Your Year of Marketing

hello everybody hi everybody Jamie and Marcus here welcome to episode number five of our nameless restaurant podcast restaurant business podcast sending us uh different names that we should call our podcast so I guess we just need to come up with a name oh by the name yeah absolutely absolutely so yeah uh let's see so you have a question today I have a question yeah so of

course one of our first episodes of the second episode was about marketing basics of marketing and I want to continue about marketing when have you learned the best and worst times to spend money on marketing so I think it's important to think about your year right think about the whole year at one time and think about when your slowest times are going to be throughout the

year and you have to start marketing before those times right you have to start marketing before your slow period but I think so once you're slow you have to really ramp up your marketing um but if you can consciously figure out when you're going to be slow then you can ramp it up before you actually so you're basically saying to spend more money when you're slow

spend more money when you ramp up your marketing you're slow yes okay certain marketing so how does a restaurant really fathom that so like right now is our Slow Time right right now we're going through our slow time and we know it's slow and we kind of dropped the ball on our marketing a little bit we do a lot of things we kind of dropped the

ball in our marketing and we're in a situation where we're like we're expecting our grandchild we have a lot going on and but we could have done a lot more and we're guilty of not doing a lot more at this time of the year but we know it and we're the ones to blame for that right so we know it's time to ramp up our marketing

and we know we're gonna have to spend a little bit more to ramp up the marketing to be able to get more people in our seats and um you know buying from us so if there's a restaurant out there that right now is like oh my gosh this is my slow time oh crap their normal attitude is gonna be I can't spend money on marketing right

absolutely yes but there are things that you can do that don't that you don't need to spend tons of money on right but you are going to have to spend money on marketing I mean that is just the bottom line to get more money you're gonna have to spend more money right so you return on investment if you know like we know our birthday offers bring

in a certain amount of money for every dollar we spend we get back a certain amount so you're gonna have to spend money to get more money yeah so a lot of obviously a lot of restaurant owners operate under fear right and all of a sudden it's slow I can't spend any money but you said the return on investment I think if you know the return

you're getting on your ads on your expenditures like you mentioned the birthday offers great like so for example it's a slow month for us right like if I can double my money spent double yet let's listen to me right if I can double the money I spend on birthday offers and I can get back even just half of what I'm spending as far as far as

half of the returns of what normally I would get I'd be happy but most restaurants say oh my gosh uh 500 in marketing it's slow let's cut that back I'm gonna say 500 marketing is going to bring me five thousand dollars let's put a thousand in marketing you might get 7 500 back right that's the way people have to approach this now but here's the real

deal what's the deal is that they don't have the money to even put into marketing right a lot of things they don't think they do they don't think they don't a lot of restaurants run week to week you know check to check a lot of Americans run paper to paychecks they have to look at marketing as an investment but but they can't if you're watching this

you can't see but what's on what's on our wall right over there that big so we have a calendar calendar um so that was kind of what I was starting at is that we know what our slowest times are and we know when we need to start ramping up our marketing and so we have a calendar on our wall and it's a full-size year calendar and

um I know when we need to start marketing and we have certain uh marketing techniques different things that we've been using for the past you know 20 years that we've been in business and so we know what to actually do on what months and uh to bring more people in the door so you know we we know we know those things and those are things that

you have to find out and if you Market on the calendar at the before the beginning of the year right so you know November talk to somebody about about doing a year-long calendar because really our calendar is a whole year in a snapshot 100 so so I would how would a restaurant how would a restaurant you know because a lot of restaurants a lot of restaurants

are guilty that's what we are too sometimes a lot of restaurants are like oh my gosh it's Thanksgiving I haven't done any marketing oh my gosh it's July 4th and the week before it's like let's go over the July 4th special and we're going to do a barbecue for July 4th or we're going to be open or we're gonna be open or we're gonna close and

this is the week or two weeks before July 4th they're deciding if they're going to be opened or closed right so talk to those these people about how we do our marketing calendar year in advance and how we plug things in and and just just how would one person go about the first step is where would they where would they start so the first step where

would they buy the calendar so the first step is you go to um you can do it online you can go to Staples or you know a um uh office office supply store um or online and you order a calendar so I use a couple of different calendars so I like the the full size calendar that's up on your wall that everybody on your staff can

see so if you have an office person by month or 12 months 12 months but month by month by month so it's a 12 month calendar and um you you have January February March April May so for example can then a new Chef that you hire in January walk in and look and say oh oh look they do July 4th their clothes or July 4th are

open or doing a barbecue right absolutely right because you have everything on the calendar um so I I like that wall calendar I like that everybody can see the whole year in review um they know what events are coming up when the events are going to be you can add things you can take things away you can have people put um on there you know if

they needed a day off or a week off you know of course their staff members we're gonna or if we're gonna not be able to be in for a couple of days or a week or whatever it might be so um so I think it's really important to have a couple of different calendars and that's just how I operate I operate with a wall calendar which

marks off the whole year then each before the month Marcus and I go through what our events are for that month um and that's on my desktop and that is a desktop calendar that I have I can see the whole month on my calendar so I take from the yearly I put it on the monthly right and then I have a little um book that I

carry around with me that is my weekly right and also in there there's a monthly and a weekly and so I can see I go from yearly to monthly to weekly and then even I do daily sometimes um it depends on the time of the year and how much time I have but there are some days that I just I have to mark off what I

have going on so I know what I need to get done and how I get it done um so you know marketing is important to think about before the year begins before the month begins so that you can start in your head deciding what you need to do to bring in the business or to promote different things that you're doing um you know sometimes people aren't

even doing them because they need to bring in the business they're just doing it because it's an event and they enjoy doing it or whatever so now here's the biggest mistake we made this year a part of our slow season part of December and I need to go on the calendar now and mark off right after um October 1st so yeah typically by the beginning of

November we usually put on our calendar to do holiday party holiday party promotions holiday party promotions and right and we didn't do a single email until it was too late and we didn't get any we did two we got four or three a couple holiday parties but typically now we're in an area that our holiday parties were not in a big corporate area we're not like

other restaurants people love to travel to US Travel and there's not so we have to Market extra hard and give a different angle of how we market for our holidays but we know that we have to do a different angle and it's worked every year to work like a charm and because of covid because of covid not many hot last year uh Omicron was out very

common chronic but there were no holiday parties we had cancellations like left and right this year we just weren't in the gear to do it and we lost money I don't know how many thousands of dollars we lost and it's not fair to us or our staff so we screwed up we screwed up we screwed up I'll take responsibility I don't know I need to ramp

up our January February March marketing so now we know we need to do something we have to think outside the box to make people want to come here so I think that we should do maybe a 10 off for everybody on our mailing list you know 10 off I love that right a coupon send it out ten dollars off whenever they want to come in there's

no questions asked between January and March and they just come in or you do it just for January so here's our New Year's we used to do that you know years ago all right so so as we're walking and talking through this now so if we we basically took all of our 10 000 contacts and send them a 10 off for the month of January no

strings attached off who cares if it's a dining or take out who cares yep just the fact the fact that we're giving them a gift um emails are basically free to send out love or graphic artists do a little design on there that's then and then if that works well we should probably repeat it again for February maybe even we could do something you know our

daughter's having a baby so maybe we could do something like however much the baby weighs you give that off in the month of some kind of contest sometime yeah something yeah all right so all right so now we're here masterminding on a show talking about how we're gonna market so this is one of the things now let's talk about before we finish this up how long

should somebody take on that so this yearly thing that we hang on our wall That's waxed by the way that's it's laminated so you use yeah it's lactated and I use um I use dry erase dry erase drivers dry erase marker is what I'm trying to say so you can change things so we can now plan events out and all year long and we can see

everything in a snapshot what a couple questions on this what happens we have to change something what happens well you dry erase it you mark it off and you you erase it and you add something else should a restaurant be afraid of changing in advance or changing something I think you have to be open to changing things things pop up all the time you know we

know that personally we know that things just pop up and sometimes you do have to cancel things I don't think you can cancel at last minute if people are booking for it so for example let's say let's say we have a we're going to do a big wine event here at the restaurant um first week in October okay and we put that in there and we

start our marketing we put it on our website and it's March or April now and what happens if a wedding calls us to do a twenty thousand dollar catering job how how would we handle that I guess it would depend on a couple of different things right it would depend on if we've sold tickets um if we have people interested but we're the type of people

that don't really cancel stuff if we don't have to but there are times you do have to Camp here's my first question on that is can we do both can we do both three to both right why cancel right but I think that the point is you shouldn't be afraid to cancel a wine tasting then you're going to bring in four or five thousand dollars for

uh and take a wedding over it you shouldn't be you shouldn't be afraid to cancel no so don't I guess the point I'm trying to make is I don't think they should keep say once they put something in there don't think it's marked in stone right I mean you can change things I mean that's why it's dry erase because then you can change it um I'm

a pencil person so I put things in pencil because I know that it's okay to change things um and you know a lot of people say not to use pencil use pen because then it is it's stuck in stone but I don't always believe that I think that you have to decide do it quickly write it down but then there are certain situations that arise that

you have to cancel something so I write everything in pencil it's just how I like to do things so dry erase works really well for me um you know you can do a brainstorming session with your staff and ask them which we're probably going to do on our next team call what types of things would you like to see here at Aroma time I know that

they've already mentioned bringing back some different foods that we've had so maybe that's something that we need to do um you know in January February maybe it's time for for those types of things my last question on this calendar is how long would would a restaurant owners how long should they put into the calendar like like they go they go to the douches they went to

Russia they say this again okay slow down they're taking your advice they go by the calendar put it on their wall okay they have the dry erase markers ready to go um but they don't know where to start it's a partnership it's a partnership where it's one person a couple like us you know it's got to be a team right you have a team yeah I

like the marketing team ID right idea now how long should those individuals sit there and plan on putting events on there initially now keep in mind things will change along the way okay but this is this an hour project a day-long project two days how long year-long project really but how long should they really sit there and spend I would put the most important things down

first so I would start with holidays I would start with all of the holidays and if you want to do a lead up or a promotion um you can put when you should start the promotion um and when the promotion is going to happen but I would say the first thing you do you spend an hour would you agree with that hour okay storming right okay

an hour brainstorming and go over what you can write it down on a piece of paper first right when are the holidays write it down then go to your calendar um you just have to be organized enough to do it but I think an hour I think all it takes people is one hour to get started to go by the calendar and get things written down

on it then you can start adding to it as you're thinking of things you know because you're going to be out in the car and you're going to start thinking while you're driving and oh gosh I should do this or your wife's gonna say oh hey honey we have this party coming up and blah blah blah so you put it down on the calendar I mean

it's a constant calendar it's a constant it's a constant calendar you have a team in your office you have a bookkeeper you have you you can brainstorm all the time and you can always add to the calendar I think it's important to schedule the meeting 100 that's an hour or two schedule the meeting get everybody together and say Here's what can we do fun exciting and

how can we make money more money here in 2023 2024 and 2020 at our restaurant based on the calendar you put in all the musicians you're going to have you're going to live music whatever you're going to do barbecues Father's Day you put all that in there now from there oh you have all that information then to give your graphic artist and then create a timeline

for doing all the details now here's the nice thing about this once you get this going you have it year after year if you have a year after year you're probably going to do the same Father's Day barbecue every single year right right we've been doing it for 20 years right we're having the same barbecue every year why wait until three weeks before to tell your

graphic artist I need this I need that I need to post up on social media I need to post it on the website so many people go to your website now and know the two next two three holidays coming up and see Thanksgiving Christmas New Year's Eve and see everything that's going on there there's also cool marketing calendars online that you can Google I know you

have one right you have a um like a special what is it special events or um uh restaurant calendar um that is available let's let's do a whole nother um episode episode on food food holidays that's a really good one so let's let's cut this off here absolutely and I think we're trying to drop us some really informal formative stuff on uh a marketing calendar get

a year-long market account you are not bullying you know things out of nowhere last minute it and uh you know listen you live and you learn on every task that you do on every mistake on every thing you do well um you know there's always improvements and ways that you can can do better we're guilty we're guilty too so yeah we're human I tell people this

all the time we're human we make mistakes we drop the ball as well and if you learn from it then you're growing and that's the most important part so so yeah get that marketing calendar going and uh get some really fun cool events on there go to restaurant growth secretsuniversity.com and check out more great tips on how to run a beautiful restaurant absolutely have a great

day thank you