It’s All About T.O.M.A For The Holidays!

If you want to be the first on your clients call list when they need a caterer for this Holiday Season and beyond you must reach “Top of Mind Awareness.”

TOMA is almost a Zen experience for marketing in business. You need to create Top of Mind Awareness with your prospects and clients. Research indicates you will create a strong TOMA experience when you PERSONALIZE your marketing to your prospects and clients needs.

 

Talk to them; not at them. Your marketing should be clear, but will make better reading in a conversational tone. When marketing your catering business it is especially important to maintain TOMA because not every prospect is going to need your catering service right now.

Some clients or prospects might not need a caterer for six months. But maintaining TOMA with your clients and prospects is the key to being a successful caterer. When I was catering my clients would receive something from my company at least 36 times a year. Be it a newsletter, email, thank you note, holiday card, gift basket, invitation to a tasting or a personal phone call.

There are many options to touch your clients personally and keep you in the TOMA zone. This is the difference between being a caterer who is just doing ok and a caterer who has their catering calendar full even during the week.

It breaks my heart and drives me LOCO when caterers take their clients for granted (unless of course they are my competitor). Clients that you have done functions for in the past and have given you money, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars and they never hear from you again. All I can say is “Are you NUTS?” These clients are your low hanging fruit, and your marketing should be the catalyst that helps to ripen them. Then it’s time to go picking and harvest them.

We are fast-approaching the busiest season of the year for catering…December with enough Christmas and Holiday parties for everyone! I remember back many years ago when I was just starting out in the catering business and 45% of my yearly sales occurred in the month of December. Talk about working your tail off! I don’t think I went home to sleep in those days. But the money was great and by the time Christmas rolled around I was ready for a vacation.

So ask yourself what you are doing to grab your share of holiday parties (and your competitor’s share while you are at it?)

Let me give you some ideas to help promote Holiday parties for your catering business: and get you into the TOMA ZONE.

First

Simply call the people and companies that you did parties for last year during the holidays and ask them if they are ready to book with you this year, because your calendar is getting filled pretty quickly and you want to make sure you save room for them during this busy holiday season.

At the very least, send them a reminder card, hand written inviting them to call you now to discuss the details of their holiday party for this year. In the past I have invited my best corporate Christmas party clients for a pre-holiday get together in early November to sample new items on our catering menu and get them to book their parties early.

This serves two purposes:

1. –It gives me an opportunity to collect a deposit and solidify the date now, and
2. –It’s also a chance to showcase the latest and greatest that we have to offer our clients for this holiday season.

This gives us the chance to “upsell” our clients on their functions. Remember, catering is all about the “upsell”. And Holiday Parties are a great time to “up sell” your clients. Doing a promotional party such as this will keep you in TOMA and ahead of your competition. But do it early! Besides everyone loves to go to a party.

Second

I will mail my “B-list” of clients. These are the clients that I have done parties for over the past few years but they might not book with me every year, or maybe they don’t spend the same amount of money as my A-list. I will mail them a marketing piece that gives them an incentive to book with us now. It might be a complimentary appetizer tray or dessert or even a two for one party offer.

The client needs to book before the deadline and send the deposit in to able to collect on the offer. I always recommend putting in a deadline on the additional incentive and put some positive pressure to get your clients to act right now.

Third

To help market my catering in what is the busiest season of year for caterers, I would roll the sleeves up and hit the streets. Well, maybe not me personally, but a member of my staff.

I would send them around to different businesses that we wanted to target and capture for Holiday business armed with Holiday Dessert Trays, Christmas Cards and our Catering Brochures and Holiday Menus. They would stop into the perspective clients business and ask to see whoever handles booking their Christmas party. Then they would drop off the tray of goodies free with all of the promotional information from our company.

Now who do you think has the TOMA for their Christmas party when looking for a caterer? If you really want to make a big impression, find someone who will dress up in a Santa Suit and send them in early November with your packets and trays and see what the response is. Nobody can throw out Santa! It’s all about the TOMA, baby!

TOMA is an imperative ingredient for caterers for developing a successful Catering Business. It is something that has made my Business a great success. But you have to do something. You can’t wait for the business to just come to you. Those days are long gone.

There are still plenty of people and companies in this economy and market that are having Holiday parties for their friends, clients and employees. Questions: Do you want some of it? And are you willing to go out and get it? This world doesn’t need another boring Caterer doing boring Marketing to his or her clients and prospects.

Think about your product and what you are selling– PARTIES. These should be fun and exciting events for you and your clients. So do something, but do something exciting and believe me the money will follow, if you have TOMA!

If you need help launching or expanding your catering business check out my Million-Dollar Catering Masterclass.

It features over 6 and half hours of video teaching proven and tested catering success techniques over 30 years of success.

And over 100 downloadable catering templates for brochures, menus, ads, cost-control, marketing, and so much more.