Web Exclusive: Marketing on a Dime, Part II

Operators find creative ways to market on a limited budget.

By Maya Norris, Managing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2008

Chain Leader found several more chain operators willing to talk about the cost-effective marketing tactics that have worked for them.

Elaine Patel, vice president of marketing, Fatburger, Santa Monica, Calif.
We've really focused this year on local store marketing. We created a Marketeer Program. We selected one employee per store to be a local store marketeer. This employee doesn't need to be on salary or high priced employee; we're just looking for personalities. So if somebody's really positive or really bubbly and can communicate well with customers, then we deem them the marketeer. They basically pound the pavement about 1 to 3 miles around their store.

So they would take fliers to businesses that surround the store or apartment buildings or a big box retailer, and they would just make contact with the store managers of businesses or office managers and just spend a lot of times with each of those ambassadors and hopefully those people would talk about Fatburger to their employees or their residents or whatever.

We wanted to do something different because if you get a flier, who cares, right? We did little things like, it looks like a dollar bill scrunched up and you just throw it on the floor. You pick it up and you open it and it says a dollar off any burger or sandwich-just clever ways of substituting it for a flier.

We did holiday parking tickets as well. We went to malls and theaters with big parking lots during the holiday season and we put what looked like a parking ticket on their windshield, but it actually was free fries or free onion rings or free shake. Just quirky, different ways to announce that we're town, we've been here, come over to Fatburger. It's very cost effective because you're really only paying an expensive flier cost.

Niko Albanis, COO, Chicken Dijon Rotisserie Grill, Torrance, Calif.
Primarily we try to focus on within our four walls talking to a minimum of 10 people a day about our catering program. The best way we feel to market yourself is with the customers that you have. You have a captive audience. It costs a lot of money to bring in a new customer. Most of our marketing dollars go to promoting our catering program because it helps us with sales and it's a tangible result that we get. But at the same time, it takes our food outside our restaurant and it gives people the opportunity to try our food and therefore become our customers.

Vaughan Lazar, CEO, Pizza Fusion, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
We do some community events. We try to do some stuff [with] any organizations that relate to [our] business. For example, we look to see if there are any green business networks, a lot of chamber events-they're all free or very inexpensive to network with those groups. Networking is such a huge part for a small chain coming into a new area-just awareness and getting to know the people in the community and networking that way through sponsored events, which is only costing you pizza or whatever your food item is. I think that goes a really long way.

Another big part of our marketing is we deliver pizza to different businesses every single day. We'll go into an office with four or five pizzas, salads. We'll feed the office. We're in Starbucks almost three times a week to drop pizzas off to the Starbucks employees. There's a lot of small, inexpensive, if not free ways to generate local business like that.

Lowell Petrie, vice president of marketing, Mimis Cafe, Tustin, Calif.
The programs that [Mimis Cafe] has had that fall underneath the marketing umbrella are heavy involvements in charities and giving very generously of gift certificates and comps, giving very generously of muffins, food, of going to charitable events and taking food to charitable events and doing booths. And so that is No. 1.

And then No. 2 is heavy involvement in kids and school programs. Over the years we've always had programs where we have meetings in the fall and invite school principals from elementary schools into our restaurants for a meal. And we talk about all the things we would like to help them with. We give them complimentary kids meals that they can use however they would like to reward students for reading program attendance, whatever--we don't set the criteria, they do. We give them complimentary certificates for desserts and cappuccinos or coffees for their teachers also to use as they see fit. We let them know any time they're having a teacher meeting, PTA meeting, planning meeting, we would be happy to supply muffins for them. And if they're having a fund raiser, we'd be happy to provide raffle prizes or whatever in terms of Mimis complimentary certificates.

For more cost-effective marketing ideas from operators read "Marketing on a Dime" in the March issue, and check out marketing expert Aaron Allen's tips for "Marketing on a Small Budget."