Direct Mail Advertising is a good option to develop your restaurant business. Unlike newspapers, radio or TV, direct mail business allows you to put your advertising money exactly where your potential clients live. You may aim geographically by neighborhood or demographically by age, income, ethnicity, etc., or a combination of both.

Direct mail advertising also enables you to rule your budget, by the size of your mailings (the quantity of pieces) and the frequency of your mailings.

There are a plenty of other benefits, here are just some of them:

1. It’s personal, between you and your prospect

2. It’s not as public as different media, your competitors won’t have access to your coupons and special offers as they do in newspapers and other media.

3. It’s bounded to one mail piece per household, which means peculiar offers will not be abused, for example, by prospects buying more than one newspaper and clipping multiple coupons

4. Response is simple to track

5. You may compare results by neighborhoods and define your best market place.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, if direct mail business is so powerful, why isn’t every restaurant in town doing it?

It’s true, direct mail can play a key role in developing your restaurant business, but, it is going to take some effort when you send out cards and, of course a budget. It’s not just a matter of putting your menu or a few coupons together and mailing them out. A successful campaign is a bit more complicated than that. To gain certain insight into the process, Irecommend reading blogs and online articles like this one, which includes ideas and tips on design, mailing lists, direct mail strategies etc.

Of course, everyone wants to hit a house run the first time at bat, but ready for some hits and misses. Each mailing is essential and provides an opportunity for you to know more about your market area. Results will vary, even if no one responds, that is still a result (evidently not what you were hoping for) and the result, that no one or few people responded, can be used to make a course correction.

So, if you have resolved to begin a direct mail campaign, begin with a mailing that is large enough to establish a base line of results, usually about 2000 to 3000 pieces. Don’t be tempted to economize money on printing by ordering big quantities to be used in future mailings. What if your suggestions fall flat and don’t work.

Direct mail advertising works. It can work for you. But, unless you are prepared to stick with it, you may be wasting your time and money. It is going to take some trial and error. The good news is, that over time, with experience, results will be predictable. That’s when you may expand your efforts, and direct mail advertising won’t be costing you money, it will make you money.