advertising

Good Luck with your ad.....was it a discount coupon or business location info ad?

peggy, we ahve a penny saver here. we ran the ad for about 2 months. even put in a coupon for free half pound of q......only one person redeemed! for us, that was a waste of time and money. the ad that worked the best was direct marketing. ever get those coupon books in the mail full of all sorts of stuff? well, that works the best here. cost about three hundred per ten thousand mailed, but we got hundreds of them redeemed. we ran a coupon for "buy one dinner get second half price" for a limited time like a month.....

I don't think our success this weekend was a result of the pennysaver ad. The lady who runs the market was in a local business women's success type magazine. So, it could have come from there. We have a lot of repeat customers. We had a lot of customers who said, "I heard your brisket is great."
I think Jack just cooks really fine bbq and we're sticking with the place people expect us to be. Being consistant can be good.
We dropped creamy brisket on a biscuit because no one was ordering it. Several weeks went by and all of a sudden folks are asking for it again.
What's that all about? Should we reintroduce it? Just offer a small amount to start with?
Peggy
P.S. I think the heat is killing my brain cells!
Peggy

We took out an ad in our small town tattler newspaper once with a coupon to redeem for a discount.
We sell pork and chicken at farmers markets.
We didn't get any customers with coupons, so we stopped advertizing immediatly.

For catering we took out a 1" add in the yellow pages and let word of mouth take over. It's been working well.

Good Luck! Roger

I had just a few thoughts on this advertising thread, as it's a subject I seem to have been dealing with a lot lately. It's not just about reaching people, it's about reaching people who are potential customers. Thats why, IMHO, mass media is not always cost effective for smaller operators.

The exception to that, for some, might be yellow pages advertising, as Roger mentioned above. While everyone gets the yellow pages, your ad will only reach those people who are looking to buy your type of product, so you are hitting your target market. The downside is that the larger the area your yellow pages book covers, the more expensive the ad will be. (In my area, it's pretty pricy, plus, there are two competing books with about equal readership.)

As everyone knows, the least expensive type of advertising is word-of-mouth. It is also the most effective, in my opinion. It's effectiveness is shown in Peggy's post above. "We had a lot of customers who said, "I heard your brisket is great." If you, as an operator, are dealing with your customers personally, I'd ask for it. Something along the lines of, "I hope you enjoy your sandwich, if you do, please tell your friends to come see me!" Or something along those lines anyway.

I've found that couponing should not be entered into lightly. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you don't want to create a situation where your customers will not purchase your goods without a coupon. If you do decide to coupon, you again want to make sure those coupons that you paid to have printed get into the hands of the people that use them. Giving coupons to your existing customers hit your target market, but that practice MAY result in the situation I descibed above. I like to focus any couponing I do on generating new customer trial. I have done direct mail to homes in my trading area with great success. When I do coupons, I give them a short expiration date so I can gauge the coupon's effectiveness quickly. Of course, if someone comes in with an expired coupon, I honor it.

I've also had good luck with talking to local businesses and handing out menus and coupons there (a little sample plate of food will get you in most doors). At events where I've vended, I've had good luck handing out coupons to event-goers. Just walking around eating a plate of tasty looking food is suprisingly effective also (people will ask where you got it).

This is sort of a no-brainer, but the best marketing move you can make is to take care of your existing customers. It's way cheaper to keep them coming back than to get new ones to try you out. I try to remind my people of that fact constantly.

I'm sorry this post is kind of long, but it gave me a chance to put my thoughts down, and reflect on what has worked for me and what hasn't. Doing this should give me a bit more perspective when I deal with the 2 or 3 advertising solicitations I will most likely recieve tomorrow (Seems like thats the average number. And I thought the restaurant biz was tough, I coulda been in ad sales!) I hope you can gain from reading this post, if not, thanks for giving me a place to think out loud. I've also dealt with most widely available ad mediums (TV, radio, print, web, etc.), so if you think I can be of any help, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm always listening and looking to learn from the posts here myself.

Matt

Matt,
This was helpful to me. I think we're on the right track. We place a table and 2 chairs in front of our trailer with a beach umbrella. When we have someone eating our bbq at the table, especially children, our sales just jump.
Now, what I'm thinking about is to offer a discount to firepeople. All the locals offer discounts to the police. And this would be an offer with no expiration date, like $1.00 off any sandwich order. Do you think that would be a good idea? I don't want to look like we're begging, but we would like an increase in foot traffic.
I handed out samples one week to people and it was pretty lame! Walking through the crowd with little cups of bbq is not a tempting thing to lure in the masses.

I think it's just a stick it out, sales are getting better type of thing.

Peggy

Peggy,

Are MFDVs exempt from the "no seating" rule when operating in a Farmer's Market? I didn't get the impression there were any exceptions when speaking with the inspector, but I'd love to know if there are exceptions.

Rootsman,
I'll have to check it out with the inspector. We have 2 folding chairs, a camp table which is about 1 foot x 1 foot, a beach umbrella and a sign on top of the table. It's more of display than anything. There isn't really room to spread out your meal. But it sure is cute when you got a little one sitting there munching on your bbq. I had a little girl sit there and eat her pulled pork like spaghetti. Took her time and talked to a lot of people while she was eating. Sales jumped way up while she was doing this. A lot of elderly people just sit down there for a minute or two to rest. They don't usually buy anything, but I like them to feel rested. It's too hot down here right now for most older people to walk around much.
I'll be talking to my inspector shortly, and will ask him about this. I'm glad you brought it up. We did have an on-site inspection at the market with the table and chairs there and nothing was said about it.
Peggy

Peggy

WE are in New York City where advertising is real expensive. We only advertise on a limited basis. what we do though with great success is a e-mailing list. We ask our customers in they woul like to be on our list for specials and special events. In 18 months we have almost 3000 names.

We e-mail them twice a week up to once every ten days.

In turn when we run a special they e-mail there friends with the special.

August us real bad here and our customer count is up over 50% from last year.

Keeps advertising cost down. It takes about an hour and we use Outlook

David

I was thinking of doing what you did Peggy, by walking around with samples. I have some of the very small containers with my name on them (I put lables on them). What do you think?

Interested to see the post in advertising. I work in advertising and do competition BBQ, just getting into catering.

Radio can be expensive, but you can find a local station to trade air time with, get in front of crowds at their events - I recommend Christian Music, Oldies or smaller Country radio station they are easier to work with then the big stations in town, but you can still find the big stations need your catering at times. Make sure you get a good value for your service they will want to only give you mentions of your business names at times, for a top 5 station that might be ok but for smaller stations you need to get a good freqency of radio time at least 20 :60 or :30 second messages per week . The credibility you gain from working with media can help your business, use the association, give gift certificates to radio sales people to bring in clients if you have a restaurant, they meet hundreds of businesses. Understand all media takes time to work, most media takes 3 to 6 months to work, there are no quick fixes.

Print is passive media, people might respond to a offer, but it can't brand your business for top of mind awareness to trigger someone to remember you, over your competition. Also being involved in your local chamber, and also find a niche market such as church, biker rallies, School groups, etc.. is a good thing to be known in a network that you can stand out with. My 2 cents

Alan,
I walked around with samples one time at the market and felt like I was begging. I think if something just doesn't feel right, I shouldn't do it. I don't think it got a single person interested. Most of them looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe taking a sample dinner to an establishment such as a car dealership would lead to something. I haven't tried that yet.

Light My Fire,
I heard from the folks I've talked to about advertising, is be consistant on hanging in there. I think it's just like when we miss a week at the market. We have to establish that we are there again. The second week we're back we do better business. Thanks for the radio idea.
The niche market sounds like a good thought.
Peggy

Alan,
I walked around with samples one time at the market and felt like I was begging. I think if something just doesn't feel right, I shouldn't do it. I don't think it got a single person interested. Most of them looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe taking a sample dinner to an establishment such as a car dealership would lead to something. I haven't tried that yet.

Light My Fire,
I heard from the folks I've talked to about advertising, is be consistant on hanging in there. I think it's just like when we miss a week at the market. We have to establish that we are there again. The second week we're back we do better business. Thanks for the radio idea.
The niche market sounds like a good thought.
Peggy

Peggy,

We walked around our farmers markets and gave out $.50 coupons off a $5. or more purchase when we were starting up.

Now we give out samples only at or stand. Our Black Pepper Bacon flies out this time of year, after sampling it [the outdoor tomatoes are in now]. The aroma gets them over, too.

We also offer specials on what we're long on, displayed on our grease pencil board. It's not much, 5-10% off, but it generates a lot of new, and hopefully soon to be regular, dedicated customers.

Roger

Gathering Email address's is the best way to go. I'm the Director of Operations at a large oceanfront hotel in Florida (With another hurricane sitting offshore). We have collected about 15,000 Email address's and occasionally do an Email blast to pump up a soft period, it never fails to give us a nice boost. Be careful not to overdue it though

I like the email advice. TO see a really great example from the meat retail side, look at www.lobels.com. THey have a fantastic reputation as butchers. They send an email one a week and ship all over.

Rita