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Importance of Advertising
Word of mouth may be the best form of advertising but in order to get those mouths into your restaurant to begin with, you have to promote. Being cheap about it by posting an occasional ad in the newspaper simply isn’t enough to say that you pay for advertising. Get with the program – everything is on the internet these days. You have to succumb to things like Facebook, Twitter and as much as I hate to admit it – Yelp. The thing about Yelp is for every 50 positive experiences you will get one person with what they’ve decided in their head is a negative one, even if it is unjustifiable and they’re the ones to write a review. That’s where money comes in; a business has to protect itself from people like that by basically doing everything in its power to drown out the bad Yelp reviews with reaching out to as many other vessels out there as possible; get featured in a magazine, attend special events and promote there, do it all. The more feelers you put out there, the more chances you have of some of them sticking – it’s like playing the lottery. If you don’t play, you don’t win. If you don’t advertise, don’t be surprised that your restaurant is dead on a Saturday night.
