I recently had the privilege of attending the 2010 Restaurant Leadership Conference this past week in Scottsdale, Arizona. Many within our company, as well as within the restaurant industry, always have rave reviews of this conference and it definitely didn’t disappoint. Speaker topics ranged from building your brand to social marketing trends to a deeply inspiring session around not wasting time. One of my favorite sessions was led by Tom Feltenstein, chairman and CEO of the Performance Marketing Group, and author of various books including, 10 Minute Marketer Secret Formula and 401 Killer Marketing Tactics. His session focused on how to think local inside the four walls within and the four blocks and four miles outside your restaurant. His ideas are easy to implement, fun and will work for any type of restaurant operation – big and small.

Here’s a couple of my favorite ideas that he shared during the session:
- Create personalized business cards for your employees with titles like “POS Guru” or “Diner Server Extraordinare”
- Use buttons to help suggestive sell on your highest profit margins or create conversation in your restaurant
- Create a fake parking ticket to place on cars outside your restaurant enticing customers into your site
- Target direct mail activity to new neighbors within the neighborhood or businesses within the area
- Give away instant win cards that give your customers a bogo or free item

The best and “whackiest” idea that came out of the session was to create your own “positive picketing” on your restaurant street corner. This is done by having some friends or employees stand outside with signs that say positive things about your restaurant to create buzz. As a seasoned marketing professional, I was re-energized by Tom Feltenstein and his passion for marketing. I immediately came out of the session with a new appreciation of taking risks and thinking outside the traditional marketing box. What other whacky ideas are out there? What has worked well for your restaurant?

This entry was posted by Jessica Lundberg, Senior Marketing Manager on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 11:57 am and is filed under Hospitality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.