The Reality of Restaurant Advertising

Restaurant marketing has become an "attention economy" because people can only pay so much of it. The number of ads that bombard us daily compared to what we can act on shows that marketing must be delivered in a way that justifies attention. Otherwise, any advertising we do can easily be lost in a sea of clutter where nobody really sees it.

There is a popular a blueprint for ads and sales letters: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA). Thousands of marketers have followed this blueprint because it makes sense... and more importantly... it works.

When writing an ad for your restaurant, you should first seek to grab the attention of your potential customer. You can do this visually with "tasty", interesting, or wild graphics (make sure the images go with your message)... but an even better way is to have a compelling headline.

Entire books have been written on how to develop compelling headlines, but the idea is exactly like the front page of a newspaper - you want to sound interesting, important and make the viewer feel an urgent desire to read what you have to say. Let me briefly mention that an advertisement's headline is 1) more important than the name of your restaurant and 2) more important than your logo.

Another rule of restaurant advertising is to focus on the benefit for the consumer. Why should they be interested in what you have to say? Have you created a sincere desire for them to dine at your restaurant? And ultimately, why should they take action on what you'd like them to do?

The name of your restaurant alone does none of this.

Having your marketing follow the AIDA formula will immediately produce results leaps and bounds over the traditional business card ad because it's different than everything else.

The formula can be applied to any media: newspaper, phone book, television, email, website... all of these are opportunities to sit down and figure out a unique way to grab attention and lead customers to action.

And be sure to tell your customers what to do. Use specific language, don't be elaborate. A lot of restaurant advertisements are clouded with long descriptions of their entrees but no simple request to "Come Try One For Dinner This Evening!" Or "Call Right Now To Have Yours Delivered In The Next 30 minutes!"

This gives psychological motive and method for working with you. Combined with a valuable offer and compelling message, I guarantee this will significantly improve your advertising return.

The number of dollar bills you throw at an advertisement can have nothing to do with its effectiveness. That's common sense, of course, but what really ties into this logic is whether or not you actually know if your restaurant marketing is producing results! Saying and doing are completely different matters, and if you're anything like most small businesses, you have no real idea if one ad is pulling better than the next.

The only way to truly see if you're getting your money's worth is to track everything. Your ads, promotions, phone book listings, sponsorships... for every medium that you use to get the word out about your restaurant, you should have a tracking system in place to know if it's working.

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