- Please, tell me a little bit about Hummingbird Creative Group. What services do you offer?
Hummingbird Creative Group is a full-service branding agency. I founded the company in 1995 here in Cary, North Carolina, and our goal is to work with our customers who are often manufacturing as well as service businesses to do whatever they need to build their brand in the marketplace.
So, that might include brand strategy, figuring out what their positioning and their major messaging should be, implementing marketing tactics, graphic design projects, advertising, PR, building websites, and doing all kinds of digital marketing and in sales enablement tools.
- What does a founder of a new restaurant should do first when starting a marketing campaign?
To me, the marketing starts before the restaurant is in place, so for me, a location of a restaurant is extremely important. What kind of signage can be put up is going to be one of the most economic marketing tools that you can have.
As far as location goes, you really need to know who your target market is and what your market share could be. I’ve seen restaurants try to go into office buildings and think they were going to be supported by the people in that building and it’s been a disaster. You’ve got to make sure you got general public around your location.
If you have an ethnic type of offering or something similar close to you, what are the competitors? Sometimes you’ll see a lot of different cultural types of food in the same place, and sometimes that’s a really good strategy because that means there is a market there to support that. So, all of that has to do with marketing, and I would say those are the first things that a founder of a new restaurant really need to think about.
- What are the best techniques (advertising, promotion, word of mouth, social media, social events) for a restaurant that help to reach as many customers as possible?
It really depends on your location, the type of food that you offer, whether there is a good target market close to your location.
I would say, multimedia is the way to go. You need to do advertising, promotions, word of mouth which is probably the biggest thing and today that includes online reviews. We have watched so many retailers get devastated by online reviews and online comments, and it’s really, really important to remember that, that is how people are finding out about you and how they are making decisions.
And so, making sure the customer experience is the highest quality possible is really important to marketing. We can market all day long, we can send out mailers, we can put the message out there, we can touch everybody, but if one person decides to wreak havoc because he was not treated right somewhere, he can destroy your reputation by simply going on Google, Yelp, CitySearch and put up a letter. The reputation management is huge, I would definitely spend money on online reputation management and have somebody watching reviews, answering reviews. If something negative happens, call the person offer her discounts, offer to fix it and ask her to take down her review. But the best way to avoid all that is just to provide a fantastic, unique customer service within your restaurant.
- What techniques are better to choose if the business is just starting out and short in cash?
First of all, that’s a bad idea to begin with for a restaurant. If you can’t afford to market, you won’t last for long. So, don’t be short on cash. But if you stuck there you know there are some interesting things that you can do, and most of them are online. Doing social media promotions is one. I’m sure you heard of things like Groupon and Living Social where restaurants can offer, send 30 dollars, get 60 dollars in food.
There are some problems for some restaurants with those deals if the margins aren’t right. Their food costs are too high, they can end up losing money on some of those deals, so even though there’s not a large cost to do the promotion, it can still really hurt a restaurant. Some restaurants can’t afford it, and they don’t realize it because they haven’t analyzed the food costs, and the cost of doing business from the rent that they have to pay, to keeping the lights on, to paying all their employees.
There is a local company called Stealz that I’m a big fan of because you can get something small like an appetizer or something that they’re featuring that day. You can get it just by checking in on the app. And then you can earn points for doing things, like writing a good review or taking a picture in the location and as you earn points, you can get things for your points. I love those types of apps because you’re not giving away large amounts of free food and people who are using the app become your advocates for your brand and they deserve to be rewarded for that.
Other things that you can do if you don’t have a lot of money is the gorilla marketing or cross promote. So, if you work in a mall, or strip center, or even in an office building, you can go to your neighbors and do cross promotions, give them coupons to send their customers over to check out your new restaurant. If there are large companies that are close by, offer the people who work there a discount who come in your restaurant or a punch card to earn points on their purchases and then get free food for being advocates.
- Social events are a great way to build strong brand awareness, earn customer loyalty, and introduce the brand to new people. In your opinion, how frequently does a restaurant need to host them?
Special events where you bring in bands and performers if the venue is right can be great. If you provide a certain cultural kind of food, you can bring in fans or performers that tie to that on certain nights. Daily specials, I’m a big believer in doing regular daily specials. Your regular customers will love it, and that would be food and drinks specials.
- What is the minimum marketing budget for a new restaurant?
It does depend on the market biz there, its location, who’s around it, how far out in the middle of nowhere it is versus if it’s in a bustling area. You have to have a budget for media, and you have to have a budget for printing. Media in some areas is a lot more expensive than others.
- What advice about starting a marketing campaign would you give to a new entrepreneur?
You have to do your homework and know your market. If you don’t do that ahead of time, you’re not going to survive. It’s really about knowing the market. How many people live close by? How many people do you think you can get in and out in and out in a day. Budget wisely. Have a really strong concept.
