You need to work on establishing restaurant marketing strategies to maximize Guest Satisfaction. You should have been working on developing your restaurant's version of Signature Service. This is really the key to the success of any Restaurant Marketing Program: Signature Service! Signature Service is when the guest realizes that your restaurant is superior to all your competition.

Some of these service ideas are focused on:

• Recognizing and rewarding customers for their birthdays, anniversaries and other special events
• How to market to new move-ins so they will become "Regulars"
• Recognizing first-time guests (and turning them into "Regulars")
• Strategies and methods of implementation for each of the marketing programs
• The concept of a Neighborhood Restaurant Marketing Representative
• Marketing to the businesses immediately around the restaurant (1-3 miles)
• Schools and other organizations in your marketing area (1-5 miles)

The Return-On-Investment for each restaurantmarketing program is important. You should develop reports to detail each marketing campaign and to give accurate information on your marketing. You also need to be collecting names and other pertinent information to establish your customer database. All your restaurant marketing programs should be well understood by you and your staff.

Understand that "Marketing" is a journey and not a destination. Marketing is more of a process than an individual goal. You need to develop restaruant marketing programs for one reason only and that is to increase your profitability. You will only reach this profitability objective if you have done a good job of personalizing each marketing program to your own restaurant. It is advantageous to have foresight and insight. Both of these are very valuable, though they are NOT the same. An old Chinese proverb reminds us: "If you have foresight, you're blessed, but if you have insight, you're a thousand times blessed." So it is with restaruant marketing and marketing strategies. You cannot make up marketing strategies as you go along. Studying and pondering about each marketing strategy you implement into your restaurant will give you the "insight" you need.

As you involve your restaurant marketing team and then work together to implement each marketing concept, you will better understand restaurant marketing and your marketing strategies. Your ability to clarify your restaurant marketing objectives will help you to maximize their effectiveness.

The more effective your marketing is, the more money that's put on the bottom line. Increased profit is the most obvious benefit of effective marketing. Enjoying your job, feeling confident and being in control are other benefits of effective restaurant marketing.

I want to stress the importance of ensuring that all of your employees are satisfied and happy in their job. Feedback from employees is critical to the success of your restaurant and its' marketing programs.

If you had all the money that is wasted each year in marketing, you'd be richer than S. Robert Walton, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet combined. The goal of your restaurant marketing is to totally eliminate marketing waste within your restaurant.

This quote by Longfellow describes most marketing:

"I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I know not where."

- Longfellow In many cases, marketing projects are doomed before they begin because they do not start out in the right direction, they do not have the right strategies and they have NO Plan-Of-Action. We should also note that - All of this money that is wasted comes directly from profits.

This wasted money is depressing. The only reason this money is wasted is because the individuals "in-charge" of marketing have no clear perspective of what their marketing programs can or cannot do. They have a superficial knowledge of the process of marketing, but lack the "insight" they really need.

You need to provide restaurant marketing programs that work and that with just a "little" tweaking, will be effective in your restaurant, time after time.