Restaurant Promotion Strategy

Sales promotions are needed in business to expand their growth and overall revenue. Businesses and companies routinely utilize different types of promotional efforts as a part of their marketing plan to effectively reap new revenue and profit from them.

Objectives for Sales Promotions

Given that the family restaurant is built around legacy, the objective of the sales promotions will be primarily geared toward keeping the current customers as well as increasing the awareness of the restaurant in order to attract new customers. Sales objectives tackle several different aspects that "stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness" such as distribution and pricing strategies (Lamb, Hair, & McDaniel, 2013).

Tools for Consumer Sales Promotion

The tools for consumer sales promotion that the restaurant should use is the AIDA promotions methods model, which seeks to "grab attention, generate interest, create desire and lead to action" (Lamb et al., 2013). In doing this, the restaurant can garner more customers to frequent them for their home-style oriented cooking and homely feel rather than the fast-food chain restaurants. The restaurant will need to factor in both consumerism and environmentalism into their promotional strategy. The definition of consumerism is the belief that that humans will go above their basic needs in order to satisfy their wants and desires. Environmentalism is based upon conservation concepts and overall preservation of elements that are related to the natural environment such as pollution and ethics (Hirsh & Dolderman, 2007). Essentially, the sales promotion will need to be dedicated to appealing to the desires of consumers to have a variety in their consumption of food and the restaurant will also need to appeal to those consumers that are ecologically friendly. This may lend itself to the restaurant creating a green initiative.

Trade Sales Promotion

The trade sales promotions that the restaurant can use are sales incentives as well as promotional products. This will surround using a pull strategy in attracting consumers to the restaurant. Incentives could be centered on a free slice of pie or a half off daily special.

Details of Sales Promotions

These can come in the form of coupons in their promotional strategy or social media marketing to obtain conversions of customers via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and the like. Furthermore, the promotional products could be a giveaway of a holiday meal or Mother’s Day catering type function. While catering is not mentioned in the case study, this is something that the restaurant should consider as a way of attracting customers to its brand. Given that the restaurant will be using social media marketing, it will be best to engage potential customers as well as long-term customers with sales promotions by giving out the coupons and giveaways via Facebook and Twitter. Facebook is typically good for contests, while Twitter is better for giveaways per what has been observed as well as what is noted by Vahl (2012).

Sales Forecasting

When comparing the restaurant to the Annual Report of Cracker Barrel, it stands to reason that the home-style restaurant can obtain similar percentages in sales over the course of four quarters given they are similar in their consumer dynamics. Consumer satisfaction is important to the home-style restaurant given the different aforementioned sales promotion strategies mentioned as well as the consistency in name. Cracker Barrel (2013) projected their sales in percentages, which is why the home-style projections are also in percentages. Q1 and Q2 vary for the home-style restaurant because it is expected that Q2 is when the restaurant will begin to see the effects of the sales promotions. There is a relative belief in stability between Q3 and Q4 given it is the hope of the restaurant to have a stable “new” consumer by that time with a steady attraction of new consumers over time.

Conclusion

The home-style restaurant stands a good chance of becoming prominent in the neighborhood among consumers both new and old, with the sales promotion strategies. While the restaurant has hopes of attracting new consumers, the promotional strategies will also be tailored to keep the loyal ones as well.

References

Cracker Barrel. (2013). 2013 Annual Report [Report]. Retrieved from http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/CBRL/2807961378x0x694453/E5100B90-72DB-40A3-B8CF-CC8E73A38836/2013_Annual_Report.pdf

Hirsh, J. B., & Dolderman, D. (2007). Personality predictors of consumerism and environmentalism: A preliminary study. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1583-1593.

Lamb, C., Hair, J., & McDaniel, C. (2013). Marketing. Mason, OH: South-Western.

Vahl, A. (2012, January 10). 4 Ways the new Facebook insights can grow your fans. Social Media Examiner. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/4-ways-the-new-facebook-insights-can-grow-your-fans/