Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

How To Have Restaurants From Different Cities ?

Posted by bijlani.ritesh on 1/15/2012 at 8:11 AM ET 125 Points
We are looking to have restaurants , pubs etc in different cities of the country to get listed on our portal so that they can post the events for our users from time to time.

What is the best way to have them get enrolled on to our site ? I was thinking about telemarketing , email marketing etc but I feel the number of these pubs will be more than 10K in total , it will take a lot of time.

Can you think of some other effective methods ?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 1/15/2012 at 8:52 AM Accepted
    Yes, it will take a long time but you will be selling them one at a time. My experience with restaurant owners is that you need the personal touch, especially as a new and unproven site. Restaurant owners are bombarded with promotional opportunities, you really need the personal touch to rise above the masses. They are hit with so many, that they are the best at eluding calls.

    If I were you, I'd find local people in the ciities to market your site. This is how sites from Monster to Groupon get clients. Follow their model or one from the local magazines like Value Ad. They are paid performance only, and it may be repricing and restrucduring your offer, but I think it's the best way to proceed.
  • Posted by bijlani.ritesh on 1/15/2012 at 10:55 AM Author
    Carol - I am impressed with your profile specially the term "automatic salesperson". This is what I am after. We are not charging anything from these restaurant owners - Its a free subscription (till the time we decide to make it paid but its in the future for us to decide).

    We are allowing them to list their events and happy hours etc to get them tentative booking and at the moment we are not charging them anything even on the booking etc and thats why we dont want to invest a lot of time in getting them.

    Is there any other way (a guerrila marketer way) to have them register on our site easily. We are looking to get atleast 10K+ in about a month.

    What would you suggest ?
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 1/16/2012 at 8:52 AM Accepted
    If the pubs already have a website with the information on it, then hire a programmer to copy the relevant details and put it onto your website. Then, email the pub owner with the login details to update the site. Consider if you'd rather have them opt-in (to have their listing on your website made public) or opt-out (to have their listing automatically made public and removed upon their say-so). Make it easy for them to get listed with no down-side to them (accurate and free).
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 1/16/2012 at 7:54 PM Accepted
    Without a doubt, you need to focus on what being on your site would do for the restaurant/pub. What benefit will they get by posting events? Presumably it is marketing for them, but let them know how many people would see it or otherwise state the benefit.

    Once the message is there - due to the number of potential customers, I would likely try a mass approach at first - emails, letters, etc. over telemarketing or direct sales. There likely will be some early adopters who will come on, so you can get some stuff up and running right away. Then slowly work your way into more time consuming approaches to work on the rest.
  • Posted by CarolBlaha on 1/17/2012 at 12:56 AM Member
    In response to your inquiry to me. The premise of the automatic salesperson is that good daily marketing habits make sales happen "automatically". When I conduct sales meetings, we make a short list of what we will do daily, weekly etc in the next 30 days consistently, and track results.

    Guerrilla Marketing is about being lazar sharp in your efforts and in more aggressive one on one marketing tactics.

    In first glance, emails is usually too passive. But in reviewing this situation (free) I think it has it's place as part but not all of your marketing efforts. Your prospect is going to have to see your service in different medians and multiple times. Both programs revolve around personal touches.

    They will like "free" but they will see this site as "another darn thing to maintain". Also, the average restaurant doesn't have an event to add. So your marketing should be around more than showcase your special occasion. For you to get the goal you want -- you are going to have to get these guys listing everyday events that can be special. Sure a winemaker dinner is special, but marketed correctly, so can a buy on a new entree coaching patrons to try. When I owned and managed restaurants I'd find the silliest occasion and talk it up.

    So your challenge and message is not about a free site to list events. Its going to be around educating the client to find the special in every week. If you just ask them to list their special events, they'll say "sure, I'll list our next Mother's Day specials". You need to be a resource not just a listing.
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