I had a request for marketing advice from a budding entrepreneur who wanted to start a restaurant. He loved to cook and was excited about the challenge. But he knew he had to think about the marketing of the business before he sautéed his first shitake mushroom. He was so wise to consider how he will position his restaurant as different from everyone else before he even picked out a location. So we chatted about restaurants and had ‘the conversation.’ The conversation is what I ask most people who are looking for coaching.
What is it that your industry sucks at, and others don’t focus their attention?
Is there something taken for granted? I used the example of Christian Louboutin and the red souls of the shoes as an example of someone paying attention and owning a part of the experience for shoes. Louboutin’s shoes all have signature red souls. Or notice Tom’s Shoes and how Blake Mycoskie paid attention to using shoes to help the poor souls of an Argentinian impoverished community.
The Conversation
To illustrate the point for his session, I shared with him something that is missing for me. Restaurants aren’t organized around quiet conversations. They tend to have music to drive up the energy. They are a loud environment designed for entertainment. But there is a portion of the population, who wants to talk at dinner. To hear each other and to sit at tables that encourage group discussions. Recently I had dinner at a restaurant, and I could barely hear the person sitting next to me and the space was organized to maximize yield – not to encourage connection.
What if your restaurant took the conversation and put it front and center? What would you do differently with every decision you make from the material used to cushion sound, the table settings, and even the shape of the tables? What might a focus on this underplayed moment have for your business if it became known as a wonderful place for great conversation AND great food? Not just great food?
Categories tend to have rules of how they are organized. The innovators looked for those under-served areas and finds a way to shine a light on something others take for granted. Wines that don’t intimate you when you can’t taste gooseberry or jams that are so special, they are kept in the freezer as a natural preservative. The paying customer notice when a kennel treats their dog like the customers or guests.
I shared with my restaurateur client a named to help him think about this concept. How would you build a restaurant called Whisper or Sotto Voce (quiet voice)? This exercise will help him think through what how important it is to understand the segment of the category you will focus on, the target you’ll try to reach and how you will position your offering to them.
Shhh…
Marketing is about noticing the little things and finding a meaningful way to stand out from a noisy crowd. What have you noticed about your category that no one pays attention to? How will you focus on an aspect of your category so you’ll stand out in a noisy crowd?
Need help finding your own red soul in a crowded marketplace of shoes? I can help. Connect with me and let’s have a quiet conversation.
