If your customers are pleading for a discount, it’s usually a good thing. It means they want your product or service. They might not necessarily value it the same way you do, but the desire is there. However, if you’re tempted to provide discounts to appease them, don’t. Resist the temptation.
Hundreds of restaurants have signed up for this year’s Dine Out Vancouver Festival. If you’re one of these restaurateurs partnering with Dine Out Vancouver, you probably know that your margins will be relatively low during the two week festival, however, you will be receiving higher traffic volumes as well as the ability to leverage a marketing campaign without spending too much of your time and money. All in all, it’s a marketing maneuver, and I’ve read and heard about several instances where it’s been both a hit and miss decision. Most importantly though, Dine Out is a big deal in Vancouver. Even if you’re a restaurateur that’s not participating this year, you can still learn several things from one of the few popular local events that focuses solely on culinary experiences. Here are 4 things a restaurateur should learn from the Dine Out Vancouver Festival.
Originally posted on VanCityBuzz.
For the past two years, we’ve run and marketed a local event called the XYBOOM Conference. We’ve been lucky enough to have over 250 attendees each year, most of which come from the largest organizations in the region – and the world.
There is a difference between marketing and marketing strategy. Marketing is your general branding, the mediums you reach out with and the messages you relay through those mediums. Marketing strategy focuses on making educated decisions on what your branding should be, what are the best mediums to choose from and what message will resonate most with your target audience. It’s important to differentiate the two as most people we encounter have marketing – but no marketing strategy.
If I were to throw 10 tennis balls at you at the same time, how many would you catch?
You’d be lucky to catch one. On the other hand, if I only threw one tennis ball at you, you’re most likely going to catch it. Marketing works in the exact same way.
I was ecstatic when Daily Deal sites like Groupon, TeamBuy, and Living Social started exploding in Canada. It seemed like a great idea at the time – a win-win between merchant and customer. As customers, we’d receive great deals to try out new restaurants and local activities. As merchants, you’d to drive new customers to your business for a nominal fee – effectively replacing the need for a marketing plan. It all seemed perfect on paper, but, like most things, only once it was put into practice were you able to truly begin noticing the cracks.
Here are 3 reasons why Groupon is a poor marketing strategy:
When I was about 8 years old, my mom would drive us to a nearby shopping mall where I would immediately bolt to the toy store and wait there while she went shopping. I’d stare at the newest action figures for two to three hours until she came around to pick me up. At the time, I had plenty of action figures, but I would always long for the ones hanging on the wall in pristine packaging. The shopkeep would stare inquisitively at me as I tried desperately to will the packaging off the action figures and into my hand.
Brands have always been about trust, and in order for brands to gain trust from consumers, they advertised. They advertised the quality of their product or service, and they did it often enough to be recognizable household names. So, the next time you walked through your local supermarket, you were more mentally willing to purchase the recognizable brand over the one you’ve never heard of. As much as this is still a tactic used by marketers today, the ability for consumers to easily speak and share with other consumers on a mass scale has completely flipped the traditionally one-directional marketing world on its head. Consumers are no longer only just listening to the neatly packaged, perfect advertisements brands want them to see – they have easy access to customer reviews and anything their large network of friends are saying. And this brand-penetrating, multi-directional world is what Generation Y – or Millennials – grew up in. So, with this evolved – and continually evolving – landscape, how do you ensure your marketing is pristine and perfect across all platforms to over 70 million Millennials who spend an average of 200 billion dollars annually?
Marketing trends come and go faster than you can say “let me think about implementing that”, but those that take action and ride the wave at the perfect time can explode onto the scene. Here are 4 marketing trends that your company can leverage right now:
You and your target audience are exposed to an average of 2,000 to 5,000 advertisements per day. You may be thinking “there’s no way I see that many ads every day”, and you may be right. Because you, like a majority of consumers, have learned to tune most of it out.
