Consumer Lifestyle Archives • The Hoyt Organization

How To Market A Cannabis Business

The global legal cannabis market will reach $57 billion by 2026. So, to stand out from the growing competition, you need a strong marketing strategy for your cannabis business.

Marketing or improving your cannabis business can be challenging due to the complex legal environment and stigma surrounding the industry. However, you can effectively promote your business and attract more customers with the right approach.

So, let’s show you how to effectively market a cannabis business.

How To Effectively Market Your Cannabis Business

Brand Awareness

One of the crucial aspects of marketing a cannabis business is improving brand awareness. How do you make sure people know your product or service exists? How do you get them to remember your brand and keep coming back?

First, create a website and an eye-catching logo to represent your company digitally.

Then, attend cannabis-related events and conferences to network with industry professionals. This can help get your brand in front of a larger audience. In addition, partner with influencers in the cannabis space to reach a new audience and build credibility for your brand. Ensure these influencers align with your values and brand message.

You can also host events like product launches or educational seminars to build more relationships and generate buzz around your brand.

Finally, offer promotions and discounts to attract new customers and keep existing ones returning.

Media Relations

Media relations can increase your brand’s visibility and build your brand’s reputation. Start by researching journalists who cover the cannabis industry. Then, contact them with personalized pitches about your brand.

Share your unique story about how you got started in the industry and why you’re passionate about cannabis. Doing so will humanize your brand and make it more relatable to journalists and followers.

In addition, develop a media kit that includes your company’s:

Background
Mission statement
Product information
Relevant statistics or data

You can also offer expert commentary on cannabis-related topics in the news. Doing so will position you as a thought leader and authority in the industry, which will build your credibility.

Social Media Presence

More than 4.26 billion people worldwide use social media. So, social media marketing will help you connect with your target audience and build brand awareness.

Start by identifying the social media platforms your target audience uses the most. Then, develop a content strategy that aligns with your brand’s messaging and goals. This could include:

sharing educational content about cannabis
showcasing your products or services
sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses of your business

Use relevant hashtags on your posts to increase their visibility and reach a wider audience.

Pitching

Pitching is the opportunity to communicate your business’s value proposition to potential customers, investors, and partners.

Knowing your target audience is key. Research and tailor your pitch to their needs and interests to build rapport. Instead of listing the features of your products or services, focus on the benefits they offer. In short, explain how your business will solve your audience’s problems, meet their needs, or improve their lives.

It is also best to use data to support your claims and prove your business’s success. This can include statistics on industry trends, customer satisfaction rates, or revenue growth.

After your pitch, follow up with your audience, answer their questions, and continue the conversation.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a powerful marketing strategy for your cannabis business. It includes optimizing your website and content to improve your ranking on search engine results pages, including Google and Bing.

Research keywords related to your business and create content that focuses on these keywords. In return, your website will rank higher in SERPs and convert more traffic into customers.

If you have a physical location for your cannabis business, optimize your website for local SEO by including your address, phone number, and hours of operation. Include local phrases in your content and create a Google My Business profile to improve your local visibility.

Finally, track the performance of your SEO efforts over time with tools like Google Analytics.

Emphasize Credibility

This industry is still in its infancy, making it important to emphasize your brand’s credibility. So, how can customers trust that your products are safe and your business credible?

Continuously highlight your experience and expertise. Share customer testimonials. Showcase awards and certifications. These efforts will prove your business is legitimate, thus instilling more trust in your audience.

Final Thoughts

When you leverage these proven marketing strategies, you will successfully promote your business, attract customers, and drive sales. However, stay up-to-date with the ever-evolving legal cannabis landscape to comply with all laws.

Remember building a strong brand and establishing credibility in this industry takes time and effort. So, focus on providing high-quality products or services first, then cater to the needs and preferences of your target audience. By doing so, you will build a loyal customer base for long-term success.

Nick Luvera

Perfecting The Art of Consumer Public Relations

Happy, engaged, and repeat customers can help you to grow your business. In an age where consumers want to authentically connect with your brand, auto-response messaging won’t do the trick. If lasting, meaningful consumer relationships are your brand’s end goal, then you’ll have to invest in consumer public relations.

In this article, we’ll explore what consumer PR is and how you can use it to benefit your company.

What Is Consumer PR?

Consumer PR refers to how a company interacts and communicates with the general public.

This includes customers, employees, the media, and key company stakeholders.

Where marketing solely focuses on increasing company revenue, consumer PR increases brand awareness. It facilitates authentic connections between a brand and its target audience.

Essentially, consumer PR can help you to mold your company’s reputation in a way that truly reflects the company’s ideals, vision, and principles.

How To Perfect Your Consumer Public Relations

When applied correctly, consumer PR can help you to attract more customers, grow existing relationships, and learn from each customer interaction. So, here’s how to master your consumer PR.

Understand Your Audience

It may sound simple, but really getting to know your target audience takes time and some sound strategy. A deep understanding of your customers will serve as the foundation for your communication style going forward and will ensure that your messaging resonates with its intended audience.

The best way to understand your target audience is to delve into market research. However, you can also learn a lot by experimenting and challenging common assumptions that you may unwittingly harbor.

If you’re targeting a number of different audiences, it’s best to develop multiple customer personas for each messaging goal you have. These personas should guide your communication tone and style and can help you position each message in such a way that it keeps your target audience engaged.

Choose The Right Content

After you have a solid grip on who your customers are, how they liked to be addressed, and what piques their interests, you’ll have a much easier time developing your consumer PR content strategy.

A key part of formulating and executing a content strategy will be knowing what your target audience deems as newsworthy.

Posting random content on your company’s social media platforms simply won’t suffice. Blogging about evergreen topics that have been written about a hundred times before also won’t do. You’ve got to sink your teeth into the gritty details of a story that will make your intended audience feel something.

More often than not, it’s not the story itself that sparks interest, but rather how you tell it that will intrigue your reader.

If you have to report on boring corporate news, put a personal spin on it. If there’s a new product launch in the pipeline, turn it into an eye-catching campaign that will both dazzle and awe.

Whatever you choose to report on, just remember to serve your target audience content that they will find interesting.

Make Things Personal

Consumers want to feel valued and heard. It is your job to make sure that your messaging reflects your company’s attentiveness to each customer’s query.

Whether it’s a customer service response, an email, a reply on social media, or a handwritten note accompanying a product delivery, you can make each consumer feel valued by personalizing your messaging.

Why is this important? These days, every customer has a thousand different vendors to choose from. Yet, they chose to support your business. So, you need to show them that they’re making the right choice and don’t just see them as some nameless paying customer.

Personal messaging shows each customer that you value their purchase. It will also create an opportunity for you to connect with that customer.

Be An Industry Leader

Consumers want to support and work with companies that are well-known, respected leaders in their industry.

Because there is so much online noise, the demand for trusted expertise is growing. Want to prove that your walk can match your talk? Then you’ll have to come up with content strategies that will help to establish your company as a thought leader.

This means you’ll have to publish interesting articles, commentary, and opinions concerning the latest trends and events that are taking your industry by storm. This will require you to practice active listening and be aware of all of the pertinent questions being asked on a certain topic. Then you can be the first to provide the answers.

Company presentations, editorials, and Q&As are all excellent ways to establish yourself as an expert within your industry.

In Summary

Although it can be a time-consuming task, perfecting your consumer public relations strategy is well worth it in the end. Not only will it help you to connect with each customer in a more authentic way, but it will also make your customers feel valued.

By understanding how to communicate with your target audience, you will make it much more enjoyable and rewarding for your intended audience to keep up with your brand.

Leeza Hoyt

How To Promote Your Luxury Day Spa With Public Relations

Luxury day spa offers customers a chance to indulge and unwind. These pamper parlors are often so dreamy that one may assume that these establishments simply promote themselves.

This, however, is not the case. Even top-class day spas need a great public relations strategy to stay ahead of the competition and win over new clients in the consumer lifestyle category.

Below, we have carefully selected the most relevant promotional tools and PR tactics that will help to put your luxury spa on the map.

3 Best PR Strategies To Promote Your Luxury Spa

Reward Loyal Customers

It may sound simple, but by rewarding both new and old customers, you can incentivize them to return more regularly to your day spa. If you are looking for a way to show your customers that you value their support, then now would be the perfect time to implement a spa loyalty program.

In general, spa enthusiasts like to be pampered on a regular basis. By rewarding your customers whenever they support you, you can become their new home away from home. All you have to do is give them even more reason to return to your day spa whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Your loyalty program can allow customers to earn loyalty points whenever they pay for spa products or services. These loyalty points can accumulate until your customers qualify for a free treatment or product. You can also give people extra loyalty points for referring their friends to your spa.

A loyalty program can make your customers feel seen and heard. With each point you award them, you are essentially saying that you see and value their support. Most customers would rather shop at establishments that make them feel included and reward them, rather than support businesses that don’t value them.

Cultivate a Strong Online Presence

In this day and age, creating a strong online presence for your brand is no longer optional. Most reputable PR firms have broadened their horizons to include online marketing in their strategies. This is largely because, during the last decade, more and more people have been finding and purchasing what they need online.

Firstly, you’ll need a website. If people are curious about your spa, then this is likely the first place they’ll go to research your company. Your website is one of the first impressions your brand will make on new customers. So, be sure to cross your T’s and dot your I’s.

Among other things, your website should be SEO-friendly and easy to navigate. It should list your services, products, and prices, and provide valuable information to all your customers. The easier you make it for potential customers to navigate your website, the more likely it is that they will book a day spa treatment.

Also be sure to list your day spa on various listing websites, starting with Google My Business. This will help to improve your local SEO ratings. Moreover, it will let people know how they can contact you and what your operational hours are.

Lastly, don’t forget about investing in your social media presence. Whether you prefer Facebook or Instagram, make sure you post regularly on all your social media platforms. These platforms can help you to communicate with your audience and make real connections with your brand followers. Further, it helps to boost brand awareness and drive more people to your luxury spa.

Partner Up With Local Businesses

The day spa industry is all about inner and outer wellness. As such, it is the ideal establishment to take hands with other similar businesses. By partnering with other companies that share your ideals and values, you can both benefit when it comes to boosting sales.

Of course, it wouldn’t be ideal to partner with another day spa. There are plenty of non-competitive options out there, like hairdressers, dietitians, chiropractors, and even nutritionists.

By partnering up with local companies, you could help to promote each other. This could increase brand awareness and up the revenue of both your spa and the company you’re partnering with. It really is a win-win situation and would require very little effort on your part.

By simply displaying each other’s business cards, or mentioning each other on both of your websites and social media platforms, you could significantly help boost each other’s brand visibility.

Alternatively, you could also write creative content and mention each other on your respective blogs. There is also the option of running a promotion together. This urges your combined customer pool to support both businesses.

There truly are numerous ways that partnering up with another local business can help to promote your luxury day spa.

In Summary

Whether you are a day spa marketer, owner, or manager, these PR strategies can help to boost your brand visibility. They can lead more people to your website and ultimately ensure you are fully booked all year round.

By investing in your online presence, rewarding your customers, and partnering up with other businesses, your day spa can get the marketing traction it needs to really thrive.

Leeza Hoyt

Does Your Beauty And Skincare PR Strategy Need A Makeover?

The beauty and skincare industry is changing. Not so long ago, women couldn’t wait to visit their favorite stores to purchase their must-have beauty products due to the pandemic. Now, however, more and more people shop online.

These types of changes in consumer behavior mean that your beauty brand’s old marketing strategies may not be as effective as they used to be. If you feel like your cosmetics brand could do with a PR strategy makeover, then look no further.

We’ve outlined PR strategy tips and tricks below that can help to elevate your beauty and skincare brand to the next level.

3 Effective PR Strategies For Beauty And Skincare Brands

Invest In a Well-Crafted SEO Strategy

Today’s typical customer wants products to be accessible and readily available. The beauty and skincare industry is no exception. With just a click of a button, customers are expecting to find all there is to know about the products they are interested in.

By not meeting these customer expectations, you could potentially damage your beauty brand and have your customers flocking to your competitors. Rather, give your customers the information they want with the help of a well-crafted SEO strategy. This will help you remain top-of-mind whenever someone wants to invest in their physical appearance.

When sticking to a great SEO strategy, you will ensure that your beauty brand soars above your competition in online search results. For example, whenever a potential customer is looking for a new face cream or mascara online, your site will be one of the top beauty brands that Google recommends if you offer that product.

Great SEO can help your brand to become more visible, which will drive more traffic to your website. It’s all about targeting the right keywords and knowing what your customers are currently searching for.

Staying on top of beauty trends and knowing which topics will be great for evergreen content is a sure-fire way to catch your demographic audience’s attention.

More visibility equals more eyes on your content, which will drive more sales and content engagement. SEO may be a long-term investment, but it is definitely worth it when done right.

Paid Marketing Campaigns

SEO is a great tool when it comes to ranking high in organic search results. However, even if you have a great SEO strategy, it may take up to six months to see results. While you are waiting for your website’s search engine ranking to pick up, why not invest in paid marketing?

Customer pay-per-click campaigns can help to boost the visibility of your beauty brand. Paid ads in search engines are usually displayed right at the top of the page, which means you automatically outrank the competition.

This means your ideal customer will not have to scroll down or go to the next page to find your brand. And seeing that most people only click on the first three search results they find, your paid ad will be able to generate a lot of traffic to your website.

You can use PPC adverts for sales and to feature some of your products. Most importantly, your PPC campaigns should work hand-in-hand with your organic search efforts. This will enable you to see a bigger return on investment in a shorter amount of time.

From display ads to remarketing and Google shopping ads, the sky’s the limit when it comes to promoting your beauty brand with PPC campaigns. The added bonus is that you can measure the effectiveness of every advert and only keep those that work.

Creative Content That Converts

Your ideal customers are probably already deeply invested in their own physical wellbeing. This means they are on the lookout for beauty and skincare tips that will truly blow them away. By providing them with engaging, interesting and educational content, you can show them why your beauty brand is truly worth investing in.

By featuring articles that link back to your website on sites that your target audience already visits on a regular basis, you can increase your website traffic. It also helps to build trust with your brand following and increases the chances of your audience actually purchasing your products.

Moreover, creative, educational content can also help to build your brand’s authority when it comes to skincare and beauty. Educational content doesn’t have to come in the typical box we’ve always put it in. Yes, there’s nothing wrong with a beautifully worded article, but these days it’s more about who is doing the telling.

By getting influencers, celebrities, skin experts, and even product reviewers to try out your products and then to share their own personal experience with your audience, your brand will look more authentic. This will also help to widen the reach of your brand and to promote brand loyalty.

In a Nutshell

Your beauty and skincare PR campaign doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. By adding the above strategies to the mix, you can start building a better brand reputation and increase your brand awareness.

Leeza Hoyt

Public Relations For Restaurant and Food Brands

The food and restaurant industry is evolving at a rapid pace. With consumers being quite adamant in understanding where their food comes from and how their purchases can affect social issues, climate change, and overall wellness, it is now more vital than ever to tell your brand’s story in an authentic way.

Below, we delve into tried and tested PR tactics that can help place your restaurant or food brand on the map.

3 Key PR Tactics For Food And Restaurant Brands

Allow Customers to Experience Your Brand

People rarely stay spectators if they see something fun they really want to participate in. Why not grab this golden opportunity to transform your food brand into the next experiential treat? After all, foodies are all about enjoying and truly indulging in each and every culinary experience.

So, how exactly does one do this? There are numerous ways to get your customers actively involved in your brand. Events, competitions, or even food tours can all allow your target market to devour your food and beverages.

This is also where digital marketing comes into play. Social media is one of the greatest and most effective tools when it comes to creating brand awareness. If you are planning on launching a competition or organizing an event, then be sure to spread the word on all your social channels.

By uniquely presenting your food and beverages at these events, people will start posting about it on social media.

Why not create a unique brand hashtag? This will help you to spread the word about your brand. Your target market will share, retweet, or repost content relating to your products and services.

In a way, each and every potential customer can become a brand advocate. It really just all depends on your willingness to give your audience the experiences they truly crave. If it’s worth doing and it’s Instagrammable, then brand hype will be inevitable!

Partner With The Right People

When just starting out in the restaurant or food industry, it can be hard to gain traction on social media and to reach your ideal consumer.

Not only does it require knowing exactly how to optimize your social media ads, but it also means you have to know what your ideal customer wants or needs.

Figuring all this out is an important part of the branding process, but it can be time-consuming and is usually done over a number of months.

The best way to get around this roadblock and to really propel your brand into fame is to form partnerships with other brands or influencers. This will allow you to position your brand in a certain way so you can target the people you think will really enjoy your brand.

You don’t necessarily have to team up with companies that are also in the restaurant and food industry. A better way to form partnerships is to partner up with brands that will truly complement yours. Ideally, it should be a mutually beneficial relationship that will benefit both parties.

When picking an influencer, it is best to choose people that fit right into your brand’s lane. Remember, it’s not worth it to compromise your brand’s integrity for five seconds of fame.

Although social media platforms are the ideal choice when it comes to hosting partnerships and collaborations, you can also opt for more traditional marketing mediums.

Print media, TV ads, and even radio ads work phenomenally well when it comes to featuring brand collaborations. It all just depends on what your end goals are, and if you would like to measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.

Content Is Still King

Immortalizing the essence of your brand on camera and broadcasting your brand’s voice through articles, blogs, recipes, and opinion pieces is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness.

Yes, content is still king, and without it, you won’t be able to show how your food or restaurant business is making its mark in the industry.

High-quality brand content allows you to tell your company’s story in a fast and effective way. As such, it should be a vital part of your PR and marketing strategy.

The best way to create content is to do it in such a way that it can be used throughout multiple traditional and digital marketing platforms. By doing this, you can maximize the return on your marketing efforts.

In addition to creating versatile content, you should also be creating evergreen content. This is content that stays relevant so that you can use it over and over again. The key to generating great content is to work smarter, not harder.

In Summary

Your PR strategy for your food or restaurant brand should be supported by high-quality content creation, partnerships and collaborations, and experiential opportunities that specifically cater to the wants and needs of your customers.

By implementing these three marketing tactics, you will create lots of brand awareness and allow your brand to speak to your ideal consumer in a personable and authentic way.

Leeza Hoyt

Public Relations Strategies For Your Architectural Firm

Running a successful architectural firm requires more than simply constructing a great business plan and hiring highly skilled individuals. It all comes down to attracting the right clients. By investing in a solid marketing strategy that allows you to establish a strong presence in the architectural industry, you will be able to rub shoulders with more high-paying clients.

Establishing a PR strategy that goes hand in hand with your marketing plan is crucial. It will ensure that your architectural firm makes a great first impression on prospective clients.

4 PR Strategies For Architectural Firms

Here are 4 proven PR strategies that can help put your architectural firm on the map.

Establish a Strong Presence

In order to really be noticed, you have to be present on the right platforms. You also need to target the right people through a myriad of advertising strategies.

A great website is a good starting point. But, to stand out from your competitors, you also have to invest in social media, blogs, newsletters, and print publications.

Aside from utilizing all the platforms available to you, you have to be willing to get up close and personal with the brand’s history and story. This means that you have to communicate with your audience in a way that resonates with them.

The way you think about architecture might not be the same as how your clients think about it. So, you need to have a great PR strategy in place that caters to your clients’ needs and tells your unique story in the right way. This will help you to attract and retain the right people.

The key is to position your company as the forerunner or thought-leader in the architectural industry. Although all your clients may differ, in the end, they all need the same thing. They need to know that they have hired the best architectural firm in the business. With a great presence in the industry, you can convince them of that and more.

Invest in a Great Photographer

The architectural industry is a very visual industry. Because of this, you should have someone on hand that can showcase what your firm has achieved thus far.

By hiring a great photographer, you will have great visual material to present at meetings, gatherings, and networking events. What’s more, you’ll have a great visual aid that tells your story for you. In other words, this allows you to show people how great your work is – not just tell them.

Not only can a great photographer bring in new clients, but it can also help with digital marketing on various platforms. At the end of the day, this financial investment will pay for itself – especially if you hire a seasoned professional that has been working in the architectural industry for years.

A great PR agency may be able to connect you with the right photographer so you can show everyone why they should hire your firm.

Networking is Key

A lot of times, skilled individuals in the architectural industry know a lot about the technical side of the work. But, they may not know how to convey that information in an interesting or articulate way.

Your PR strategy should definitely include lots of opportunities to communicate with the community. However, in order to do this effectively, you should invest in some public speaking training.

More often than not, people want to engage with you face-to-face and hear what you have been up to straight from the horse’s mouth. This can be done during speaking arrangements, media opportunities, or when pitching ideas for potential new clients.

By conveying an idea or past project in an alluring way, you can halve the time needed to network and still land the same amount of new clients or projects. If all the people in your firm acquire this skill set, just imagine the vast number of business opportunities you could land!

Media Mindset

Investing in traditional and digital media coverage couldn’t be more important in the digital era. Whether you want to invest in print, magazine, website, or blog coverage, it could all lend more credibility to your firm.

You should also try to get on people’s mailing lists so potential clients are constantly reminded of what you have to offer.

Remember, coverage online has a longer shelf life than print publications and can also be shared with other people. When it comes down to it, there are a lot of options to choose from. So, you should try and invest in the media platforms that your client demographic most enjoys and engages with.

Final Thoughts

No two PR strategies will look the same – even if the strategy caters to the same type of business. In the end, knowing your unique architectural business and your potential client pool really well will help you to better strategize around key business opportunities.

Leeza Hoyt

What Is Consumer Public Relations?

Are you looking to increase awareness about your consumer lifestyle business and build a larger audience? You may want to consider developing a consumer public relations program. This can help you build your reputation and grow your business.

Consumer public relations is how businesses communicate with the public, or more specifically, their target audience. Businesses use consumer public relations to build positive impressions about their brand, services, products or goods.

Keep reading to find out the difference between consumer public relations and marketing and how to create an effective strategy.

What Is The Difference Between Public Relations And Marketing?

Public relations may sound a lot like marketing, but it is important to note the difference between the two. Consumer public relations is dedicated to building a business’ reputation and increasing brand awareness. Marketing, on the other hand, is focused on increasing a business’ revenue.

It is recommended that businesses use both consumer public relations and marketing tactics to achieve success in this day and age. This will help businesses stay consistent across the board and reach their target audience. It is crucial that businesses share similar messages across platforms, as this will make people more willing to purchase their products or services.

How Do You Create A Consumer Public Relations Strategy?

The first step to is to identify your goals. Not only will this help guide your efforts, but it will also allow you to measure the success of your efforts. Are you focused on building and maintaining a positive reputation? Would you like to improve customer loyalty? These are questions you should ask yourself before creating a list of goals.

Once the program has been launched, you can refer back to this list to make sure you are on the right track.

After creating a list of goals, you should define your target audience. Who are you currently targeting and who would you like to join your customer base? What qualities do they possess? Once you decide who you would like to target, you will be able to craft messages that are tailored to your target audience.

Before generating the content, you should take a look at your competition. Browse their social media channels to see what they are putting out there and whether or not their content is driving engagement. That way, you will have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

Once you have identified your goals, target audience and competitors, you can start writing a list of key messages. Your key messages should be concise, simple, compelling and memorable. Then you can start thinking about which tactics you would like to employ.

What’s Next?

Here at THO, we work with a full tool chest of tactics, from digital to social media to event planning and management, to highlight your company and engage your customers now and in the long term. Feel free to contact us. We can determine which tactics would work best for you. To learn more about consumer public relations, click here.

Leeza Hoyt

Building the buzz for a new LA Eatery

Industry
- Commercial & Residential Real Estate
- Design & Construction
- Consumer Lifestyle
Services
- Strategic public & media relations
- Social & digital media
- Content generation
- Brand enhancement & awareness
- Internal Media training

Building buzz for a new eatery is always exciting. In a major metropolitan city like Los Angeles, however, competition is tough. Working with one of our PRGN partners, THO was tasked with building excitement on the newest location for LYFE Kitchen in one of our submarkets. Our goal: creating unique opportunities to get the media, community and social media influencers in the door.

The Challenge

With two locations already in the greater Los Angeles area, this was not the first entrance into this market. THO’s goal was to fill the restaurant and encourage local Yelpers and social media influencers to not only come to the restaurant but actually cover this particular location.

The Solution

Get creative! Launching to the lunch crowd with a “brussel sprouts ribbon” cutting (see photo) served as the initial kick-off to the local community. THO then got even more creative in the design and implementation of media events, along with the necessary due diligence to identify food writers and bloggers willing to re-discover an existing restaurant brand.

Results

Using private tastings and the grand opening, THO attracted writers and reviewers from more than 15 local magazines, community publications and blogs. We then implemented a second strategy targeted at the Yelp community, to build affinity for this location. More than 150 Yelp reviewers were invited to a complimentary tasting and experience evening. The results of this created an immediate buzz, as well as a strong, positive rating on Yelp that supported a successful launch as well as a restaurant filled with first-time LYFE Kitchen guests.

Takeaways

Building a buzz requires a building block process. Make sure you’ve engaged all of your major stakeholders early in the game.

Plan a soft grand opening at a time when the core group can gather and celebrate.
Remember, “the devil is in the details”: make sure menus are ready, the parking is easy, and directions are simple.
Listen to the comments at the first event, then make any adjustments based on the initial feedback for the next one.

Category: Consumer Lifestyle

Perfecting The Art of Consumer Public Relations

What Is Consumer PR?