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Bottom line...What is the best advertising for the dollar?

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rookiepizzaguy

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Hey Guys,

Just wondering bottom line, what has the best return for the buck in advertising…Im not asking you all for a novel of a response, just tell me in a word or two…In all your experience, what advertising has given you the best return on investment…Thanks so much!
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

Strangest looking delivery vehicle possible.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

The best bang for your buck would be door hangers. They’re cheap to buy and if don’t have much money, you could always print up some coupons on your home printer, tri-fold them together with you menus, and staple a rubber band to them. The key is to be consistent with them. Try to get at least 1,000 of them hung each and every week and you will see results. The average return for me is usually around 5%. That’s based on an aggressive offer (free bread sticks, 2 liter of Pepsi, and 2 free toppings with the purchase of a Large Pizza). They almost always add on wings with their order.

5% return on 1,000 door hangers = 50
Lets say the average ticket for each order is around $18
50 redeemed door hanger x $18 ticket = $900 in additional sales for the week.

The offer I mentioned above costs me about $4 (including the pizza), so I end up profiting around $700 for each weekly door hanging campaign.

I believe the second most cost effective advertising would have to be direct mail (postcards).
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla
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rookiepizzaguy:
Hey Guys,

Just wondering bottom line, what has the best return for the buck in advertising…Im not asking you all for a novel of a response, just tell me in a word or two…In all your experience, what advertising has given you the best return on investment…Thanks so much!
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Depends on location, market, and advertising budget.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

Word of mouth.

It’s free and by far the most effective advertising.
Make a remarkable product, get some people in any manner possible, and they will tell other people.

You have to be more specific about the context you are inquiring about. Are you starting a shop or is your business down or are you looking to expand, etc…?
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

gotta go with door hanging. Few people are likely to order unless they have a menu in front of them. I cover my area every month and I can tell when the menu’s get to the door without fail.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla
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CaptSammy:
Depends on location, market, and advertising budget.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. There are no guarantees. I just started door hanging 3 weeks ago (with menus and some aggressive offers), 1000 per week and havent notice much increase at all.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

I would say from personal experience that mail drop coupons work the best. Door hangers work a small percentage of the time, I would say around 5 to 10 percent will respond to door hangers. Also, consider this, at one place I ran… we had calendars printed up with coupons, all through out december we gave these calendars to our customers. the response in the following year was great.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

above two posts - really depend on what you are door hanging of course.

Good looking menus, good offers = good response.

You’ve got to get something which customers will a) actually look at rather than throwing in the trash and b) will think this is something that I want to try (maybe its value maybe its quality - that will depend on the area)
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

I tell people that my take on marketing is that all bets are off. In this current marketplace climate, my regular expectation of return is all wonky. One truism is still going to hold, though: Marketing is about consistency, getting your name and message in front of customers regularly over a period of time. In the absence of an ongoing strategic plan of appearing in the marketplace, it is awfully difficult to predict a good return.

We got a little lazy over the summer and started paying the price. Now we are going to have to play catch-up, and our marketing dollars won’t be as efficient as they would have been if we had kept up the momentum. We are going to be involved in some community activities in September/October that will help us out for just volunteer time.

We are hosting a rest stop in town for a charity bike ride. Meeting people, getting our names out, and helping a good cause.
 
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another thing you could do. If there are a lot of factories/construction sites and other industry types of plants like dow chemical and what not… take out samples of your food to the management, take some fliers or some door hangers out to the workers. offer up some specials just for them. that may get your lunch business up and going better. make some business to business packs. with your menu, your name and contact numbers and some special prices or coupons. take them out and talk with other business managers/owners.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

In my mind door hanging menus gives you the best bang for your buck…Now you may not get the same response as door hangers with offers but your margins will be higher…So there is somewhat of a trade off…Test to see what frequency gives you the best return and then divide your total market by the number of weeks and do 1 section each week over and over and over and over…

One of our local spots does a mail drop all at once and goes from being so busy they lose orders to standing around doing nothing…So best to spread it out…And increase frequency in times of the year that are traditionally slower…
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

Use your POS system to identify your top 50 customers based on frequency for the last 6 months. Sit down and spend the two-three hours it takes to call them personally and thank them for the business. I do it during the day and end up leaving a message about 75% of the time.

The call goes something like this:

Hi, this is rookiepizzaguy from rookie’s pizza. I was looking over our recent business and noticed how often you had ordered from us and I wanted to call and say thankyou for the business. We really depend on our regular customers and I wanted to be sure you know I appreciate your business. Thanks again, and please call me if there is anything we can do for you to make our product or service even better.

Repeat at least a couple of times per year.

Cost? Two hours of your time.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

bodegahwy, a fantastic idea but its more ‘retention’ and ‘cultivation’ rather than advertising?
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

When you’re door hanging, it’s also a good idea to do it before people get home from work. Most people on their ride home are thinking about what they are going to eat for dinner. When they get out of their car with food on their mind, you want your door hanger to be the first thing they see when they walk up to their door. Make sure your door hanger has a nice picture of a pizza that’s going to make them hungry when they see it.

Another good strategy to try is hitting the same houses twice a month. The average home orders pizza around twice a month, so if you door hanged on a Tuesday and they just ordered pizza the previous Friday, they’re most likely probably not going to order until the following week.
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

Right on bedegahwy…

And get some thank you cards and “hand write” cards for new clients and larger orders…
 
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Re: Bottom line…What is the best advertising for the dolla

You would not believe the number of times I have heard from someone else who we did not call that they heard we do this… We even got written up in the local paper for it. Retention? Certainly. Marketing? Without any doubt.

It is far easier to get an extra $1000 in sales from your best customers than it is to find new customers to generate $1000 in sales. You need to do both, but when the question is “what is the best advertising for the dollar?” I will stand by the answer I gave.

What is the second best advertising per dollar? Box toppers… oops… retention again.

Third best? Front desk referrals from lodging. We hand out free pizza cards to all lodging staff twice per year. One card per employee at each lodging property.

Fourth best? Coupon books.

Radio gives coupons a good run for the money in my opinion, but since it does not generate a direct sale with coupon to count, it is hard to measure.
 
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royster13:
Right on bedegahwy…

And get some thank you cards and “hand write” cards for new clients and larger orders…
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My wife/partner had a great idea of doing a little scrapbooky thing with even just stickers and cut-out dies to create a personalized card to send out for really special occasions.
 
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