Be The Market Leader

 

What is in Your Brand?

Being the restaurant employer of choice is something we teach. The purpose is to attract and retain the best employees in the market. The result will be extraordinary service providing the best and brightest and most talented people in your market.   Unfortunately products menu items, restaurant recipes and service tends to become a commodity over time and for good reasons.
Over time the value of a product and or service lessens, when we first create a new menu item or provide an increased level of service we are usually solving a problem. Customers and guests are usually willing to pay a premium for the latest and greatest product or service.
Over time the new product or service then becomes SOP or Standard Operating Procedure.
The new unique restaurant menu dish gets discovered by the restaurant chains and they dumb it down and slap it on the menu of a thousand restaurants, run months of restaurant marketing mass media advertising campaigns and completely obliviate the uniqueness of the product with some mediocre knock off.
The premium menu item becomes mainstream. and the price gets lower as the economies of scale adjust and then we see it in the grocer freezer of our local grocery store labeled gourmet! (bah humbug)
Buyers become Aware over time learn to better evaluate the economics of the new product and chain restaurant marketing then run these menu items as specials Basically as a commodity a restaurant menu item matures the price pressure coupled with a “tough economy” Sorry I hate to say that, makes it even harder to sell the product or service at a profit, assuming you are not a chain restaurant with extremely efficient supply chains.

What is on your Menu? (How would Capital One handle this?)

Restaurants can only discount products or services so far. Capital One in 1995 was not in a position to compete on rates with the big credit card companies. Rather then competing on rate to increase market share Capital One took a different approach to creating a new  marketing plan. They chose to compete on value.
Remember perception is reality. They implemented a “radical” “branding” “strategy” to differentiate themselves from the other credit card issuers to stimulate an increase in demand. All of this without discounting or sacrificing margins.

A Winning Brand Starts with The Customer

What made Capital One’s strategy work is the fact that they started with customer input to derive the strategy. Through serious market research they were able to target the most important features of a credit card the consumers wanted.  They did not stop there they actually created a family of products and features to target different types of card users.
Most important part of the research revealed that the features were not the most important lessons learned from the research. The realization that there customers actually had an emotional aspect of the decision process and not rational.
Their sales success is actually tied to the benefits to the emotional needs of the customer. Make life easier, “no hassles”.

Simplify

Busy has become the new good. When asked everyone is “busy” Simplify your message do not use elongated marketing fluffy language, this does not work in todays market. Capital One’s core message is “No Hassles” They then have fun hammering the message using not so bright  rowdy vikings to make the point. Then the “What’s in your wallet?”

Position Yourself as a Market Leader

• What is your Unique Position (Reference USP article) Are you focused on an area where you can outperform the competition? That means find the holes in between the chains and your geographic targeted market, neighborhood.
• The large corporates feederies are required to follow a very specific SO (Standard Operating Procedures) and cannot usually move outside of the brand very easily, use that rigid structure to your advantage. Perform a USP analysis and identify the market opportunity.
• What do your customers want, follow Capital Ones strategy and communicate, talk, ask, comment card everyone. Train the staff to find the answers you will be surprised how much they want to help. Is it specials, menu items,  price,  speed,  hours,  catering?
• Develop or better yet reposition current brand, products, menu offerings and or training to capitalize on the newly discovered information. How does this satisfy the emotional needs of your customers, What would you charge to “guarantee this product service”

Develop a Message

Build your USP reduce it to a simple tagline message, you know Fedex, “Absolutley positively has to be there overnight”.  The next step is to then identify your competitive advantage for your geographic market. What do you do better then anyone else.
Find and create the bold claim in your positioning message and focus on the one attribute of your product or service that satisfies an emotional need.
To (the geographic market you serve.) (your brand) is the one (that provides a type of service you offer) that (key benefit you deliver better than any other company in your market). Identify your Olive Garden “salad an breadsticks” (the core menu item(s) customers  love you for) and capitalize on it. Recreate your restaurant brand, update restaurant marketing and branding. Re-Invent, try stuff, try new stuff, and newer stuff all the while staying true to the core items on your menu.
Caio