into
the conversation that’s going on in their head about what your product/services
need to do for them. That’s what I call
their “listening.” And that listening
would create a mission statement such as:
“You work hard all day, you put up with the concerns
and stressed of daily life. You deserve to be pampered, spoiled and treated to
mouth watering steaks served in a comfortable atmosphere in a place you feel
like you’re at home.”
Now, does this speak closer
to a mission and purpose statement of a Steak House who is focused on what the guest
would welcome hearing?…Absolutely!
So write a mission and
purpose statement for your business, one that speaks exclusively to your
guests’ needs, to the true benefits, advantages, solutions, and better life they
want as a result of your product/service.
Step 2 Your Points of
Difference
Once you have created that
all-important mission and purpose statement, you now have to develop what is
called your P.O.D., your Points of Difference.
This answers the question: “What makes you different from and better
than your competition?” Why should
that prospect do business with you rather than with any of your competitors?
To develop your P.O.D., you
need to invest some time doing research.
Take a Saturday afternoon away from your business and go to the
library. Study all your competitors’
ads from the Yellow Pages, publications, and trade magazines in your area of
specialization. What are the features
of these ads? [A feature is a tangible
or intangible listing of what the prospect wants to buy.] A prospect buys a feature but really needs
what the feature will do for them.
Features include a variety of things: your years of experience, testimonials, equipment, quality, service, location, pricing, offerings, responsiveness, etc. What the prospect needs, however, is what the features will do for them, how they will derive benefits, advantages and solutions from what you are offering. So, how do you go about developing your features?
Arm yourself with a stack of
index cards and be ready to list all the things your competitors are
doing...all their features. List one
feature on each card. Then on other cards,
list what benefits these features offer.
[A benefit is what the guest will get as a result of buying a product or
service. Benefits have to complete the
statement: “You get…” because the only reason a feature exists is to
allow a benefit to happen.] Continue
this way until you have a stack of Feature cards and another stack of Benefit
cards.
We have talked about your
features and benefits, and you are now ready to use the index cards to make
your own two lists: one, of your features and the second, the benefits that the
prospect will derive from each of those features. Your cards must emphasize your P.O.D., those features and
benefits your competitors do not offer.
This is hard work but well worth it, for very few, if any, of your
competitors will do it.
Are you willing to do what it
takes to out-market and outsell your competitors? If you are, then be certain to include this step.
To determine the benefit of
each feature, add either of these phrases to the feature: …as a result…
or …which means that…
For example, as a chef-owned
restaurant, your P.O.D. would sound something like: “As a result of our 20 years of cooking and studying foods in
the finest restaurants and club’s in the city, you are assured of getting the
most delicious tasting and original food delighting your taste buds and
satisfying your palate”.
Now you are highlighting the
benefit of that 20 years’ experience, the upscale places and vast repertoire to
create guest enjoyment.
Now that you have your
Mission and Purpose Statement and your P.O.D., you are ready to create a
message that will allow your prospects to know what they will get from
you.
Just as most large restaurant
companies have created messages for their prospects/customers, so must you, the
small-to-middle-size restaurant.
You are only one good message
away from success in the restaurant business.
History documents the success of one good message that was originally
shot down as “preposterous,” with no chance of succeeding, when presented to a
Yale professor.
The message was based on the
concept of sending packages overnight and charging a lot of money for that
service. It was a simple 12-word tag
line message, but it resulted in the Yale professor’s prediction to fall flat
on its face. Those 12 words?…“If it
absolutely, positively has to be there overnight…it’s Federal Express.”
Creating the message of what
you do for your customers will go a long way in getting them to identify you,
as well as help others do the same.
When I ask a seminar audience
how I should get my Toolkit to another state when I have to have it there the
next day, the unanimous answer is: “FedEx it.” Not “Overnight it.”… “FedEx it.”
You need to create an
impacting tag line for your business so, for example, when a prospect asks a
friend: “Do you know of a great restaurant to dine at??” your name, your
tag line, will be their automatic reply because you have carefully crafted it
into your impacting 10-15 word message.
Do it and see how well it
works.
Step 4: The Right
Message
Providing benefits to your
features was the second step in getting the prospect to hire you because you
are aware enough to provide them what they really need, aside from the stuff
they want. But to make your message
even more powerful, you must include the third element, the Problem, the
appeal to the pain and anxiety the prospect is experiencing. The Problem is the reason the prospect needs
what you have.
What problems are they
experiencing? What’s keeping them up at
night? What are they worrying
about? What is creating the anxieties,
fears, pressures and stress in their lives that you - and only you and your product/service - will solve for them?
This now forms what is called
the PFB formula: Problem, Feature, Benefit.
For any presentation, ad, flier, or marketing piece to be successful,
you must include all three elements in it.
It is not enough to just tell
your prospects about your features (or as I call it, your “stuff”); everyone is
doing that and it’s no reason at all for them to want you or it.
If you watch television
commercials, you can see how expert their creators are at using the PFB
formula. Take, for example, women’s
hair care commercials. First you see
limp or tangled and gnarly hair. The
model can’t do a thing with it (the problem).
You, the audience/target/prospect, sit there, agreeing, “Yes, that’s
me, my hair is like that.”
But then the commercial says,
“It’s okay. If you use our product
(with its feature), this is what will happen (the benefit).” Then you see the model shake her head
from side to side and her hair swings gracefully back and forth until it falls
softly into place. And you say, “Yes,
that’s what I want my hair to look like.”
So they are saying: “We
know your hair is limp and tangled. You
can’t get the comb through it, frizzies, etc.”
The experts are appealing to your pain, stress, pressure and
anxieties. They’re making you think:
“I don’t want that to continue happening to me.” So here’s their product (with its features and benefits)…and
you say, “I want my hair to look like that and if I want that, I must buy
that product.”
This is the exact formula you
must use to get brides to hire you. You
need to know precisely what their pain is, let them know that you fully
understand it, then assure them that you are the one, the only one, who
can solve that pain for them.
So, now armed with a PFB
example, you are ready to develop what I call your “escalator speech.” This brief (10-15 seconds) pitch will become
the most effective personal presentation you will develop in order to drive
prospects to your business. The
escalator speech was so named because it restricts your timed pitch to the
10-15 seconds it takes to travel up one landing of an escalator.
Here’s how the elevator
speech works:
Start with the phrase “You
know how…” or “You know when.…” Follow that with the problem,
pain, stress, pressure, fear or anxiety the prospect is experiencing.
Suppose you’re a Pizzeria,
and someone by asks you what you do.
Your immediate reply is pointing out a common problem:
“You know how most people
enjoy who eat pizza find it’s greasy or soggy or tasteless…or they eat the
entrees and find them to be less than they expected?
See, we created the pain, the
want, the desire…
Now you answer the prospect’s
question with:
“What I (or we) do is…” and state your features and benefits.
“We provide the highest
quality, freshest ingredients available and prepare it fresh when you order it.
This way every time you order from us, you will enjoy a delicious fresh made
meal and be satisfied and feel good.
Doesn’t that sound like a
better answer than: “I’m a pizzeria and we serve great food”?
A 10-15 second escalator
speech can be developed for any restaurateur.
Once you have done that, watch your business increase dramatically. In addition, your escalator speech will
generate new interest in your products and services, whether you use it with a guest
directly or at an event promoting networking, partnering or joint
ventures.
Now that you have developed
your mission and purpose, your P.O.D., and your escalator speech, you have, in
essence, your message. This
message will permeate all your marketing and promotional materials. It is the basis of what you do and what you
are.
With your message in place,
you need your market. While the 8 Steps
are applicable to many special event markets, for this report we are targeting
the restaurant market.
Now that we know the right
message with which to enter the right market, we need to utilize the right
mechanism,
A mechanism is a tool that
provides you with a list of your target market clientele. There are several ways to obtain this
mechanism.
The best way is to obtain a
lead list is to define your target audience. Once you have defined this
audience by age, income, zip code, credit card holder, home value, etc. You can
then begin to market more effectively to your target audience.
The right mechanism is
vitally important to the success of your efforts. With the list of 100% qualified prospects, you increase
dramatically the chances of prospective guests becoming buying guests.
If you specialize in a certain market, you must locate a mechanism with a list of your target clientele. You can best accomplish this with a targeted mailing list service available in your Yellow Pages or through SRDS, (Standard Rate and Data Service), which lists almost every conceivable list of prospect you can target.
So, we have the right
message, the right market and the right mechanism.
Now that you have all those
wonderful marketing words, we need to look at the right medium in which
to use them. There are three major
media available to the hospitality professional: telephone, email and direct
mail.
In order of effectiveness,
the telephone is perhaps the most effective, cost-efficient medium for reaching
and selling to guests. Once you get
through to a prospect, you can prequalify them and determine if they are a
prospect or a suspect.
A suspect?…That’s a person in
your target market who, while not having shown any interest in your product or
service, simply fits the demographics.
In this case, it might be an unmarried female between the ages of 20 and
35. She has not said she is interested
in your product or services, but is out there in the pool of people who may,
sometime in the future, need and have to buy your service. She is what we would call a suspect…
…as opposed to a prospect, a
person who raises her hand and says, “I am interested in your product or
service. I need what you are selling,
so please contact me and give me a reason to buy what you have to sell.”
I maintain that the telephone
is the best medium, the best tool, because you can contact the prospect with a
good script and make an immediate offer to get them in your business.
Most of your competitors are not
calling prospects.
When using the phone, you
need to have some basics firmly in place.
First, your script must begin with your introduction: who you are, what
company you're with and how you got her name.
“Hi, my name is Scott with Food for Thought Restaurant. I got your name from XYZ.”
You have now answered the
first question in the prospect’s mind: who you are, what company you are with,
and how you got their name. By having
that script, you have answered those questions and have become an invited
guest, not a bothersome pest. If you
were to call just any person from the white pages and say: “Hi, are you
interested in dining at my restaurant in the near future?” then you would
be a bothersome pest. This is cold
calling at its worst.
But if you call a prospect who
has said they are looking to dine out at a good restaurant, then you are
speaking with a qualified guest who needs your product or service to
make their lives better.
So, you have introduced
yourself. Now, you need to get the prospect
interested in hearing what you have to say.
You need to provide them with that self-serving solution, advantage,
result or benefit that they will get as a result of doing business with
you.
This part of the script has
to be well crafted and similar to your escalator speech. It has to be all about them, not about
you! (The most common mistake most
of you make is to tell them all about you.)
Once you have provided them with
benefits, you then move to the question process. This is where you will have prepared a list of questions designed
to find out what they really want and need from a restaurant.
So, you follow with: “Have
ever had a great experience in a restaurant where you feel comfortable, you
enjoy great food and you feel like the most important person in the restaurant?”
or just simply: “May I ask you a few questions to see if I can interest
you in a FREE dinner at a great restaurant?”
Or you ask: “Do you have
time to speak with me now or would there be a better time?” If they say now is not a good time, ask them
if tomorrow or Thursday would be better and would day or evening be more
convenient. Then be specific about time
and place: at about 3:10 or 4:40, at home or at work.
Notice that I always give
choices for the prospect to answer. Do
not ask questions with yes/no answers; ask only questions with choices.
If they say no in the
beginning, you have simply, easily and quickly eliminated them from your
list.
You have to look at this
exercise in terms of how much money is each call is worth. For example, if your average sale is $30.00
with a lifetime value of $2,500.00 and you make ten calls, get two prospects to
come in and dine, then each call is worth $250. So, no matter what happens when you pick up the phone, you make
$250. Even if the prospect says no, you
just made $250. If you make four calls
and you get four no’s, you have made $1,000 and you say, “Yes! I made $1,000.”
From your averages and
industry statistics, you know that you will set up two appointments and one
guest will dine with at least two people. It’s that simple. So, look it that way, the positive way.
Now, for the first four weeks you must be steadfast in your calling. You must call in the evenings and on weekends. Make a chart starting at 6:30 and going to 8:30 with 15-minute intervals. Check how many prospects you get to talk to in each 15-minute period. Once you do this for one month, you will find out when you reach the most prospects and you can then focus your efforts on those days and times. Once you have initially put forth the effort yourself, then you can train and delegate others on your staff to do it for you. This works… guaranteed!
The second form of marketing
that costs nothing and requires you to put even less time, effort and energy
into it is email. When a prospect gives
you their email address, or better yet, opts-in to your website, you send them a
well-crafted email. Why do I say
well crafted? Because of the emails I
receive per month from restaurants, most - if not all - are all about you, the sender.
The Internet is a two-edged
sword; you can send emails for nothing and it happens instantly. On the other hand, the recipient, can and
will hit DELETE if your message is not powerful and all about them.
The subject line on
the email screen is the line you must use to get the prospect’s attention and
get her to open and read your message.
Your subject line must be personal, to the guest, and it must be of
interest to and speak to them. It must
get their attention immediately or that DELETE key awaits.
Now that your subject line
has piqued the guest’s interest and he/she clicks on READ, your
opening line must address them personally, with their name. Your first line must get their attention by
creating interest in the benefits, the self-serving advantages, solutions and
results they will receive. If you open
it by talking all about you and your stuff and how great you are, they will not
read on…and you will be sent to the RECYCLE bin.
Next, you must create desire
by providing a compelling and irresistible offer. The best way to get anyone interested in a product you sell or a
service you provide is to let them test-drive what you are selling. (This will be detailed further on in this
report.)
Think about how you buy a car. You decide on the type of car you want and then you do some research on it. After that, you go to the dealer’s showroom or lot and look at all the options. You talk to a salesperson, then test-drive the car you want. Once you have test-driven it, felt the ride, smelled the new-car smell…you are usually sold. You usually buy because you have experienced what you are going to buy.
The next medium that is very
effective and should be included in your marketing efforts is direct mail. Direct mail is not a dirty word; it is
simply a vehicle to get your important message to the prospects and customers
who need and want your product or service.
When
we talk about direct mail, the two areas we focus on are postcards and letters.
The humble postcard,
so small yet so commanding, is perhaps one of the most powerful and effective,
if not the most effective, written marketing tool. It is the fastest, easiest, most economical
and most successful way to market and advertise.
The postcard is, in essence,
a naked billboard! There is no envelope
to hide your message. The postcard gets
to the prospect the quickest...quicker than any other direct marketing
mechanism.
Prospects can’t
hang up, they can’t click DELETE, they can’t use Caller ID and let an answering
machine pick it up. But they can
throw it away…but not before they at least take a quick look at the billboard,
the postcard’s picture. That picture
grabs the attention of any prospect in only a few seconds. They don’t have to open a letter (9
seconds). With a postcard, there is no
guessing, no surprises, no competing with the bills, personal mail or junk
stuff she gets.
If you have created a unique
billboard, you will get prospects to look at it and at least turn it over to
read the beginning of what your copy is all about. When I say a “unique billboard,” I mean a picture that is
different than the usual (not the usual picture of a steak or your food), but
something uniquely original that speaks to the prospect.
In most cases, this is your
first contact with the bride. It’s like
a blind date and you have to make a good first impression. So be creative, be unique. For example, if you’re a fine-dining
restaurant, the use of an oversized postcard with a photo an empty plate. Your
billboard caption?...“Your plate will end up this way”
Okay,
your billboard has caught the prospect’s attention. Next, you want them to turn the card over and read what you have
to say. That’s where the mighty
headline comes in.
“AFREE Entrée Awaits You…No Strings Attached!”
If
your headline is powerful, the prospect will go on to read your copy. On a postcard, she always sees your
headline, whereas in a letter she may not.
So,
your headline has worked and now your challenge is to get the bride interested
in your product/service and get her to act.
Have
I made this sound simple?…Well, it is!
The
copy following your headline gives you only a few inches and a few seconds to
get your message across, so it has to be good!
When
Mark Twain was asked how long he prepared for a two-hour speech, he said, “I am
ready now.” When asked how long he
prepared for a one-hour speech, he said, “Eight hours.” When asked how long to prepare for a
ten-minute speech, he said, “Two weeks.”
So
what does the Twain philosophy tell you?...Simply that you need to have the
best copy or hire the best copywriter to create your copy for maximum
pulling-power. But keep in mind this caveat: If they can write good ads, they
won’t necessarily be able to write great postcard copy. If they are good at writing long sales
letters, they won’t necessarily be good at writing postcard copy either.
If
you know a person who claims to write good copy, ask the following questions:
1.
“How much money have you made using postcards?”
2.
“How much money have you made for other people this
year?”
3.
“What are their names and can I call them?”
4. “Do you
guarantee what you do?“
I
can guarantee you that with the exception of a handful of postcard copywriting
marketing experts, very few people will meet these criteria. We know of and can recommend a select few
whose expertise qualifies them in the wedding and event market.
Just
think about the mail you get every day: bills, magazines, letters in white
envelopes with words or labels in black ink, junk mail, etc. What if you got a full-color postcard with
an eye-catching, interesting picture?
Maybe a lush tropical scene, cuddly animals, a foreign country, a
sporting scene, a powerful waterfall, a cute smiling baby or even something
humorous or cartoony. What will you
do?…You’ll read it, of course.
Why?…Because you’ll be curious that it might be from a friend or a
relative or someone you know.
Author,
consultant and coach Alex Mandossian offers the following statistics in his
“Market With Postcards” program:
“You have 90 seconds to get
the prospect to take action...
90 seconds total for
the entire postcard!”
A
successfully crafted postcard to a prospect times out in five stages:
Stage 1: The prospect glances at the billboard side (3
seconds). This gets their
attention.
Stage 2: The prospect turns the card over to read the return
address (5 seconds). This acknowledges
their acceptance.
Stage 3: The prospect reads the headline (7 seconds). Here is where you create
interest and draw them in to read the rest of the
postcard.
Stage 4: The prospect reads the body copy (60 seconds). Here is where your
compelling copy and powerful offer create desire.
Stage 5: The prospect takes action if your message is
interesting (15 seconds).
Your offer and call to action have to be unique,
powerful and time sensitive, whereby
they need to act now in order to take advantage of
your offer.
The result of these five
stages can be found in the easy-to-remember acronym AIDA… Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action.
Attention: You must first get the prospect’s attention with the
billboard, then a powerful headline that speaks to them. The headline must ask a question, pose a
challenge or get the prospect to stop what they are doing and listen to you and
read on.
Interest:
You must then get their interest by
talking about them, about their needs and wants, by telling them what
benefits, self-serving solutions, advantages and results they will get from
doing business with you.
Desire:
Your next move is to create desire by
stating your offer. The irresistible
offer that they just can’t refuse (think of it as the first date, if you must),
the reason for them to say: “Okay, I’m willing to contact you and possibly
do business with you.” The offer
must give them some reason to call you (not a discount or a price break or a
package). It must be something that
they can get from you that will show them what you’re all about, how they can
use your product or service.
Action:
Finally, you must tell them what to
do, the call to action. Do they have to
telephone you? Stop in to see you? Visit your web site? Respond in some way? It is a must that you tell them what
the action is, why they should act, and what benefit they will derive from
acting now.
AIDA is the formula you must use in every marketing
communication, whether it’s one that you write or present in person.
I strongly recommend that you
send at least three different postcards to each prospect, then measure
which of the three provides the best results.
Try using different
billboards with the same message, or three different offers with the same
billboard, or any combination you come up with.
But always - and I emphasize always - test everything you do. I mean everything when it comes to marketing and
selling.
Following the postcard in
Direct Mail effectiveness is the letter. There are some simple rules that you need to follow in order to
make your letters effective.
You have three “get”
goals in marketing through letters: get it to the prospect, get
the prospect to open it, and get the prospect to read it.
You’re probably thinking: “It’s
easy to get the letter to the prospect; just put a stamp on it and mail it.” Well, it’s not that simple. You see, you have to make sure that you use
a “live” (not metered) stamp, that you hand-address the envelope, and that you
hand-write the return address.
Do not use your business name
or your fancy business letterhead with your expensive logo on it. If your letter has a real stamp, a
hand-addressed envelope and a hand-addressed return, your chances of delivery
are almost 100%.
You want to get as far away
as you can from the look of junk mail or non-personal mail, because those
pieces have a greater chance of not reaching the intended recipient.
When people open their mail,
they sort it where you probably do…close to the garbage pail. They look through the mail for bills, which
unfortunately they have to keep. Then
they look for junk mail, which they know is junk because: a) they didn’t ask
for it, b) they aren’t expecting it, c) it has printed address labels, d) it
has a business return addresses, and e) the envelope has a metered stamp on
it. Those characteristics define it as
junk mail, with chances of being opened…slim to none.
So, you hand-address the
letter, use a live stamp and send it.
The prospect gets it and opens it because it’s personal. It’s about them, or it had better be about
them. If you’ve gotten that far and
they open it to find a cheap-looking black and white flier with your package
special or your brochure, it will wind up in the garbage unread.
So what must you do now that
you’ve succeeded in getting them to open your envelope? Pretty much what I described in the postcard
section. The first thing the prospect
must see is a headline, a benefit-driven or a pain-driven headline that gets
the recipient’s attention. Refer to the
AIDA formula.
The headline of your letter is not your logo or your company name or your package pricing or your money-off offer. So lose those fancy letterheads, which are all about you, and write a headline that’s all about the prospect, as if you cared only about that one person. Something like these:
9 Out Of 10 Diners Will Make These Mistakes; Don’t Be One Of Them!
7 Secrets You Need To Know When Choosing a Restaurant
10 Questions To Ask When Choosing a Restaurant
Once you write a great
headline or beginning and have the prospect’s attention, then you have to
create interest. Interest is created
using benefits, benefits and benefits.
Benefits are all about the prospect…what they will get from you…how
their life will be better because of what you will do for them. One way to begin is with a story, in this
case one we created for a restaurant:
Once upon a time there was a salesperson who wanted
very much to land an important client. Knowing that entertaining at a
restaurant was one of the best ways to get the client away from their office
and be on neutral ground, the salesperson chose a restaurant in close proximity
to the prospects office. He was told the restaurant served good food and had
good service. So a reservation was made for noon on the appointed day.
Upon arrival the prospect was told the party had not
yet arrived even though the salesperson arrived early and told the host to
inform him of the prospects arrival and escort the prospect to the salesman’s
table. (it was a busy restaurant and he had to be seated or lose his table).
After 10 minutes the salesman went to the host stand
to ask if the prospect had arrived and he said no. the salesman turned around
and saw his guest waiting for him. He apologized profusely and they went and
sat for lunch. The prospect only had one hour for lunch and almost 15 minutes
of the time was eaten up waiting.
The waiter arrived and took the order and kept
interrupting the conversation to describe menu items, offer suggestion and
become overly friendly. The salesperson hoped the waiter would just go away,
but no, each time he arrived with a new item, he felt the need to converse.
Each time he left, the salesman had to get back on
track. What happened? The lunch ended too soon. The presentation was ruined and
the salesperson lost the sale…
Understand
this: The salesperson does not want a restaurant with just good food and
service; he wanted a way to entertain his client, to be in a place where he
could conduct his business and have good food and service to support his
purpose.
Those are benefits…the
self-serving results, solutions and advantages that the salesperson wants to
hear about and have the restaurant provide.
What do your guests want from
your product or service? Develop
your opening story the same way.
So, once you have provided your
prospects with the benefits to dine with you, you must move on to the desire.
You create that desire by
making an irresistible, risk-free offer they can’t refuse. An offer that allows them to test-drive your
service in a no-risk manner, in a situation where they can feel comfortable
without fear of high-pressure selling.
As a restaurant, how can you
provide them with a risk-free trial of your service? Offer a free entrée, appetizer, a tray of assorted hors d’oeuvres
or pastries or a sample hot dinner for two.
Now that you have offered the
free trial - with no commitments, no
expectations and no obligation - you have placed the prospect in a safety zone where they are not
exposed to any high-pressure selling.
Your next step is to tell the
prospect what action they must take. Do
they need to call you or go to a website?
Tell them also what not acting will cost them or what they will
lose by not calling you. Make your
offer limited by time or by the number of people who can respond.
“Do
to limited availability, only the first 49 to respond will get this...”
“If
you don’t act by (date), you will miss the opportunity to …”
Then tell the prospect how to
contact you and give them a way to do so.
It may sound elementary, but many direct mail pieces submitted to me for
critique don’t lead the prospects to what they must do and then make it easy
for them to act or call.
Okay, so you get the client
in the restaurant, you’ve made the sale.
But that’s not the end. The best
time to get your guest to buy more of your product or service beyond the
one-time sale is at the point of purchase.
But you do this only when the guest will benefit from the purchase of
additional items, where they will save money by buying at that time. For example:
If
a bottle of wine will help create a more memorable celebration …suggest it.
If
serving shrimp as an appetizer will enhance the guest experience…suggest it.
If
a dessert for two will wow the guest …suggest it.
Notice that each suggestion
was made for a specific purpose or goal that the client wants to accomplish.
Once you have spent time,
money and effort to gain new clients, what do you do with them?…Keep them
neatly tucked away in your database…and forgotten? By doing this, you are ignoring their back-end value as
customers.
When was the last time these
people heard from you?
The guests who dined with you
last year or three years ago, have they heard from you? Have their lives and needs changed?
Don’t think for one minute
that down the road, the prospect-turned-guest will think of you as nothing more
than a place to eat. They won’t think of dining with you frequently because you
probably haven’t kept in touch with them at least six times a year with
different offers and information.
Then again, they may not
always be in the market to dine at your restaurant, but they surely have
friends, co-workers, relatives who might.
But if they don’t think about you, they can’t use you or tell others
about you. So, get with it and let your
database of customers know what you are doing.
I guarantee you that you have
tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars sitting in your database and you
don’t even know it’s there!
What is the lifetime value
of your customers? How much money can
or will they spend with you in their lifetime?
Most hospitality professionals can’t answer this question and will
respond with something like, “They’re priceless,” or “invaluable.” Actually, the answer can be calculated to
the specific dollar value.
Sit down and figure out how
many opportunities each year every one of your guests will dine with you and
how much money they will spend with you and for how many years they will buy
from you. You will then determine what
kind of approach you can take to get a customer for the first time.
You are reading this report
because chances are you received it from me free. I know the lifetime value of my clients, and once I help them
make money, they want my help making more money. So I will provide you with the products and services I know you
need to make more money. And if I
deprive you of the opportunity to have this information, to make more money,
and to increase the quality of your life, then I am doing you a
disservice.
Many people – too many, in
fact talk about networking to the point where it has become an overused
and ill-used word. I go to meeting
after meeting and watch the clicks staying together, the newbies
struggling to fit in, the networkers running around the room giving out
as many business cards as they can, and the askers working the room with
their perennial queries like, “Why haven’t you sent me any business lately?”
That’s not
networking!
Forming joint ventures,
however, is. It’s a form of
word-of-mouth, or affinity, marketing that you should be involved in if you’re
not already there. Every one of your
colleagues in the industry has a database of customers who could benefit from
your product or service, just as your customers can benefit from theirs. By forming joint ventures, you can market to
each other’s lists. Other vendors,
caterers, florists, entertainers, limo services, etc. have customers in their
databases who already know them and who could use your services as well.
What if clients were to get a
letter from one of these joint venture partners offering them a free dinner gift
worth $100? Those clients would look
very favorably on your joint venture partner, they would get a great gift, and
you would have the potential of the lifetime value of that customer. Think about it. They already know your joint venture partner who is, in essence,
introducing you to them. They have had
a successful relationship with that vendor, so transferring those positive
feelings to you is pretty much automatic.
Once you begin establishing these joint venture partnerships, you will
make money effortlessly.
The problem for many hospitality
professionals - you, probably included - is that you get caught in the incestual marketing
trap. You go to the same meetings with
the same people and do the same things they do. You don’t get creative and go outside the profession and find new
partners who have lists of people who need your creative offerings and programs
that you must develop.
Give people ways of buying
what you have in different ways at different times and in different
increments.
It is our hope that you have
gained some tips and techniques on how to increase your marketing effectiveness
to sell to more weddings and events.