Patience, Grasshopper

When you begin any marketing or brand awareness campaign, patience is not always foremost in your mind. Your product or service or company is the best ever and simply opening the doors will leave you flooded with customers. As anyone who's ever introduced a product or started a company understands, that is not the case. Brand awareness takes time. Lots of time. And during that time, you'll be forced to spend gobs of money that you can't afford on media that looks great when the salesperson is in your office but shows absolutely no signs of life once your campaign begins.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way around this. Introducing something new is very difficult. Even if you don't have direct competition, you have perceived competition. If you're the only Italian restaurant in town, for instance, you may think you've got a corner on the market. But you're competing against a finite number of customers who are either not aware of your restaurant, not in the mood for your style of food, want to eat somewhere tried and true, have a coupon, don't want to hassle with parking ... the list goes on. You may be the only one of your kind, but you are certainly not immune to competition. Your food may be incredible and your service out of this world, but if you aren't "top of mind", you will lose business.

So how do you become top of mind? The answer? With lots and lots of patience.

DEFINE YOUR GOALS
What are you hoping to achieve? Think both long term and short. Your overall goal may be to franchise your Italian restaurant, but there are many, many steps between here and there. What do you hope to achieve in the next month? The next three months? The next six? Be reasonable. Having seven restaurants in six months is not only very difficult to achieve financially, it's also very difficult to manage. Your first Italian restaurant is where you work out your processes. It's where you fall flat on your face a few times. What's a reasonable goal? It's something achievable. It requires you to stretch, but doesn't require you to break.

POINT YOURSELF IN THAT DIRECTION
Your closest goal is the one you focus on. Your three month goal is to increase dinner reservations by 30%, let's say. Point yourself that way. Focus exclusively on promoting your dinner menu. Invite movers and shakers from the community to dine at a special opening event. Use social media to generate a buzz. You have a Facebook page - enlist your friends. Ask them to enlist their friends. It's a network - that's how it works. Keep in mind that any broad marketing you do will have a very low feedback rate. You're not just starting a restaurant - you're establishing a brand.

Remember to set your baseline. You can't measure success unless you know where you've been.

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
You may know the best way to cook lasagna, but if your customers don't like it, you have to change. Your customers will not change, and shame on the business owner who demands that. Your customers will tell you what works and what doesn't. All you need to do is listen.

MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE
Allow your strategy to work. Whatever combination of promotional material, word-of-mouth, social media, etc. you choose to use, let it work. It takes time. There are various environmental factors that can contribute to why people aren't seeking you out. Using our Italian restaurant as an example, it may be that your potential customers have a favorite place and haven't discovered you yet; it may be that it's too hot outside and Italian food seems too heavy; it may be that people are on vacation; there might be something happening on American Idol. The point is, don't throw away your plan simply because you don't have instant gratification. You won't. Branding takes time.

FOCUS ON SHORT TERM CASH FLOW
Most new business owners cut their startup investment very close to the wire. By the time all the expenses have tripled and the marketing budget comes around, business owners are so tired of spending money with no return that they demand something immediate from the marketing. Creating your identity takes time. Most businesses will not see a profit for at least two or three years. How do you mitigate this? Focus on keeping afloat. Working for cost or just above cost will allow you to keep yourself above water long enough for you to catch on. Every day you stay in business is another victory. Celebrate that. Your franchise may be years away, but you will have earned your business by fighting in the trenches. Successful business owners are those who make failure a four-letter word. Failure and falling on your face are two different things. Failure means you don't get back up. Falling on your face means you take your blows and live to fight another day.