Austin's Steak House

A restaurant named Dow Jones was attempting to capture business professionals, and was getting nowhere. So they hired a consultant who specialized in turning around failing restaurants, and that consultant hired Outpost to develop and execute the marketing strategy.

A common mistake marketers make is to try to be all things to all people, to make sure they leave no one out in casting their marketing net. Dow Jones advertising recited a laundry list of their menu items hoping that the people who liked one item or another would come in. The problem with this approach is that lumping multiple items together doesn't allow any one of them to stand out as unique, special in some way, available nowhere else.

It was decided, therefore, to relaunch the restaurant as a "steakhouse" and to shout "steak" from the mountaintop. Within a year, Austin's became recognized as one of the top 3 steakhouses in the Twin Cities. Steak was the "hook" that got people's attention and that became the focal point for choosing this restaurant. Once inside, steak was only 30% of the total revenue, but it got people in the door to order the other menu items.

This strategy increased revenue +20% over what it had been under the "Dow Jones" approach.

In Year II, management wanted to let people know that their seafood was also exceptional, and this led to "Seafood That Rivals Our Steak," a head line which had persuasive meaning because the reputation for steak had been hammered for a year.

This generated another +15% increase.

The moral of the story is to focus on single components of your total offering, one at at time, sequentially, rather than try to jam everything you've got at people in one breath.

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