Shop and Restaurant Marketing

If you run a shop or a restaurant there are various means to be applied for sales optimisation.

One of the most apparent things about running a shop or a restaurant is the necessity of getting buying customers into the store.

Great earnings potential

If you succeed getting buying customers into your store there is a great earnings potential in this kind of business.
Oppositely, if you get no customers or just browsers, you can suffer a great loss from this kind of activity.

Thus, you should seek to optimise the factors leading to good sales:

Location

Any restaurant or shop must be located where the customers are or where they live. The price of a shop is always directly proportional to the number of consumers passing on the sidewalk outside the shop. Strøget (high street) in Aarhus is the most expensive location, while a remote Galten side street is quite inexpensive.

New businesses should always go for the best location within the limits of their budget.

The best location of a lunch café could easily be in an industrial area of small businesses without in-house canteen. For a high class fashion shop the best location might be in a rich residential area.

Attract customers to your shop

A good location, however, is no guarantee that customers will flock to your shop or restaurant. It is important that the store signals candour and appears capable of meeting the consumers´ needs.

For instance you could:

• Leave the door open
• Place stands with goods outside the shop
• Arrange for proper shop lighting indicating that it is open
• Place dummies making it look like there are customers in the shop
• Display inviting pictures of the dishes served in the restaurant
• Advertise today´s special
• Advertise in the local paper
• Have your own homepage

Practice salesmanship in the shop

Most consumers are positively surprised when they come to a store where they get a good service. Running your own shop or restaurant you should always aim at offering your customers good service.
Professional shop staff instructor, Kurt Bakman, says that there is a big difference between being a shop assistant and being a salesman/saleswoman.

• A shop assistant is a person who passively lets the customer pick and assess goods
  
  
• A salesman/saleswoman is a person who shows attentive interest in the customer. Asks questions in order to gain knowledge of the customer´s needs and wishes.

This information the salesman/saleswoman uses to guide and bias the customer into a purchase - into buying the right thing and maybe buying more than s/he intended to.

After-sales

The best promotion tool you can get is a satisfied customer who recommends your restaurant or shop to others. For this to happen, the customer must have experienced to get more than s/he expected. The mere experience of being attended by a salesman/saleswoman is more than expected. But also a cup of coffee on the house after a meal or offering the customer´s child an ice cream adds to a positive experience.

If you get the customer´s address you can e-mail or send out newsletters whenever you have something new to present. It is also a good thing to have a business card or web address which makes it easier for the customer to pass on the experience to others.

Note!

Customers expect to buy flawless and perfect products. Thus, it is not the product you should spend time on improving for increased sales.

Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it.
- Joe Penna, musiker

Sitemap