It may sound as if Method Marketing looks down on advertising. On the contrary, Method Marketing embraces advertising. It just hates inefficiency. Outside of the restaurant experience itself, there is no more powerful way to communicate the essential experience details of your concept than through electronic media. The very same details, I might point out, that you and your guest forged together through Method Marketing.

There are precious few companies out there who have unlimited advertising funds with which to play. I suspect that if I mentioned names, they too would insist that they do not spend what they should. So, a given in our business is that: "You'll never have enough dollars, hours or people with which to do all you want." Turn that lament into a virtue.

With the "inside-out" approach, you spend marketing resources on a series of ever widening programmatic circles. Do not spend on media until you have exhausted the marketing possibilities within your three-mile trading area and the zip codes from where the majority of your guests come.

Focus your marketing communications efforts. Answer these questions first, before you spend a dime:

1. Have you done the research to determine who your guests are? When they use you? What they feel about you? How they describe your concept and to whom they compare you?
   
   
2. Have you determined from where (zip codes) your guests have come, when they patronize your restaurant?
   
   
3. Do you have a plan for your upcoming year? Have you prepared a graph of weekly sales broken out by your dayparts so that you can compare current performance with the past year? Does your plan evaluate the success or failure of past programs? Did sales and guest counts go up? Did you retain those increases after the program was over? Did your profits rise with your sales?

With Advertising, ask yourself:

1. "Will this 'ad/promotion/vehicle/whatever' reach my target market? How many other people will it reach that are not my target?" You do not need a sledgehammer to smack a fly.
   
   
2. "How often will it reach my target?" We live in a culture where, we are assaulted by 10-15,000 advertising messages a day.
   
   
3. "Has the advertiser shown me how their 'ad/promotion/vehicle/whatever' reaches my target? If not, why?" Advertisers understand targeting, but they do not want you to do it. It costs them too much money. Make them.
   
   
4. "Does the 'ad/promotion/vehicle/whatever' support my story?"
   
   
5. "Does the charity, worthy though it may be, enhance my story?" Fighting cancer is an important goal, but it does not enhance most eating out experiences.
   
   
6. "If the expenditure 'goes back to the community', what return do I get?" It sounds cold hearted, but that softball team had better be eating and spending at you establishment. Otherwise, do not do it.

The best advertising is that which reinforces the feelings your guests have already expressed about your concept. Reassure them that, indeed, "This is why I chose Rick's Place. I just love their..." This is a powerful truth. Remember it.

In the next issue, we will profile Michael Katz, a man who embraces this philosophy and taught me a thing or two about relationship marketing.

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