By Marc Pickren
17 April 2019

Answer these questions honestly and thoughtfully to streamline your business's marketing plan without taking too much time or insider marketing knowledge, and translate customer behavior and insights into real business success.

People become small business owners for any number of reasons. Mostly, though, it's because they have an interesting or new idea. They're dreamers, passionate about a certain skill they're particularly good at or a service they're excellent at providing. For the majority, marketing isn't listed as the motivation for starting a business and is simply a set of tasks that needs doing so they can spend more time focusing on the things they enjoy, like running the business itself or dealing directly with customers to help them solve their problems.

The internal dialogue for small business owners generally goes one of two ways:

1. "I don't know anything about marketing, and I don't really care to learn."

2. "There aren't enough hours in the day for me to sit down and really focus on marketing my business."

The result is largely the same regardless of which category a small business owner falls under. Marketing takes a back seat, basic-but-critical tasks are overlooked, the business suffers, and the stress of it all becomes unbearable.

To make it worse, there are thousands of options and marketing tools available that can quickly overwhelm just about anyone. It is, however, entirely possible for small business owners to keep things simple. But simple does not mean nonexistent, which is the case for small businesses far more often than one might believe.

Earlier this year, OutboundEngine surveyed more than 350 small business owners across a range of industries and found that nearly half didn't have a marketing plan for the coming year.

For many small businesses, it's good to create a simple plan that explores how owners want to grow their businesses, who their customers are, and how those customers communicate with the business and each other. This might put a slight dent in day-to-day workflows and lengthen to-do lists, but answering these questions honestly and thoughtfully can streamline a business's marketing plan without taking too much time or insider marketing knowledge. The information can translate customer behavior and insights into real business success. 

How do you want to grow your business?
Nearly a quarter of the owners we surveyed didn't know how they planned to grow their businesses in 2019. It's a particularly critical question to answer, because even small investments in marketing – no need to go crazy with huge budget increases or unruly time commitments – can have a big difference on growth. Over 80% of small businesses that invest 5%-10% of annual revenue in marketing experienced revenue growth last year. Similarly, 79% of small business owners who invest 5-10 hours per week on marketing tasks reported revenue growth last year. The key is to balance investments of time and money to build an efficient marketing engine. 

Who are your customers?
The beautiful part of this question is that small business owners likely already have the answer. Small business owners value their customers above all else. However, they can't afford to offer subpar marketing experiences to their target audiences, especially in markets that are overloaded with competitors and increasing ways to communicate. It's a concern that small business owners are working through. About 40% of small business owners were at least slightly worried that increased competition would affect their businesses in the next five years.

How do your customers communicate?
Small business owners overwhelmingly value social media as the primary means of interacting with their customers. Nearly 57% said paid and organic social posts were the most successful marketing tactic for their businesses. Organic posts in particular are a huge time-suck for small business owners, but the business value is clear: Just over 60% of small business owners who said organic posts were their most successful marketing tactic experienced revenue growth in 2018.

As millennials and Gen Z – the two largest generations in history – accrue more and more purchasing power, social media will increasingly play a role in business success. It's no secret that social media is an important component to these generations' everyday lives and, more specifically, their purchasing decisions, presenting a lucrative opportunity for small business owners. More than half of small business owners say that they want to market to and do business with millennial and Gen Z buyers. The best way to do this is to meet them where they are with a message they care about. Millennials in particular care about small businesses and are willing to pay more to support them, but they first have to know you exist.

When small business owners answer these simple questions with confidence, the prospect of investing a little extra time and money – either into learning a new marketing skill or into the business directly – won't be such a daunting or stressful task.

4.8.2019
By Tami von Isakovics

The key to marketing special events in restaurants is putting the right message in front of the right customers. You want people who love your brand to know you’ve created something perfect for them. If you do it right, you can build a strong community and, ultimately, build your business.
I’ve found the best way to do it is with quality over quantity. As the Executive Director of Marketing for the Dinex Group, I’m in charge of getting the crowds to show up at our 16 restaurants located around the world. Dinex Group is a collection of high-quality, fine-dining, casual and quick-service restaurants founded by French chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud.

Part of our marketing vision includes producing custom events featuring experiences that build on the unique vibe of each location. There’s something for foodies of all walks of life. For example, at Restaurant DANIEL, we recently hosted a luxurious caviar-and-wine-focused event (with high-priced tickets).

Anyone can host a wine dinner, but we really work to create a theme that resonates, and with partners that have a following. Because our chefs have relationships with all the top purveyors, we’re able to offer our guests specialty ingredients and the highest-quality goods on the market that they can’t always find elsewhere. During the last year or so, we’ve found there are a few key steps to selling out these special events. Here they are.


#1: Make it Easy to Stay in Touch with Loyal Customers
A famous chef attracts media attention and Dinex is lucky to have that angle covered. Besides having Daniel on the marquis, one of the most effective tools I’ve found for promoting events is email marketing.

For many years, we used our website and customer comment cards to collect guest contact information. Before I joined, our site really wasn’t optimized for signups, and customer comment cards were slow to trickle in. I needed an “automatic” solution and a way to rapidly grow our database.

I had used WiFi marketing at my previous job and knew it was a good option. We offer guests free access to WiFi through a platform called Zenreach when they’re in our restaurants, in exchange for giving us their name and email address. Since we already know email is a tried-and-true channel, building a massive list that is customizable, easy to use and cheap to run has been a game changer for us.

#2: Build Segmented Lists
Once we collect email addresses, it’s simple to segment lists by specific demographics — namely which restaurant they’ve visited — so we can connect with the customers most likely to be interested in an event at that venue.

Segmented email lists take almost no effort to manage, and gives us information about visit behavior. This data helps us build more relevant email marketing campaigns, which is helpful for segmenting. In about a year, Dinex Group has collected over 64,000 contacts and we get hundreds of new emails every month.

The overall quality of the contacts is high as well. Since they’re collected in our properties, the information we collect represents customers who have already dined with us. These are ideal contacts to have because they’re from people who we expect have had a good experience and naturally want to return. The events give them another reason to come in, and us another chance to impress them with our quality and hospitality. 

#3: Give People What They Expect
Even though I had success with WiFi marketing at a previous job, there was initially some resistance when I suggested it to the executive team as a solution. The Dinex Group didn’t offer free WiFi because there was an assumption that it was wasn’t needed in fine-dining restaurants. But pretty much everyone expects WiFi now, and not having it is annoying. (Especially when you want to Instagram a beautiful dinner!)

Whether it’s fine dining or casual, we’re always looking to improve our guests’ experiences. So offering WiFi was just a natural progression of something that guests wanted.

#4: Design Events Tailored to Customer Behavior
Our events capture media buzz, strengthen customer relationships and allow our amazing, creative staff in our kitchens and bars to show off what they can do. The messaging and content that goes out to the public is individualized and location-centric because Zenreach has helped us collect and segment high-quality lists.

In short, we’ve been able to create separate lists for each location. One of our segmented lists for Bar Boulud highlights what’s going on in the world of wine and share the weekly lineup of big-bottle Panier offerings. Because we’re connecting with an audience who we know is interested in wine, when we send out an email announcing a special wine-focused event we see immediate action.

Another recent example is a Mardi Gras dinner we hosted featuring Chefs Daniel Boulud and Emeril Lagasse that sold out the day after we sent our e-blast! We also host an annual cheese dinner at Restaurant DANIEL, where we partner with a cheesemaker and offer a smorgasbord of amazing cheeses with a multi-course dinner. It’s also a luxurious kind of experience, and a little higher priced than some of our other events. Within two days of emailing our list it sold out. Due to popular demand, we decided to add another night and sent out a blast announcing it. That one sold out, too. We’re still amazed at what we were able to accomplish with just two targeted emails.

Email sometimes gets a bad rap because too many companies spam their customers with irrelevant or visually unappealing content. We’ve found that when you offer people something they’re interested in, they eat it up.