By Doug Radkey

Do you market your restaurant spontaneously, or do you have a true marketing playbook in place? If you said both, great answer!

Marketing is not intended to be static. You simply cannot “plan it and forget about it.” It’s imperative that you consistently check in on your marketing playbook and the efforts made to inquire if there needs to be any shift in spending or direction.

The unfortunate truth is that when brands decide to level up their marketing efforts, often, they don’t create a marketing playbook first, looking only at the now and not to the future. The number one question is always “How can I get more traffic tomorrow?” This often results in an idea or campaign that falls flat on its face, leaving the leadership team wondering why their “million-dollar idea” didn’t work.

You need to create a plan or playbook first and then adjust it “on the go” throughout the year or quarter. Marketing shouldn’t be looked at as an effort to create overnight success. Winning plans take time to create, design, launch, and nurture.

What is a marketing playbook?

A marketing playbook is a lot more than simply posting on social media and hoping for the best. A marketing playbook provides your brand with an intelligent direction towards scalable, sustainable, profitable, memorable, disruptive, and consistent strategies. That may sound like a lot of work, but creating a destination that formulates those key characteristics and one that stands out from the crowd is often easier to map out than many seem to think.

Define your audience

First, create your ideal guest persona(s), including detailed socio and value-driven data within your hyper-local area. Use these personas to visualize and understand your target audience better. This will help you tailor your marketing efforts and offers to attract and engage the right guest, at the right time, and at the right price. You need to create emotion while building three important values: trust, credibility, and connection. At the end of the day, that is the purpose of your marketing efforts.

Align your brand

Next, look at your brand. Many operators are missing the connection between brand strategy and marketing strategy and how they work together by aligning messaging, positioning, and tactics to create a cohesive and compelling guest experience. On one hand, brand strategy defines your identity, values, and personality thereby shaping how it is perceived by guests. On the other hand, marketing strategy leverages this brand identity to develop messaging, visuals, and campaigns that resonate with your defined audience to communicate your unique value proposition.

Create a guest journey

Now that you know your most targeted guests and have aligned your brand, you need to create an experience map for each persona. Create one that will tell the story of each experience: from initial contact through the process of brand engagement and into a long-term relationship. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. The best and easiest way to create this guest journey map is by creating a chart:

Top row:

Pre-visit: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling before deciding your brand?

Entering: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling as they enter or order online?

Ordering: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling as they place their order?

Eating and drinking: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling as they receive their meal?

Paying: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling as they are paying and exiting?

Post-visit: What is the guest thinking, seeing, and feeling after their visit/meal?

Left side:

Verbatim: What are they thinking during each noted touch-point?

Guest actions: What actions are they doing during each touch-point?

Pain points: What could potentially create a negative emotion during the touch-point?

Goals: What are their personal goals during each touch-point?

Touchpoints: Which branding and marketing points will create an emotion? List here social media, website, people, technology, menus, signage etc.

Emotional experience: Are they happy, sad, confused or angry? If it’s not a 100-positive emotion, make adjustments.

Opportunities: What opportunities does your bar or restaurant have to ensure it creates a positive experience during each touchpoint? It’s important to recognize that the journey map needs to be revisited every three months to analyze and adapt any changes, allowing you to create more positive opportunities.

Develop your strategy

Developing a marketing strategy after understanding the customer journey map involves leveraging insights from each stage along with your brand and guest alignment – to create targeted marketing initiatives that both engage and convert potential guests.

Based on the insights gathered, you can establish clear and measurable marketing strategies that align with the goals of each stage of the journey. For example, objectives may include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic to boost online orders or reservations, or to enhance guest loyalty.

RELATED: The crucial role of loyalty in restaurant operations

You want to select marketing channels that align with the preferences and behaviours of your target audience at each stage of the journey. This may include a mix of digital channels such as social media, email marketing, technology providers, search engine optimization (SEO), and offline channels such as community partnerships and local advertising.

Before executing, you will want to set up tracking mechanisms to monitor the performance of your marketing strategies along with opportunities to obtain first-party guest data, at each stage of the journey. Remember, data in 2024 is arguably just as important as cash flow. Having in-house data will over time – reduce your marketing costs and maximize your marketing results.

Tell your story

When you’re ready to execute, you want to develop stories plus consistent messaging and content that resonates with your ideal guest at each stage of the journey through a multitude of channels.

With storytelling, bars and restaurants must make their stories meaningful, personal, emotional, simple, and authentic. Despite the word “story,” it isn’t even confined to the written word. Colours, décor, vendors, staff training, plating, glassware, and packaging – even the simplest visual segments within your brand messaging – can all paint a picture worth a thousand words.

Let’s be honest, paying guests are complicated, emotional, and confused individuals. Their buying is often based on subjectivity and not often backed by objectivity. Therefore, don’t be afraid to tell your true story to make your brand a destination where your guests are excited to visit, where your staff is excited to work, and where you’re excited to lead.

With a true marketing playbook plus a smartphone and a modest budget of three to five per cent of your sales, you can tell a variety of stories that align with your brand, connect to your ideal guest, and address each unique touchpoint leading to increased awareness, revenue, and profits.

Doug Radkey is the president of KRG Hospitality Inc. plus a 2x author and a keynote speaker on all things bars, restaurants, and boutique hotels. He is on a mission to revolutionize the way hospitality businesses start, stabilize, and scale all over the world by aligning strategy, programming, and coaching to deliver what’s needed most – strategic clarity. For more information, visit krghospitality.com