Short Lesson Series
Bring Them In With Special Offers
Lesson #6
Reading Time About 4-minutes.
Running a restaurant or café in Singapore means we’ve jumped into the fray and we’re in competition with many others. On the other hand, we’ve created a gastronomic market place and the general public is accustomed to dining out more. That’s good for us!
We need to promote more to attract more customers to your restaurant. Once they’re trying your food, and becoming familiar, they’ll keep coming back.
In the next lessons, I’ll present fun, effective, and cost-efficient ways to get more customers into your restaurant, helping you build a loyal following.
Some restaurants have left Flyers around announcing this month’s “Special” but paper can be messy, expensive, get wet and ruined, flops over by its own weight or curls up in the damp air; and it’s expensive. Fortunately, we can put on Singapore Shopper anything you can put on paper. It’s less expensive, won’t get wet and ruined, always looks good, and reaches many more readers island-wide.
All I need is for ONE café or restaurant owner to suggest he wants to run “Specials” and I’ll open a section just for that purpose and links with pointer ads to it on the Cover Page! I can also put the same pointer ad on your landing page.
I hope just passing these terms “pointer ads,” “Cover Page,” and “Landing Page” has you wondering what this means. If you’re new t this I say, You’re missing out on a serious medium designed by a serious advertising writer and producer over many years.
We’re not playing games. I’m bringing more customers to small businesses and you really should join in.
Don’t waste your time and money on a generic ad with every special, event and picture you can fit on it. Potential customers want quick information, and the focus should be on ONE item this month.
Your menu on a web page is helpful, but I don’t push for menus because the more items you have there the less each is emphasized.
Emphasize a Special Food and be specific about pricing it. If you want to do something more for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday “weekend,” featuring this in the Exciting Dining Weekend Edition will also reach a growing number of subscribers who asked for this information because they want to plan where to go out to eat on the weekend! Don’t ignore those people. They’re your strongest potential market.
Your offer should last a month giving readers time to plan to visit you.
If you’re including a discount reduce the price by at least 20% . Do not write it up as a percentage. Write it as an actual price. For example: “Regular Price; $20, Special Price $16. That’s a 20% Discount This Month Only!
I think it’s better to give away free appetizers or desserts. Something like “Come in with a friend for lunch. Coffee is free for both of you.” Or “Call for reservations for two or more. Get a drink or dessert FREE for your guests.”
This presentation online is a very professional way to reach the dining out public. You’ll reach….
- the right public
- at the right time,
- in the right place to read about it,
- with the right offer,
- and the right message
- in the right format.
I know that’s asking for a lot. It’s my cardinal list. I specialize and focus on providing these factors. Why? Because specific, pointed, well-tested advertising methods get strong response. I don’t want a reputation for wasting your money. (Oh my gosh No!) I want a reputation for bringing you more customers.
The magazine online is the right medium and it’s in the right place.
The reading public wants to dine out so they’re the right public.
They read when they’re planning to do business making them the right public at the right time. They won’t do business when you make an offer. They will do business when they are ready to buy. Therefore we must run the ad for several months and expect within the year, if they like your offer(s), they’ll plan to call and order or come in and dine.
The format is the Internet and the website is made to work on all instruments. It always looks good and it’s always conveniently available. I will place photos correctly. An incorrect placement causes the reader to stop reading!!! That’s terrible. They never finish the message, reach your conclusion, and make a purchase! Even big ad agencies often don’t know this. Their artist makes up what looks good to him/her. The ad won’t work. It kills sales!
We’re not here to decorate. We’re here to bring more customers into your business to make purchases. There’s nothing wrong with that. They want to eat and if they won’t dine with you they’ll go somewhere else. It’s my job to get them to visit you, not just anyone.
The right format should be clean, simple, easy to read and understand, get your offer across quickly and be so irresistible the potential customer says, “OOhhh I want to try that!”
I’m not simply promoting my magazine. I’m promoting your business here. I’m promoting getting more customer traffic to you and more profit into your accounting figures. The placement of these ads can be inexpensive.
The Exciting Dining Weekend Edition is presently planned for $50/weekend. (I’ll begin at a lower price while we’re building readership.) I’ll place the pointer ad for the “Special” offer on your Landing page FREE of Charge. I’ll Create a “Weekly Specials” Section and add your offer to it in a similar appearance and fashion to the Weekend Edition for just $45 for the entire week! A link from that offer will go to your Landing Page so we can get a count of visitors. It’s important that you know your ad is not just a gong sounding in an empty desert. You want to see the counter indicating more visitors to your Landing Page and then we assume, they are calling you or visiting any other website you own. If you don’t have any website for an honest price I can build a one or three-page “sub-site” for you hosted in the magazine. This is at a lower cost and much less trouble and work than trying to do this yourself.
(No One in the publishing and advertising world will do all of this so inexpensively!) For this year 2021, while we’re getting started in Singapore, that’s a low price and a very handsome offer that’s bound to bring you a profit. Actually no one else in Singapore is running a Dining Out Guide like this and thus it’s the best medium in town for this purpose.
Add it all up: A month-long package can be had for as many Weekend Editions as you want + $45 to go into the Weekly Specials Section. If your offer is exciting you’ll see so much profit I think you’ll be sending me a request to enter you in the Weekend Edition the full four or five weekends for the month! Why Not? You want that profit don’t you?
At most, the entire package for 4 weeks could cost S$245. At the lowest just run the $45 Weekly Special as a test and see what happens to your page counter numbers.
A good photo of the items offered is really essential. I prefer professional photos but if all you have is a cell phone with a pretty good camera in it, send me that photo and I’ll make the most of it. Photos on a white plate work very well.
By the way, if you have a young person living at home desperate for good honest work, there’s a lot of information on YouTube and in books teaching about food photography. Get that person a good camera, and with some training and testing, he/she can go out on jobs and make a sterling extra income.
I will promote these photographers on a “Recommended Photographers” page for just $5/month. You can’t beat that offer! It should not be free, but it should not be too expensive either. I want to help our young friends get started in a decent, honest sideline or career and if it’s a favor to their family, I’m thankful to help!
Info Letters and Traffic Getting Archive
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