Promote and Position Your LTOs for Success

“A brand becomes a brand when it is consistent.”
– anonymous

There is always a debate on what is marketing and what is branding. There is one factor that runs into both, and that is consistency. When crafting your message, it must ring loud enough and often enough to make an impact.  We talked last month about implementing pizza styles that make you stick out from your competitors. When putting together the marketing campaign around the new style, you want to make sure your branding message is entrenched in the overall campaign.

We recently introduced a Tavern Style pizza to our menu, and we now are advertising it. We built this campaign for a 90-day stretch of time. In the past we have done monthly pizza specials. However, we have found that 30 days is not enough time to run a Limited Time Offer pizza. We like to run somewhere between 4 to 6 limited time offerings throughout the year. Some examples of LTO’s would be our stuffed crust pizza, our pickle pizza, a new style of pizza or a collaboration with a non-profit.

We like to run these LTOs because it keeps things fresh and new. When we run a new campaign, here are the ways we promote and position the new pizza:

• We start by taking great pictures. Set aside a few hours where you can take some great photos of the new pizza. We usually start this process at least two months before we launch the special.
• Once we have the pictures, we then create in-store displays. This includes posters, table tops and sometimes box toppers.
• We also create digital ads for social media. We have found that if we create fresh digital ads for all of the social platforms (each one having their own ad) that the results are higher. Additionally, we have found that if we use another fresh digital ad halfway through the campaign we likewise end up with higher visibility.
• On top of the digital static ads, mixing in videos in the form of short videos is a huge plus. Short videos of staff talking about the creation or trying it goes a long way in the eye of the customer. We typically have some paid Facebook and Instagram ads to which we allocate some of these advertising dollars. That further helps push these specials to introduce them to the public.
• Finally, training your staff to offer the LTO is another key to success. We let the staff try all the new LTO pizzas so that they understand the item and can get excited about it. We always offer it at a fair price — a fair price for the customer, but also a fair price for us so that we can still run a profitable restaurant.

If you have other forms of advertisement in your arsenal already like direct mail, TV, billboards or radio, I suggest you use them around your limited time offers as well. Since we mentioned profitability, that’s what we will get into in the next installment of Building Blocks!

Nick Bogacz is the founder and president of Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Pittsburgh.  Instagram: @caliente_pizza