10 ways women restaurant owners and managers are using unconventional restaurant marketing and advertising to skyrocket profits   by Jerry Minchey

Many women restaurant owners and managers have learned how to drive a starving crowd to their restaurants on a shoe string budget.

On the other hand, many men restaurant owners and managers seem more likely to stick with the status quo and many keep using conventional marketing techniques even while they continue to lose money.

The problem with conventional restaurant marketing techniques is that they are getting more and more expensive while they are proving to be less and less effective -- especially for the independent restaurant.

Maybe a psychologists can explain why women are taking the lead of using unconventional restaurant techniques in the restaurant business. This seems odd because we know that men are usually more willing to take risks.

Never-the less, women seem to be the more aggressive gender when it comes to restaurant marketing.

Here are some of the many unconventional marketing techniques women are now using:

1. Women are using far less radio, TV and print advertising.

2. They are doing a much better job of capturing customer data such as names, addresses, birthdays, anniversaries and most important email addresses.

3. Women are doing a lot of direct mail promotions and they are doing even more email promotions to their customer data base.

4. They are taking advantage of the power of press releases. Maybe they are more successful in this area because a great press release must strike an emotional button in the reader and we all know that women excel when it comes to tuning into emotions.

5. Women know what the "Unique Selling Proposition" or "USP" of their restaurants is and they can clearly explain it in one to three sentences. They don't try to be all things to all people when it comes to marketing their restaurants.

6. They know the demographic of their customers. They do a better job of learning what it is that their customers like and dislike.

7. Women do a much better job of negotiating and with these skills, they are able to buy advertising for 10% to 50% on the dollar. After all, every dollar saved on advertising and marketing (as long as the advertising brings in the same amount of business) goes straight to the bottom line as profit.

8. They seem to write headlines that bring in two to 10 times more business for the same ad. They probably do this because they are able to do a better job of putting powerful emotion into their headlines.

9. Women are using the power of the Internet to bring in customers and save up to 90% of the typical cost of bringing in new or repeat customers.

10. Finally, women do a better job of tracking marketing campaigns than men do. This fact alone provides them with the proof they need to drop conventional marketing techniques that are not working and expand the use of unconventional restaurant techniques that are working.