2020 RESTAURANT

MARKETING PLAN
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If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!
- Benjamin Franklin

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⊡ Six out of ten restaurants
fail in their first year
⊡ 50% of restaurants have
no written or
documented plan
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Do you see a correlation here? Restaurants often struggle to break
even or yield some minimal profits. That’s a scary statistic for
anyone in the biz. Most of these are small independent restaurants,
self funded by the owners. Large chains are not immune to failure
too, however.
Of the dozens of restaurants we work with, most do not have a plan
when they hire us. Some had a business plan at start up, but it was
mostly about revenue and expenses using industry standard
statistics for food costs, etc. The majority never dig into the details
and explain or figure out how they will achieve the revenue
numbers they project in the plan.
My dad always said, “People never plan to fail, they only fail to
plan.” He also said, “The devil is in the details.” I always remember
these sayings when working on a business. It is easy to be a
spreadsheet millionaire and say you will generate $100,000 per
week in sales, but if you don’t figure out exactly how to do that, you
will fail.
In this walkthrough, you will gain the new mindset and tools for
creating a plan to hit your goals this year. I look forward to helping
you make this year the best ever for your restaurant business.
-Brian
 DISCLAIMER

This plan is a mindset for you to document a strategy, then take action.
You or someone on your team needs to own the plan and be held
accountable for it. Only then will your restaurant be successful.

Marketing should be focused on bringing in NEW customers. People who

have yet to experience your amazing food, drinks, service and
atmosphere.

BUT…Generating new customers is one part of the equation.

You need to make sure your operations team delivers so these people
come back again and again. If you have bad food, bad service, or bad
anything, marketing will only help for a while. You always need repeat
customers.

Use this template as a guide, and factor in your unique situation. Every
restaurant is different, so the plan will vary for all.

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 Table of Contents

Business Plan vs Marketing Plan 06

Conversion Mindset vs Branding 09
KPIs 13
Analytics & Tracking ROI 15
Marketing Audit 17
Competitor Analysis 19
Setting Goals 21
Budgets 23
Pulling it all together 27

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 Business Plan
vs Marketing Plan

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 Business Plan vs Marketing Plan

Business Plan
We should start by separating a business plan from a marketing plan. A
business plan will focus on financial goals for both revenue and
expenses. Things like sales, labor cost, cost of goods, rent, etc. It’s a
financial tool.

⊡ Company Mission
⊡ Financial Tools
⊡ Sales Forecasts
⊡ Expenses - Labor, Cost of Goods, Overhead, Occupancy
⊡ P&L
⊡ Cash Flow

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 Business Plan vs Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is a section of the business plan which helps define how you plan to
achieve the revenue numbers in the business plan. This is the “How”. How are you going
to fill the restaurant every weekend? How are you going to consistently book that private
party room? How are you going to sell out your dinner reservations in advance? How are
you going to pack your bar for happy hour?

⊡ Strategy to Achieve Financial Goals from the Business Plan

⊡ Goals, Funnels & Conversions - Actions that Influence Sales
⊡ Internal Audit
⊡ Competitive Analysis
⊡ Customer Personas
⊡ Analytics and Data for Decisions
⊡ Build Your Brand
⊡ Do not focus on sales numbers, this is a trap for spreadsheet millionaires

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Conversion Mindset
vs Branding

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 Conversions Mindset vs Branding

This is the most important part of the plan!

“Conversions” should be your new middle name this year! Your goal is converting people into new and loyal customers.
Getting them through the door the first time is the hardest. So you need a plan with actionable ideas that you can track to drive
in new customers.

The main goal is sales, but it should not be your focus for marketing. You need to focus on the tactics which convert someone
into being your paying customer. They have many choices for dining, so your team needs to convince them your restaurant is
the best choice for their money.

You can track and measure conversions to know if your marketing is working or not. Track every dollar spent to determine the
return on the ad spend.

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 Conversions Mindset vs Branding

For Example:
Let’s say you want to increase your private dining requests/leads. The goal is leads. Conversion is a phone call or form filled
out on your website to request an event.

If you spend $3000 on a billboard ad, can you track exactly how many calls and forms it generated? No. Because billboards are
mostly for branding, which usually means you hope someone sees the billboard and maybe takes action later. One problem is
they are driving and will have to stop to take action. Plus they will see dozens of other billboards before they stop. Will they
remember?

With digital marketing you can spend $3000 on Google ads, Facebook, Instagram and track exactly how may leads each
channel generated AND the cost per lead. You can then optimize to get the lead cost down and volume steady to fill your
pipeline consistently. If each lead averages $30, then your $3000 spend will generate 100 leads that month.

So, will you buy a billboard, magazine, or radio ad with no way to track ROI or invest in a digital strategy where you can see
how every dollar converts to build your income to the next level? Digital of course.

It’s important to note that digital ads do not come out of the box with goal and conversion tracking. There are steps you need to
take in order to set up the tracking. I’ll explain this in another tutorial, but for now it is the mindset of knowing you can and
should track everything in digital marketing.

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 Conversions Mindset vs Branding

Direct Conversion Micro Conversion

A direct conversion might be making a reservation, buying
a gift card, purchasing an event ticket, or filling out a group
dining request form on your website.
You can closely tie these conversions to possible sales.
$86.50 $93.70
A micro conversion is a small commitment from the
customer prior to making a direct conversion. Examples
would be signing up for your email list, following one of your
social media accounts, visiting your website, or requesting
more info.

$167.90 $61.80 These micro conversions will then need another push to
convert them into a paying customer. We call this a
marketing funnel. More about funnels later.

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KPIs

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 Conversions Mindset vs Branding

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Here are some common KPI conversions you should focus on this year:

1. Website Traffic (where the majority of your conversions happen)

2. Reservations
3. Email Subscribers
4. Social Media Followers/Audience
5. Private Dining, Events, or Catering Leads
6. Positive Reviews
7. Direct Mail Redemptions
8. Gift Card Sales
9. Event Ticket Sales

You need an audit of where you are now and where you want to be for each of the goal categories. This part cannot be skipped.
There are probably other categories you might want to set for goals - we are simply listing the most common goals you can track
directly through marketing analytics.

Revenue is the top goal, but we need to identify the channels which drive the most revenue. If you increase website traffic,
reservations, and email subscribers, your sales should also naturally increase as a result.

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 Analytics &
Tracking ROI

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 Analytics & Tracking ROI

Are you tracking conversions?

We just discussed how important a strategy for goals and conversions is for your business. It’s nice to have goals, but if you are
not set up properly to track and measure those goals, you are going to fall short or have no clue how you’re performing.

Everything digital can be tracked. You should have the following free tools set up on your website and social:

⊡ Google Analytics: track website traffic, leads, and more

⊡ Google Search Console: track SEO keywords, rankings, and more
⊡ Facebook Business Manager: manage your page insights and ad campaigns
⊡ Instagram Insights: create a business account to manage account insights
⊡ Constant Contact or MailChimp: email marketing platforms for sending and tracking emails

The above free tools need to be set up properly in order to give you the best results. You should consider hiring a trained
professional to do it, or you can take their tutorials and figure it out. Either way, it is a must.

It also sets the stage for your audit and sets up all the needed data.

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Marketing Audit

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 Marketing Audit

Where are you now?

This is an important step in the growth process. You must know where you are now to plot a course towards where you
want to be. This can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.

For simplicity, you can record only last month’s numbers or the current totals. For a complex solution, you can take the time
to look back a few months and record month over month growth in each category to see if your business is growing or
declining.

Use the example spreadsheet linked below. Download it or make a copy - don’t request access, as it is a view only template
for all to copy.

You want to record current totals or last months numbers for each conversion or metric important to your marketing and
business. I have added place holders to help you get started, but feel free to add more if you want.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SRSE1fzFNsFWS-u0zMclc1QRfaUOKnH8wlvMTBcs4tQ/edit?usp=sharing

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Competitor Analysis

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 Competitor Analysis

Where are you in the race?

With your marketing audit, you know the stats for your own business. Now you need to see how you compare to the
competition.

Most of the data will be easily accessible to the public like social followers, reviews, etc, but you should order an SEO analysis
on your competition to see what keywords they rank for, how much traffic they get, and if you are missing out on opportunities.

Use this spreadsheet to record all the info about your competition:

Make a copy or download the file.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16PMHoORJqs_QhLNjN113WyhmycctRI4Q6oKaCZiCIaQ/edit?usp=sharing

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Setting Goals

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 Setting Goals

Where do you want to be?

This should be fairly easy now that you have data about where you currently are and how your competition compares.

The next step is plotting a chart of where you want each conversion or metric to be. It’s important to plot these in a monthly
format. You need to see goals for month over month growth rather than where you want to be next year.

Chunking things out and setting goals for each month is easier to measure and hold yourself or your team accountable for the
results. You will know if you are on pace or not.

Use the same Google sheet from the Marketing Audit. There is a 2nd tab called “Goal Setting.” This tab will automatically pull
in your audit data from the first sheet, then you need to plot how much you plan to grow each line item every month.

Be realistic with your growth goals. Improve a little each month and by year end, you will see significant growth in your
marketing and sales.

Feel free to ask me any questions about this brian@restaurantclicks.com

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Budgets

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 Budgets

What should you spend on marketing?

Here is where you need to shift your mindset again. People without a plan might say I only have $X to spend each month on
marketing, then spend it blindly. Instead, you will target a budget for each line item and then figure out how much each
conversion is worth.

Example: Let’s say a private party averages $1000 in revenue and you typically close deals on 1 out of 4 incoming requests.
You might be willing to pay $25 per lead. That equates to $100 cost per booked event (10% of the revenue). To sell out your
private event rooms, your restaurant can handle 30 groups per month. You might want to allocate $100 per booking x 30
bookings per month = $3000 on marketing just for event leads. You will need 120 leads. This should generate $30,000 in sales.

This is why the tracking and analytics is so important. You can make better spending decisions on real data.

There were four areas where you needed to know your numbers in the above example:

⊡ Average event price

⊡ Average closing ratio for leads
⊡ Budget allocated from a closed event to generate the leads
⊡ Capacity of your venue

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 Budgets

What should you spend on marketing? (cont.)

Building off the example, if you want leads for $25, where will you get them?
If you do or hire someone for proper SEO, most of these leads will flow in for free through organic traffic. A lot of businesses will
use pay per click ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin, however. I’ll break down paying for leads.
Let’s say you spend your $3000 budget, split between Google, FB, and IG campaigns. After a month you look at your analytics
and lead tracking to see the following costs per lead source.
⊡ Google Ads = $20 per lead (50 leads)
⊡ Facebook Ads = $30 per lead (33 leads)
⊡ Instagram = $50 per lead (20 leads)
You spent the same $1000 on each platform, but the results were different. How will you spend your budget the following
month knowing these numbers? Imagine if you didn’t know these numbers and thought Instagram was a better place to run
ads. You would fail.
Now do this same exercise for reservations, email subscribers, website traffic, social followers, etc. What are you willing to pay
for each based on the value each bring in sales?
Do instagram followers and posts translate into actual sales? Probably not, so why spend money there? Do Instagram ads
convert into leads and sale? Yes, but only when done properly. You have a lot to think about.

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 Budgets

Great. So how much should I

budget?
Consider most places spend 5% of their gross sales on marketing.

You should spend/invest the % of where you want to be, not always where
you are. So if you are doing $20,000 per week now and want to be at
$25,000 in a few months, budget based on $25K.

Use common sense as well. If you are doing $20K now, don’t start spending
like you want to gross $100K. Climb the ladder in steps.

Newer places typically spend more and older places that are doing well,
spend less.

Remember the GOAL… Track everything so you know exactly how your
dollars are working for you. Do not spend without tracking the ROI. Next time
someone wants to spend your money, ask how is it being tracked to a goal.

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Pulling It All Together

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 Pulling it All Together

Congrats!
Now you have set the stage for success:

⊡ Conversion Objectives
⊡ Analytics and Tracking
⊡ Competitor Analysis
⊡ Set Goals
⊡ Budgets

Now it is time to meet with your employees, boss, and co-workers and present the plan.

Creating the plan is tough and most people fail to do it. Give yourself a pat on the back for being a planner.

Now, the hard part is how you execute on the plan, who is responsible/accountable, and always making sure you watch the
analytics like a hawk to optimize the conversion metrics and stay within budget.

So, do you try to do this in-house or outsource to an agency? Either way, they will have to follow your plan and priority list for
growth. Make the employee or agency propose to you how they will hit your goals in the plan. If you are presenting this plan to
your boss, try to break down how you will hit those goals each month.

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 Next Steps

Next Steps

Once you downloaded this marketing plan, I added you to our email subscriber list.

Every few days you will receive a new email with tips and tricks to improve your restaurant’s marketing.

There is so much info to share with you, it was impossible to add it all into the one document. I believe it is easier to digest over
a series of emails and take action rather than one long and drawn out PDF.

I also offer services to get you to the finish line quicker in order to beat the competition.

So I look forward to helping you be the best restaurant possible this year and next!

Brian

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 NEED HELP?
Set up a call with me to discuss how our team can help
you reach your goals.

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 Contact Us

About Us Brian Nagele

We have almost 20 years of experience in restaurant brian@restaurantclicks.com
marketing, managing, and ownership. We have been in your
shoes and love helping restaurants grow through digital.
215.804.9011

Fee free to contact us about our different marketing services

230 S Broad Street 17th Floor
to take your restaurant into 2020 and beyond. Philadelphia, PA 19102
I love feedback, so don’t be afraid to let me know what https://restaurantclicks.com
you think of this plan.

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