I can’t speak to the rent, location or product. There are a lot of seasoned pizza store proprietors here that can do that, but I can speak to the marketing question…
The marketing question could fill a small book, so lets focus on the task at hand first, which sounds like finding new customers and even more importantly, bringing them back.
[]What kind of marketing works best for a pizzeria? We’ve seen everything from value-pak mailers to social media to billboards and fliers. Which provide the best return on investment?
[]What is a realistic budget we’d need to set aside to reach a goal of 400 pies per day?
If you take only one idea away from my post, I hope it’s this… that no two customers are the same. Each has his / her own preferences, desires, interests, ways they like to be reached, times they like to be reached, if they like to be reached at all. Build your marketing around your customers, not your customers around your marketing.
Your marketing budget will grow as you grow your business, however a key aspect of launching a new pizza business is the operative word, “launch”. “Opening” a business does very little benefit to your long-term popularity. Better to overwhelm your customers on the first day than to underwhelm them. A first impression is a lasting impression. That said, you’d better be ready to handle a capacity crowd that night, as a poor performance not only will stay in their minds but also likely end up on third-party review sites, and those stay with your business forever. Train, train and train your team some more, for opening night.
Long term, my experience has been that every pizza business owner has their own secret marketing tools, the ones that they rely most heavily on, so you will likely hear some different ideas on this point. Keep in mind that none of them are wrong, in that what works for them is based on their locations, their customer preferences, their products, their customer demographics, even the local weather. That said, and from an aggregate perspective, here are some of the most powerful tools that pizza store owners can use:
- Loyalty Rewards - It costs 6 to 7 times more to find a new customer than to bring back a customer that may not have returned. Loyalty Rewards can also serve double-duty, in that a business owner can leverage any costs incurred for issuing rewards by advertising those rewards issued. Example, having a redeemed reward posted automatically on a customer’s Facebook page, “I just got a free slice at X Pizzeria” with a link back to your business and a promotional offer for the new prospective customers reading those posts to redeem. Who better to bring you new customers than your existing customers?
- Marketing / Contact Automation - There are many services that can provide ways for you to reach your customers where your customers prefer to be reached. Everyone is different, and has his/her own preferences of how to be reached, be it text-message, email, social media, box flyer or others, as well as how often to be reached. Such services will usually give your customers a choice and deliver the automated content of your choosing based on the customer’s choices / desires. Customers may even choose to “opt out” of receiving your contacts, protecting their privacy and keeping you from losing a customer that might have otherwise grown frustrated by the long-term contacts.
- Social Media - A huge buzzword and the future of all service oriented business marketing, Social Media’s power is in the Friends and Family which a customer may reach with it. Create incentives for your customers to post on their social media sites about your business. If you pride yourself as using the best cheese in the industry, why not have a “Longest Strand of Cheese” photo contest? Customers will have fun with it and take pictures of themselves eating and sharing your pies, with links back to your business.
- Reputation - As in days of old, your business’s reputation is among the most important factors to growing your customer base. In days of old, however, it took longer to build a bad reputation than it does today, and it was easier to forget poor performances when they weren’t posted online for all to see, in perpetuity. Today’s pizza shop owners, businesses in general, are held to a higher standard then ever before.
I’m a lover of good quotes, and one of my favorite is… “Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster. Be sure to always be part of the Good news.”. Give your customers a way to provide you feedback, in the form of surveys, or even just a good old-fashioned “Suggestions” box. It gives them a way to express how they feel and share their insights on how you can improve your business. A good survey can lead to a good online review, with the right tools provided to your customers.
If you’re going to pass out a flyer, be sure that the flyer has a way to collect contact information from your customer, with their permission, of course. This way, there will come a day where you’ll never have to pass out another flyer, ever again, as you’ll have built your own contact list. Otherwise, you’re relegated to distributing flyers for the rest of your business’s life. These days there are ways to provide a URL or a QR code for a customer to scan, or just give them a phone number to call where someone can ask for the contact information and introduce them up to your loyalty program.
Budget to set aside to sell 400 pies a day, I think a seasoned pizza store proprietor would tell you that money and marketing alone can not ensure you reach 400 pies a day. First, be sure that you have the systems and team in place that can produce that many pies a day, and do it with a quality product and give quality service with speedy delivery time. If you reach your goal before you’re able to sustain that kind of service, you run the risk of dissatisfying your customers and in the process, no amount of money you spend on marketing can overcome the bad press and customer dissatisfaction.
As far as actual monetary cost is concerned, I recommend setting aside X% of each sale to go towards your marketing costs.
I could go on for days, but I think this is a good start for a business school project, or for an actual pizza shop start-up. Hope it helps.
