RESTAURANT STRATEGY

#17: Menu Magic Think about the people who dined in your restaurant last night. Couples, families, businessmen, friends, whatever... all of them were there for different reasons. They ordered different things, and in the end had different experiences. But there's one thing they all shared about their dining experience. And that was the menu. Your menu was the one thing every single person in the r...

#16: SEO Crash Course for Restaurants SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's a crazy complicated topic that would take hours to effectively explain. But just because it's complex doesn't mean we should ignore it. In fact, I'm going to make the case that SEO is the single most important tool in the Digital Marketer's Toolkit. The ability to be FOUND in a world as vast as the internet i...

#15: 10 Books Every Restaurant Owner Should Read ** Click on any of the titles to order your own copy at Amazon.com ** 1. Purple Cow by Seth Godin 2. All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin 3. Permission Marketing by Seth Godin 4. Setting the Table by Danny Meyer 5. Start with Why by Simon Sinek 6. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook 7. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday 8. To Sell is Human by Daniel Pin...

#14: Getting Started with Facebook Ads By far the biggest question I get from clients is this: "Should my restaurant be running Facebook Ads." In this week's episode we break it all down, and share some key reasons why paid advertising works on social media. I'll show you an easy way to get started, and walk you through the most efficient ways to spend those limited marketing dollars. FACEBOOK BUS...

#13: Twenty Marketing Ideas to Boost Business We've spent the past few months talking big picture ideas, establishing a strong foundation for your business. But perhaps you're sitting there wondering, "Okay fine, but how can I apply these to my work?" Well, today we're going to start putting it all together. This week I challenged myself to come up with 20 different marketing ideas you can try rig...

#12: Brand Marketing vs. Direct Marketing These are two totally different things that unfortunately get confused all the time. In today’s episode I walk you through both of them, show you the different ways they can be effective, and explain when to use each one. Yes, it is ultimately about driving sales, but before that we need to raise awareness, build trust, and communicate effectively to our a...

#11: Starting With Why This episode was inspired by two things... Simon Sinek's book "Start With Why" and an episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where he interviewed restauranteur, Nick Kokonas. The question WHY is at the core of both of them, but used in very different ways. I've fused the two lessons together into this week's episode. This one is a bit of a departure... a series of stories and thoug...

#10: The Digital Marketing Toolkit In this week's episode we're talking all about the  Digital Marketing Toolkit , the variety of tools available to us as marketers to help us reach our target audience. For my money it all comes down to five different areas: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Permission Marketing Social Media Content Strategy Paid Advertising Everything we do online will fall into o...

#9. What is a Customer Journey Map? What exactly is a Customer Journey Map? It’s a visual representation of the process a customer or prospect goes through to achieve a specific goal with your company. Simply put, it’s a way of identifying all the steps it took to turn a regular person into a customer, and big companies are constantly trying to understand the path people take to get to them. Usual...

#8: Why Do You Want to Open a Restaurant? To be totally transparent... I think a lot of people go into business for the wrong reasons. They open restaurants because they think it'll be fun (which it sometimes is), or because they think it'll be easy (which it rarely is). But I think it's just too hard these days unless you're ready for the challenge... too hard to succeed unless you really know wh...

#7: How to Build a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy What does your marketing strategy look like? Do you even have a marketing strategy? If you're like a lot of restaurant owners out there, it's non-existent. Often times it ends up being more of a seat-of-your-pants kind of thing. Mother's Day is coming up... well, we should do something for Mother's Day. Beverage sales are down... let's come up wi...

Fifth Marketing Pillar - OPPORTUNITIES We've finally made it. We are at the end of this little five episode arc where we've been discussing the Five Pillars of Marketing. We started with IDENTITY, finding ways to talk about the product. Then we identified our AUDIENCE, or ICA. We figured out who they were and what their pain points were. We're figuring out what problems they have that we might be...

Fourth Marketing Pillar - DIFFERENTIATION We're starting to turn the corner now as we come to the fourth episode in a 5-show arc. We've been breaking down the Five Pillars of Marketing  as a way of giving ourselves a strong foundation to work upon. Because before we can begin building a true marketing strategy for your business, we first have to understand the business we're in. What's our product...

Third Marketing Pillar - Competition Welcome to the third in a 5-episode arc where we're talking about the Five Pillars of Marketing . Before we can begin building a comprehensive marketing strategy for your business, we first have to understand your business. These five episodes are a version of an exercise I do with my consulting clients. They're assignments, really, that help us begin to unders...

Second Marketing Pillar - AUDIENCE Welcome to the second in a 5-episode arc where we're talking about the Five Pillars of Marketing . This is our opportunity to give ourselves a strong foundation before we begin building a complex marketing strategy. These five episodes are a version of an exercise I do with my consulting clients. They are a series of questions... assignments, really... that help...

First Marketing Pillar - IDENTITY This is the first episode in a 5-episode arc where we're talking about something I call the Five Pillars of Marketing. Before we can begin talking about building a marketing strategy, we first have to give ourselves a strong foundation. These five episodes are a version of an exercise I do with my consulting clients. It's the best way I know to get all of us on th...

EPISODE #1: What is Marketing? ** Download the 3-Step Marketing Worksheet HERE ** Since this is a podcast all about marketing, I thought we would start off by first agreeing on a definition for marketing .  And so that's what this episode is all about... articulating a clear way to talk about a subject that people tend to overcomplicate. For me it's not about fancy jargon or academic explanations....