I get restaurant menus, flyers, and coupons in the mail quite regularly. Judging by their marketing efforts, I’m guessing most of these new venues won’t last more than six months. Typically, the places sending out flyers are nowhere near my apartment, or they’re priced too high, or they’re too generic to justify switching from my favorite establishments.

With this in mind, here are some things that every restaurant should do when sending out a mailer:

– Pick a sensible geographic area. It’s a waste of time and money to blanket the whole city with flyers, when your customers are likely to live within a few miles of the restaurant.

– Explain why people should give you a try. In today’s economy, people have finite restaurant budgets. So, trying a new restaurant probably means snubbing an old favorite. If your food is better or fresher or different, make that clear. If your atmosphere is nicer, throw in some pictures to prove it.

– Include a coupon or discount offer. Unless you’re Rick Bayless, simply announcing the new restaurant opening probably won’t attract enough customers to pay the bills. By providing a financial incentive to give the place a try, you’ll get a lot more customers in the door and help build word-of-mouth.

Granted, these tips still won’t help you overcome a bad location or bad food or an oversaturated market segment. But if you do have the basic ingredients for a successful business in place, telling people about it the right way should vastly increase your chance of success.