Ok,
As many of you might or might know, I will be starting delivery on March 10th. I have just ordered full color menus, and boxtoppers with coupons on them. I have purchased a cartop sign. I will be spending more money to add delivery (min wage + tips as pay).
I would like to hear what would be the lowest cost, highest impact marketing ideas. I am planning on door hangings because I can spare labor, just not much cash flow. Would a full color menu + the boxtoppers be a sufficient doorhanging? DO you rubber band the material to the door, put it in the mailbox, or put it trough the door handle.
A few details. I have 5k people within 4 miles. No other business delivers. I m about 40% lunch currently with a decent demand for lunch deliveries. I really need to improve dinners, especially Mon-Wed.
I am all ears at this point. I have one week to put together the marketing plan. Thank you to all who take time out of your busy day to assist me and improve the life of my business, and the lives of our employees.
The problem I see will be that it seems your area will be too sparsley populated for economical doorhanging. I would consider mailing a postcard with big and bold [size=5]NOW OFFERING DELIVERY!!! [/size]I realize the budget is small, but you have to get the word out. Buy 2 more car toppers and have one permanently on top of your car and your wifes car even when you are not on delivery. If no one else is delivering, these will garner much attention. What about stickers for the front page of your newspaper? This is a relatively new marketing tool(at least here its new), that Liz from Note Ads can help you with. You should be able to find her contact info through the memberlist of this forum. If there are neighborhoods that are dense enough to doorhamg, if you don’t buy doorhangers, staple a rubber band to your material and put it on the doorknob. Inside mailboxes is against the law and in the doorjam tends to blow into the yard and become litter.
“Lowest cost” and “high impact” do not always go hand in hand…The important thing in any kind of marketing is to get the best return for your investment…Sometimes a more expensive promotion with a higher return ends up costing less as a percentage of the sales generated…
If door hanging is costly because houses are not close together, you need to deliver something that will have a longer inpact than a flyer an/or coupons…For example some kind of promotional product…I am kind of partial to magnets and magnetic memo boards because they are 65% of my sales…
And as far as distribution perhaps you can hire a local sports team to do it as a fund raising event…You may be able to get away with paying the “team” per piece at a rate that would be similar to the cost per piece if your were using hired help in a densely populated area…
If your delivery service is “unique” you just need to get your message out there and do not have to reply on coupons so much…Once competition catches up you may need to adjust…
Have Employees stand in major commercial areas handing out materials and being very friendly introducing themselves to people. I am talking about malls, near places like Wal-Mart, outside city hall on water utility due dates, and churches even.
For very soon if strapped for marketing cash: Develop a plan to donate to the school library (or PTA or something like that) 10% to 15% of all deliveries that have “this coupon” in hand and given to the driver for a couple of weeks. Design a catchy looking half page flyer that can even be black and white if it has visual impact. Talk to your school principals and ask if you can send this home with all the students. You get to help the school and and huge marketing pool . . . plus you are doing some community building by contributing to the school. I swear by it as one arm of my marketing machine. If nothing else, you spend a few bucks getting your flyers DELIVERED FOR YOU to hundreds of homes.
Develop some specials, coupons and/or flyers to give to school teachers for lunch. They get tired of cafeteria food, and often order in bunches. Drop the same materials off and City Hall or County Offices if they are nearby. They eat too. Police and Fire Departments are good. See, all of the above are people who are connected to various facets of communities and are networking engines. They are high value word of mouth candidates who talk to lots and lots of people in the course of their business day and week. And they know lots of people.
Send a news release to the local newspaper about a new service available to your community. Make it something exciting and newsworthy. If it sounds like a free advertisement piece, then they won’t run it. Your Chamber of Commerce might have resources to help write one. Concise, to the point, and enthusiastic are key elements. Make sure it is easy to understand why a subscriber would care about what you are announcing . . . like that school fund-raiser promotion I mentioned above? Celebrating an anniversary? 1st and only delivery service in town?
Do not neglect getting word to the rooftops and the people who live in town. What I am talking about is another facet that could pay of in foundation building and underground networking growth for your message about your food and new delivery service.
D@mn I get wordy sometimes. It’s just that I am doing a lot of these things to good result right now.
Paul, Thanks for the refferal! I got all excited when I saw my name!
Matt - if you are interested in using Post-it notes on your newspaper like Paul mentioned PM me and I’ll get you some information. We also sell Super Sticky Post-it notes that are great for doorhanging/windshield leaflets. We have done a lot of these and many of our customers have had great results. I can send you some info on those as well, just let me know. The nice thing about using Post-it notes for your doorhangers is the fact that people can peel them off the door and re-stick them near their phone or on their fridge and your marketing wont just get lost.
This is Jay from Smart Marketing Solutions. We specialize in marketing and promotions for pizza companies. Without a doubt the best product to develop or grow a strong delivery business is the SmartMemo board. It is a magnetic memo board that people use to write notes on that features your complete menu, special offers and coupons. It is delivered fully assembled and includes a pen and either a door hanger bag or mailing bag. In the past three years we have distributed over 10 million units for pizza operators from coast to coast. Over 90% of customers who distribute SmartMemo boards report sales increases of $1,000 - $5,000 per week lasting several months.
The product is more costly to distribute that flyers and postcards but if what you want is a promotion that will actually force you to hire more staff SmartMemo boards are the best thing you’ll find.
We currently have a promotion for the Pizza Expo that would save you 45% off the regular price of 5,000 units. The boards are going at $0.49 per unit until April 3. The regular cost of 5,000 units is $0.89 each. We also offer six monthly payments with no interest, which would be $410 per month. The offer ends April 3.
Good luck with your new delivery business. One more thing… a lot of our clients have used the boards to promote lunch deliveries with great success. People stick them on their filing cabinets.
