How much do you advertise your cart?

One of the biggest surprises for me since I have started at lunch every day is just how much I need to advertise to keep my customers.

I approached my lunch business from the mindset that I needed to start with a splash and make sure I push the hell out of my business at the start, but once folks got a taste of my fantastic product that they would all come back.

That has not been the case at all and it has been a source of great frustration for me, but I think that my frustration might be misplaced.

Any time I spend a few hours and ten bucks printing a few hundred flyers and putting them on the doors of local businesses and my business goes up a ton. Anywhere from 150-300%. I give the same good service, I offer the same good product, and yet a stupid flyer makes people come in droves.

Today I put out 150 half page flyers on the doors of local businesses and I know I'll be busy as hell tomorrow and I have trouble understanding that.

I guess in the 21st century America that we live in where we are all constantly marketed and sold something every time we open our eyes that it IS necessary to constantly advertise, but for some reason it really irks me that I need to. Is that really the case? Do people really have such short attention spans or am I missing something?

Experienced people, please set me straight.

I am not experienced at Mobile Food Vending, but I am at marketing.

First, I would say, Word of mouth is the best advertising, but the hardest to come by. Promotion of some type is often required by any business to generate consistent sales volume, particularly if you are new or in a highly competitive market or if your product (or how its delivered) is new in a particular area.

Then I would ask you a few questions.
1. Is the foot traffic volume not sufficient enough to support your venture? Are you needing to pull people of their standard daily path to generate sales? At the end of the day, mobile food vending strikes me as more impulse or convenience buying, at least until you can generate a reputation that people will follow. If foot traffic is low, you may need to move to a better location. If foot traffic is high then you may have another problem. See item 2 below.

2. Have you surveyed your customers at all? A simple comment card often will lead to a wealth of information. If that fails incentivize them with a weekly drawing for a 1 free lunch ($5. Draw one card from the lot of those filling out the survey. Keep survey short and do them in short burst - not more than 2-3 weeks of a give a way (less if you can get enough info). Giving away meals is not a good idea, but $5 could pay a great deal more in returns if you get useful info. Ask them what they like and dislike. Also, post your winners name and/or photo on your cart so that customers know someone won so people know you made good on the give away. (Make sure you get their permission first.) At least ask customers how they found out about you. Even better would be to survey people not coming to your cart to find out why they don't. Get a spouse or friend to do impromptu street survey of customers in your area going to other venues.

3. Is what you serve from your cart unusual in your area or for that matter is mobile vending? People buy what they know, so your offering (the product or delivery method) may not have much of a market share in your area, which means you may need to educate the public to the virtues (or lack of vice) in your product. For example in NY food carts are everywhere, where I am from they are rare. In my case, I anticipate needing to overcome a certain wariness that by locals may have if they have never dined at a mobile cart.

4. Opportunity cost attaches itself to everything, if I do X, what does it cost me in Y. The best burger in town could be around the corner, so how do you draw people to you, the best dog in town? Or you may be competing against time, if it takes 5 minutes to walk to your cart from an office building and they have 30 minutes for lunch, you have a problem if they have an option 1 minute away from them. Or if you work in an area with elevated health conscience and there are 3 healthier options on the same block. I did an informal survey around a local hospital down town, of the top three issues healthy option was tops on the list a majority of the time.

5. Target market. Have you noticed any similarity in the customer mix? Are they mostly white collar, construction, police, shoppers, etc? Then blanket that segment with flyers to get a greater return on you ad $$. Also, compare it to the general population you see around your cart. For example if 70% of the general traffic around you cart is white collar workers (a business district for example) but 70% of your business is blue collar, then talk to some white collar folks to find out what they would like to see you do differently.

I am sure the more experienced here can give you some better advice, but that’s where I would start.

AS I read my own post again I saw something that was vague - surveys need to be more than "what did you like/dislike". I was generalizing, my wife is educated in marketing research and would kill for saying something so generic. Survey questions need to be well crafted in order to be of much value.

I am sue there are other misques as well, but I will let them rest for tonight.