In a previous blog article, we covered the 4 Ps of Marketing Your Menu. There, we discussed how this common marketing strategy could help you improve your menu. This time, we’re going to discuss how each of these 4 Ps impacts sales and promotion of products (the food you’re selling).
The 4 Ps of marketing, of course, are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. These can all have strong effects on the way you showcase your menu items and your restaurant itself.
Product
Your products are the items on your menu, the ones you’re advertising. Naturally, you will have some fan-favorites, dishes that people perennially love and recommend to others when they come to your place. These are the ones you should focus most on when you’re deciding what to showcase in marketing efforts. When potential customers can see what others are raving about, it helps increase the desire to experience your food for themselves, which is the whole point! Take quality pictures of these dishes with good lighting and at a good angle. If it makes your mouth water, it’s a winner! Keep in mind that whatever products you feature are going to have an increase in sales due to their increased exposure, so be prepared for the uptick in sales on those foods.
Price
With rising costs due to increased food costs, third-party delivery fees and higher wages, finding the right price can be difficult. You don’t want to hike up menu prices and inadvertently alienate your customers, but you are worried about those dwindling margins, too. You want to be competitive while still drawing in a profit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Most people today understand those rising costs and won’t mind. Still, it’s best to choose your more competitively-priced items to showcase in ads and marketing efforts, which will encourage new customers to come in.
Place
In our discussion of menu marketing, place referred to what people are seeing first, most prominently, on the menu. In this situation, we’re going to use it in a slightly different context. Place is where you’re marketing your restaurant, whether it be a billboard, a text message, social media, a TV ad, or an email promotion. Place, in this context, is important for many reasons. First, the type of media you use for marketing will reach a specific audience, and you have to make sure that’s your target audience. Selling meals for kids is never going to be as effective on a late-night TV show or email as it will be on social media or a billboard. Grabbing a teen’s attention is easiest on social media. TikTok is great for showcasing food. Whatever you’re selling, you want to make sure you know who’s buying it, and select your place appropriately so you can have the greatest increase in sales.
Promotion
It never hurts to offer people an incentive to come into your restaurant and have a bite to eat. A coupon is easy for online advertising or physical paper ads in a newspaper or as flyers, but otherwise a seasonal discount is a good bet. Make sure this discount is actually limited time, or it will lose its appeal quickly! Other promotions include referrals and loyalty programs, both of which can increase long-time customer loyalty.
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