Your business can gain golden insights about marketing and deep customer understanding from the US restaurant with the highest sales. No matter what business you’re in, Tao Las Vegas Restaurant and Club offers many delicious marketing and customer segmentation ideas.
According to BusinessWeek the Tao Las Vegas restaurant earned $59,292,345 in 2009 sales. That’s more than twice the $27 million earned by the then-closest runner up restaurant.
How did Tao do it? Here are the two aha marketing and strategy insights I got from reading about Tao’s rocket-ship success. Use these ideas to take a fresh look at your own customers and market!
1. Plan for success in your market by serving as many of the available customer segments as possible from day one. Tao Las Vegas restaurant is located adjacent to the Venetian hotel, typically known for hosting convention-goers during the week. Convention folks turn in pretty early and the restaurant could be empty by 10:00 p.m. every night. Not great for sales in a 7×24 town.
What marketing strategy did Tao develop to overcome this barrier? And more important–what can you do in your market to maximize customers and sales?
Appeal to the conventioneers, grandmas, celebrities and clubbers or (fill in the blank_____) group of customers in your market.
When they opened in 2005, Tao decided to go beyond the traditional Las Vegas customers (convention attendees) and market to and appeal to several customer segments. They worked to win sales from the whole universe of customers in the Las Vegas market. Not just the conventioneers.
- Tao developed long term relationships with top celebrities. Tao works big time with the celebrities needed by all savvy “hot” restaurants. (Like Kim Kardashian.)
- Then Tao attracts the traditional Las Vegas convention folks early in the evening.
- They use innovative marketing to reach out to—and retain—the young clubbing crowd for late nights/weekends and pricey bottles of vodka.
- Tao also appeals to “ladies that play nickel slots”. They eat in restaurants, too!
BusinessWeek’s Joel Stein quotes one of the partners in his article, “the A-list only comes for so long. So you better be nice to the grandmas and the babies.”
You can read the complete, juicy BusinessWeek Tao Las Vegas article written by Joel Stein. Just click here.
2. Continuously develop and execute innovative marketing strategies, techniques, and programs. In addition to using ‘celebrity-appearance marketing’ to build and retain customer interest, one of Tao’s other marketing strategies was a text messaging campaign.
According to the company that helped Tao with the text campaign, its database of 2,000 customers opted in to receive regular texts from the restaurant/club. Those opt-in customers led to increased sales and visits to the club. The online source for this text message campaign information is here.
To emphasize the importance of innovative marketing, veteran journalist Robin Leach interviewed Tao managing partner Jason Strauss in an interview posted Nov. 6, 2010.
“I think we just have a great brand that has come out of New York. We have a lot of history, and we have a management team that is plugged in every day. We created a culture that is one of the best in its class. We spend a lot of money on innovative marketing and service techniques that keep us relevant throughout the year.”
Source: Vegas Deluxe, Luxe Life blog, to read the complete interview click here.
I hope your head is swimming with ideas for taking a deep look at your market and your customers. Which new types of customers can you appeal to, market to and win over?
Photos purchased from istock.
Great post. This is important for any business. Know who you are marketing to.