Matt Plapp, CEO of national media and marketing agency America’s Best Restaurants, has launched several marketing-focused podcasts to help independent restaurant owners and operators maximize their effectiveness in retaining customers and driving sales, especially in the face of a likely recession in 2023.
Restaurant Marketing Secrets, a five-to-ten-minute daily podcast that focuses on how restaurants can easily build a customer database to target their marketing efforts, launched in June 2022. In August, Plapp launched The Restaurant Recession Webinar Series, a weekly podcast that offers actionable tips for restaurant owners to reach more customers and increase revenue through marketing and sales, regardless of economic predictions.
“There are three things I believe in with regards to restaurant marketing,” Plapp states in the first episode of Restaurant Marketing Secrets. “You must attract attention; you must build a database from that attention, and you must retain the people’s attention in the database you’ve built.”
‘Attract, Build, Retain’ sums up Plapp’s entire philosophy of successful marketing. He sees the key to increased business and higher check averages is based on gathering customers’ data and using it to market specifically to them. Targeted promotions, continual social media content, and making a point of connecting on a more personal level with customers all translates into more sales.
How does he know? Plapp has logged thousands of miles in the last few years traveling to independent restaurants all over the country. He has found that only about a third of independent restaurants have a website data gathering tool, such as a pop-up window that invites a user to enter information, and less than ten percent have an in-store data gathering tool, such as a table tent QR code to scan or a server asking pertinent questions of a customer in order to gain data.
“I think one of the biggest atrocities in restaurant marketing and small business marketing is they don’t actually know who their customers are,” Plapp told Entrepreneur.com in June 2022. “Point of sales is a key way to gain customer data.”
Podcast episodes are short and one-topic, which Plapp says gains positive feedback from listeners.
“[Restaurant owners] can listen on their commute,” he notes.
The podcasts are available on multiple platforms including Spotify, iHeartRadio, and iTunes.
The CEO of America’s Best Restaurants, Matt Plapp has a passion for helping restaurant owners gain more customers through savvy social media promotion and engagement. He is the author of three books and host of four podcasts on restaurant marketing. An avid CrossFitter and Buffalo Wing aficionado, he lives with his family in Union, Kentucky.
America’s Best Restaurants, a national media and restaurant marketing company based in Florence, KY, travels the country telling the stories and highlighting the unique food of locally owned independent restaurants as part of their ABR Roadshow. Restaurants are featured not only on ABR’s Restaurant Network of social media channels and website, but also each individual establishment’s Facebook page. With over 700 episodes filmed, America’s Best Restaurants is the premier marketing agency for restaurant owners and operators to have their story broadcast coast-to-coast. Visit AmericasBestRestaurants.com to learn more and to view the episodes and profiles of hundreds of America’s Best Restaurants!
