How to make a marketing plan, many commercial restaurants provide excellent service and delicious food and end up going out of business due to the lack of a successful marketing plan that suits the restaurant and customers, without making a marketing plan for your restaurant, you will not be able to measure the performance indicators (KPIS) for your restaurant, and therefore it will take a lot of time to see if it performs poorly, which may cause it to shut down like the others. Marketing is just as important as the services your restaurant offers. Without marketing, customers won’t know you exist, and if they don’t know you, they won’t buy from you, so you’ll end up just like everyone else.
How to make a marketing plan ?Â
Marketing plan: It is one of the most important reasons to ensure the success of your service, because it starts in the pre-service stages and even after it ends with after-sales services, and it also changes with market data changes, so we will discuss in this article: How to make a marketing plan for your restaurant and its most important points, plan template Marketing + Explanation of Marketing Mix, and other topics of interest to start-ups and medium-sized companies in the private sector.
How to make a marketing plan for restaurants?
A restaurant marketing plan is: the methods that restaurants follow to organize and implement marketing strategies to achieve their goals in a specific period of time.
Goals: What the restaurant seeks to achieve during a specific period.
The current location of the restaurant and its position in the market.
Restaurant competitors and identify their strengths and weaknesses.
The needs of the customers to whom the restaurant is directed.
Digital Marketing Plan Digital Marketing Strategies.
Key performance indicators and performance indicators, to implement each objective of the marketing plan.
The importance of a marketing plan for your restaurant
- It defines goals and strategies alongside helping to make the right decisions and determines the best marketing channels that the company should focus on.
- Setting smart goals for the company: that is, goals based on numbers and statistics, and set at a specific time.
- Help make the right decisions based on pre-set smart goals.
- Achieving marketing goals at the lowest possible cost.
- Maximizing return on investment (ROI).
What is return on investment (ROI).
An abbreviation for return on investment, it is one of the most popular economic terms used in the business world.
It expresses the relationship between the value expended and expenses and the value of profitability obtained. It can be calculated by: (total return on investment – total costs).
Traditional marketing strategies for restaurantsÂ
While digital marketing efforts have become the cornerstone of most marketing plans, the power of traditional marketing should not be overlooked.
Face-to-face interaction, word of mouth, and word of mouth are tried and true marketing techniques that still work.
Make sure to augment your digital marketing efforts with traditional marketing as well. This dual strategy makes for good marketing and when you switch it up you don’t need much effort.
Example: making celebrations and gifts on the street where the restaurant is located, and distributing some simple foods to passers-by.
How to make a marketing plan for your restaurant
Through these steps, you will be able to create a successful marketing plan, which is as follows:
The first step: analyze the situation
The current status of the restaurant: Is the restaurant less than 5 years old as a start-up, or does it have other branches?
The current situation of competitors: Is the competition currently high in the field of fried chicken or not, for example? What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Questions about the product for customers: Is the product suitable for the interested customer or not, what are the best places to locate the target customers, are they in public places, do they order via delivery, and what is the percentage of your demand? Online?
Customer status: the location of the target customer, his age characteristics, demographic factors, the nature of his personality, behaviors, and purchasing power.
Step Two: Create your brand
Before you begin brainstorming your restaurant’s marketing activities, review your brand’s mission, vision statement, unique value proposition, and brand positioning statement. These should already be in your business plan, but it’s important to review them with restaurant marketing.Â
Step Three: Your target audience
Your target audience has been determined based on customer segment demographics, psychoanalysis, and behaviors. All restaurant marketing strategies must target one or more segments of your target market.
Run the following questions for each customer segment:
- Do they communicate on social media or visit websites?
- What do they do before they choose to eat at a restaurant?
- Do they prefer eating inside or outside?
- What kind of events do they enjoy?
- Do coupons or discounts affect them?
Feel free to add any questions related to the concept in which you are discussing customer segment behaviors, you will need to identify the reasons behind choosing one restaurant over another, so that you can properly speak to your target audience in a way that resonates with them.
Fourth step: SWOT analysis of competitors
Refer back to the competitive analysis you completed Depending on how you conducted the competitive analysis for your restaurant, pick 3-5 of your top local competitors. For each competitor, do a SWOT analysis:
Strengths: What are your competitors doing well? By understanding what your competitors are doing right, you can do it better.
Weaknesses: What could the competitor do better? Learn from your competitors’ mistakes by identifying gaps in your operations
Opportunities: How can you exploit your competitors’ weaknesses and do better?
Threats: Are your competitors offering something unique that you can’t?
Visit your competitors’ website for the latest promotions and campaigns, get coupons or free gifts Daily deals and specials Visit your competitors’ Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and blog, rate your followers and your content.
Step Five: Determine the price differences in the market
Repeat the SWOT process in your restaurant and identify the market differentiator in a statement. This statement should describe your advantage over competitors.
Examples of unique selling points are: lower prices, a unique location, special dishes, more attractive service, the atmosphere in your restaurant, or the culture you create.
Note: Your competitive advantage must be suitable for the customer, for example: we assume that you target customers don’t have high purchasing power and do not care about the quality of the product or service provided, the advantage here is not the high quality of the product, but the right choice here is the advantage of low price with additions such as Condiments and chips with every meal as a unique selling feature.
Step Six: Define your product strategy
Determines what products will be sold and how to display them, and sometimes create a unique strategy for each product for each market, whether it is local or on social media. Determine promotions and plan for each product, based on the analysis, it is very natural to change and adjust the strategy based on market data. Monitor customer responses and competitor status on social media.
Step Seven: Select Marketing Channels
Marketing channels: are the places where your target audience is present, whether on site or on the Internet, namely: online, on any channel (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat …) or being in shopping malls, of course, it you should focus on the channel where your customers are the most present. Marketing channels differ in their marketing methods, for example, online marketing is very different from traditional marketing in stores, because each requires different practices.
