How Can I Improve Our Marketing
Marketing a Pasta Restaurant
A profitable pasta restaurant is about more than supply and demand. It's about designing ways to entice new customers to engage with your products and to encourage existing customers to increase the frequency of their purchases.
There are no shortcuts to success in marketing a pasta restaurant. In this industry, the application of fundamental marketing tactics is more valuable than promotional fads and gimmicks.
Top performers habitually integrate sound marketing concepts with market demands.
Public Relations Strategies
Marketing and public relations are two distinct promotional disciplines. While marketing flows blatant advertising messages to audiences, PR takes a more educational and informative approach. For example, if you buy a premium mailing list and use it to conduct a direct mail campaign, that's marketing. On the other hand, if the Sunday paper runs a story about your pasta restaurant, that's PR. Since PR leverages media outlets, it may cost nothing to acquire media placements that feature interesting storylines about your products and brand. The trick is learning how to pitch storylines to media professionals without sounding too promotional or sales-oriented.
Expand Your Advertising Options
Take a look around the industry. Chances are, you'll see companies using a vast array of advertising vehicles to communicate brand messages. When it comes to pasta restaurants, it is mission critical to identify the advertising vehicles that are most likely to meet the specific marketing goals your business is facing right now. These days, pasta restaurants get solid marketing results from online channels capable of streaming high value content to a large, yet targeted customer base. To learn best practices of online advertising, learn from pure-play online businesses, as the principles they use for promoting an online business are very relevant to promoting any business online.
Price Matching
Don't underestimate the importance of competitive pricing in this industry. Even though you've worked hard to create a unique value proposition, cost concerns are serious issues for buyers. The principle is simple: Since pricing is a primary factor in product selection, your business agrees to match advertised competitor pricing. Without price matching, if they can locate lower pricing from a competing pasta restaurant, buyers will jump on it. Today's consumers are educated and informed. They use social media and other tools to identify the best pricing, making it imperative for small business to consider the value of a well-publicized price matching strategy.
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