If you don't really know the answer to that question, you may be destined to waste a great deal of money over the next few years. Most restaurant operators spend large amounts of money each year on both advertising and marketing and often receive little or no measurable increase in profits. If you don't want to join the ranks of restaurants that seem to be making contributions to their local newspapers and radio stations rather than investing in building sales and profits, it would be good to understand the difference between advertising and marketing, and use them both to your best advantage.

An advertising campaign is a component of your overall marketing plan. An advertising campaign uses media to promote a specific product, idea, or an event in your restaurant over a finite time frame. Depending on your budget and your target market, an advertising campaign can be delivered to prospective customers using television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, the Internet, direct mail, e-mail, faxes, and probably some other media that I haven't thought to mention here.

Marketing on the other hand, is the total plan that you are using to promote your product and services. Advertising is part of your marketing plan, but advertising is only effective if the other facets of your marketing plan are in place. These other facets of marketing would include but are not limited to public relations, product quality, pricing, service, and the atmosphere in your restaurant.

If you focus on advertising but never take the time to do your marketing homework, you may find you are spending money with little long-term impact to your sales and profits. If you are lucky and your ads actually attract new business, you must be sure your product quality, pricing, service, and the atmosphere in your restaurant are right for your new guests or they won't come back a second time.

And, of course, if you focus on your product quality, pricing, service, and atmosphere but don't advertise how great you are, your sales and profits may stagnate. The industry is filled with stories of "great" restaurants who have gone out of business because they just weren't able to make a profit. In many cases these were simply very good restaurants that didn't realize that part of being a successful restaurant is advertising.

Advertising is the only really effective way you can communicate with your guests when they are not in your restaurant. The National Restaurant Association says that the average loyal customer in your restaurant visits you 4.3 times every year. How can you build a relationship with someone you only see once every three months? The answer is through your advertising. Send personalized messages to your guests on a regular basis and encourage them to come see you more often.

Then, track the responses to your advertising to be sure that all the advertising you are doing is effective and is building profits. Of course, you can measure profits based on a one- time response to your ad, or on the long-term profits you will make from the repeat business from this customer. So which should you measure?

I would like to encourage you to make sure that every visit you have from a customer is a profitable one, and I would measure the profit from the one-time response to your ad. This is the profit or return on investment from advertising. However, if you haven't done a good job on your marketing, they may not come back again.

Very few restaurants can remain profitable without a large core of loyal return customers. It is the profit from these return visits as well as the profit from their original visit that is the profit on marketing. This is your ultimate goal, to make your marketing and your restaurant very profitable.

To put together an effective plan that will take advantage of both marketing and advertising, follow these steps:

- Analyze your restaurant and your market; determine who your competitors are, what your market share is, and what the consumer perceptions are about your restaurant.

- Identify your primary and if applicable your secondary guest profile. Determine if there is a viable target market you have not yet penetrated.

- Identify your "unique selling proposition". Why would a customer want to visit your restaurant? What makes you better than your competitor down the street? It cannot be price! Someone can always beat your price. Offer unique service or unique products or a unique atmosphere and then make sure everyone knows about it.

- Analyze media channels available to you (include print, broadcast, mail, electronic, direct response, etc.), and their effectiveness and cost efficiency with regard to the target audience. My experience has been that in almost every instance the most profitable marketing is done through permission-based personalized direct mail, e-mail, or faxes.

- Develop copy and layouts, storyboards and scripts; that are consistent in branding your restaurant and generate desired profitable customer action with every ad.

- Test each add to prove "believe-ability", appeal, and clarity of the message before mass distribution.

- Track and analyze the impact of each advertising campaign in terms of profits, brand recall, message recall, market share increases, and the like.

- Instead of establishing a budget as a percentage of sales, do only profitable marketing and continue to do it as it continues to increase profits. Why would you stop?

Look around you. It's easy to tell which restaurants in your market understand the difference between advertising and marketing. They're busy and profitable. If fact, if you go in to check them out, you may even find out that the owner has taken the day off. Business is so good that he can afford a great support staff.