Bombay House
November 30th, 2006 | Author: Tom Dalton | PermalinkFantasy Football season is upon us again, and I hate it.
The point of this section of the magazine though, is not to rant about Fantasy Football. Rather, it’s to introduce you to a new connect feature — Fantasy Marketing! We’ve got a better name for it of course, but that’s essentially what it is.
The readers of this magazine (you) are a bunch of really smart people. Many of you are experts in PR, marketing, e-commerce and the emerging Web 2.0. We’ve got seasoned and energetic entrepreneurs and businessfolk with experience and interests all across the spectrum. We want to leverage your brilliance.
So, each month, this connect readers marketing challenge will feature a local business’ marketing and/or advertising woes. The reader that submits the best idea will win free stuff and have his or her idea published in a future issue of connect.
This month we’re focusing on local Indian restaurant chain, Bombay House. Read up on its history, visit its Web site, try out the restaurant and enjoy a great meal! Then let us know what you think it should do. If your idea is the best, you’ll get a $50 gift certificate to Bombay House.
There are a few criteria that we’ll be using to judge your suggestion(s):1. Is it practical? Most businesses could sell more if their products were free. But that’s not going to win you any awards.
2. How effectively does it use technology? Blogs and RSS are cool, but real people don’t care about RSS for its own sake. When technology actually advances human purposes, that’s when it gets really cool.
3. Is it innovative? The answers don’t have to involve technology — the simplest ideas are often the best. But if you can come up with something really creative, think of how impressed all your peers will be.
Armchair marketers, get your game on. Stretch your knowledge and share your ideas. This is, after all, connect. Let’s connect!
The Setting
Visitors of the Bombay House restaurant will probably be greeted by an Indian man wearing a turban.
The lights are dim, the walls covered in murals of serene palaces and dancing gods. The furniture is lush and the colors are vibrant. Instrumental music plays softly in the background, but it’s not the light jazz you’d find in almost any other restaurant. Sitars and tablas resonate and soothe. The mixed scents of mint and curry bring home the feeling that, when you enter a Bombay House, you’ve stepped far outside your typical environment.
Daniel Shanthakumar, a graduate of BYU Hawaii and native of Madras, India, founded the restaurant in 1993 to bring a taste of his homeland to Utah. The first location in Provo has grown steadily and the newer location in Salt Lake was an instant success.
Between City Weekly, Utah Valley Magazine, and Salt Lake Magazine, Bombay House has been voted Best Indian Dining in Utah on a regular basis for the last eight years.
The Challenge
Bombay House is currently marketing in the Yellow Pages, a few local newspapers, and one magazine. Word of mouth has always been Shanthakumar’s most effective source of new customers. However, in his words, “If 100 people leave happy, they will probably tell 10 people about it. But if one person leaves unhappy, that person will probably tell 100 people about it.”
A few other considerations: growth is slowing, weeknights are underutilized, and seasonality is high. The Web site (www.bombayhouse.com) provides a menu and some other basic information, but no commerce functionality like reservations or take-out ordering — two features that have been requested by customers. The original design of the site was contracted out several years ago and there is no one on staff to develop it further.
Take Action
What should Bombay House do? E-mail your suggestions to tom@connect-utah.com or leave a comment on the Marketing From the Masses blog (www.connectblogs.com/marketing-from-the-masses).
The winner of this month’s challenge will receive a $50 gift certificate to the Bombay House.
Watch the blog for updates and results. The winning idea will also be published in a future connect issue.
If you’ve got an idea for a business with a marketing challenge you’d like to see featured here, let us know about that too. Send your ideas/comments to tom@connect-utah.com.
“growth is slowing” may apply to the Bombay House, but it also applies to the Yellow Pages and newspapers as well, and therein may be a large part of the problem. When phone books are dropped off at our office we don’t know what to do with them, and who subscribes to newspapers anymore other than senior citizens? My recommendation is target the Internet. It’s where I and everybody I know go first when we’re looking for someplace to eat and we’re in need of new ideas. Here are a few specific points of advice:
1. Redesign the website. It’s not very professional, and it doesn’t show off the food or the ambiance, two of the most important factors taken into consideration when judging a restaurant.
2. Set up a blog and post specials on it. That way you’ll get people subscribing to the blog’s feed as a way to find out whenever there’s a special offer. This way you can target people immediately. You can post on the blog at 10am about a lunch special for that day only and see the results of it by noon.
3. Drive people to the blog via your other forms of advertising. Make the blog your central marketing tool. In fact, you could make the blog your entire website.
4. Perform search engine optimization on your blog. Make sure it comes up when somebody types in “utah indian restaurant” or related phrases. Even better, get a top ranking for “utah restaurant” so that you can get people thinking about Indian cuisine who may previously not thought of it as an option.
Hey, Joshua –
Thanks for your thoughts. Next month’s ‘marketing from the masses’ will have the results from all the comments we got — mostly through email — and the Grand Prize Winner. :o)