Advertising Questions

[pieguyevan]

I stumbled upon this forum a little over a year ago, had some questions about making pizza with home made starters and the information I received from the people on this forum was priceless. Flash to today, I opened my pizzeria here in Billings, MT at the end of July, using the same starter I had made last year. Business is doing okay, started off great, then the winter months kind of slowed down a bit. I am now looking to do some more advertising but am cautious on spending big money without exactly knowing if it is wise or not. I have been cooking pizza for 11 years, and this is my first time being on the business side. I have done direct mailers, which started out great, and then stopped paying for themselves the bigger my range went. I did a commercial during the little league world series that worked very well, but I also got a hell of a deal on it. I need a game changer here, and was wondering if there was any advice you who have been through this before. Anything would be appreciated. Thank you!
Pie Guys Pizzeria in Montana

[Tscarborough]

You need to work on your web presence.  When I searched "pizza billings mt" you were not even on the first page.  Redo your website, make it a little more professional, and make sure it works for mobile devices and has all the correct meta information as well as back links to get you up there in the Google rankings.

If you are spending more than the bare minimum on Yellow pages, drop it down to straight listing, bolded at best.

Your pizza looks pretty damn good, and your menu sounds very well thought out.

[La Sera]

 [Deleted. Oops. I forgot that trying to be helpful only leads to being called names.]

[TXCraig1]

You don't have to spend a lot of money to be highly effective. I would suggest reading this book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618785914/?tag=pmak-20

[jeff v]

Agree on the web site and the book reco.

You have a Wordpress site which should be very google friendly. Start writing or producing content and publishing it on your site and you should rise in search rankings. I say this cause I'm an example-Google artisan pasta and see who's first or t least in the top 3.

Can a customer order from your website or Facebook? If the message is what you have in your commercial, go with that. Tell people your mission and why you're better through social media outlets and ask or incentivize them to tell their friends, re-order, review or whatever you choose. Optimize then repeat.

[jeff v]

Also, do you know and market to your previous customers with an exclusive offer?

[Pete-zza]

pieguyevan,

While you are at it, you might also want to check out the PMQ FAQ thread at the PMQ Think Tank forum at http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3374&sid=ee7dbb2d8eacf1df3c080ca10ce4d693. That section is somewhat dated, since no one has chosen to do the laborious task of updating it, but it does have quite a bit of useful information nonetheless.

Peter

[thezaman]

 i do not know if this will pertain to you.in our town our cable tv and internet are a local co op. their is a company out of new york that specializes in advertising for these types of cable systems. you can locally produce your add and it is marketed thru different stations thru out the month.i think we get 70 spots per month.the cost to us is 105.00 per month plus producing the ad which costs 400.00.i do two to three a year. it is the most effective advertising i have ever done.
 the other part mentioned above is your internet presence. on line ordering is something that is very popular today.if their is one area that the chains kill me in is delivery. i hate delivering,but my accountant tells me it is the area that i can use to increase sales dramatically. we used to do as many as 150 deliveries per night, now a good friday is 40 to 50.like i said i hate delivery and my carry out and dine in has grown to make up for the loss,but if i could stimulate delivery it would be a nice way to increase sales.even keste, and motorino deliver and we know how badly neapolitan pie travels!
 the other area is your web site there are programs out that give your website the ability to be read on all platforms such as phones and tablets. to covert mine to that form was expensive. i am computer challenged and a smarter person could probably do it themselves.
 i hate to admit it but any type of Mobil application that you can utilize will help increase sales.the power of face book is ridiculous. i put pictures of my heart shaped pies on Facebook yesterday and i already have 67 pre orders, last year i sold 50 heart shaped pies. it cost me nothing!!!

[tinroofrusted]

Following up on Zaman's mobile advertising comment, Wordpress does have its drawbacks but one of the great things about it is that there are tons of free or low cost plug-ins that help you do things like serve pages to mobile devices.  Here's one popular plug-in that senses mobile devices and serves up the pages formatted for mobile:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/

There are many other plug-ins that perform similarly.  Mobile is getting more and more important for retailers, so it's good to get this taken care so you can serve up pages that will be easily viewed by mobile devices. 

Regards,

TinRoof