Marketing

restaurant marketing tips

5 Quick and Easy Restaurant Marketing Tips

Leave a Comment / Restaurant Marketing / By

Whether you are new to the restaurant business, or you have been in the field for years, there is no getting around the fact that you need to have good marketing if you hope to succeed. Word of mouth can still be powerful, but you need to make sure you have a strong online presence. In fact, even much of the word of mouth marketing happens online today via reviews and your customers talking about how much they liked your restaurant on social media. It has a huge influence.

The following are some simple and effective tips that will help you increase visibility for your restaurant so you can start getting more customers.

1. Geotargeted Advertisements

When you are marketing your restaurant, you need to think locally. Utilizing geo-targeted ads is a fantastic idea. It can help you to save some money, as your ads will only be shown in the cities and geographic areas that you choose. Since most people are looking for food near where they live or where they are vacationing, this ensures that you have the right potential customers looking at your ad. After all, if you have a restaurant in Tucson, you do not want to have your ads running for people in Bangor.

You can use geotargeted ads through many of the advertising services available today including Facebook, Twitter, and Google AdWords.

2. Utilizing Yelp

Set up an account for your business on Yelp. This is a highly popular site that many people frequent when they want to learn more about what a restaurant can offer. You want to add your location, the menu, the price range, photos, hours, and any other features of your restaurant that customers would appreciate knowing before they arrive.

If you respond to reviews on Yelp, whether they are positive or negative, you need to maintain a positive, professional, and nonconfrontational stance. If a customer has a legitimate complaint, see what you can do to make it right.

3. Consider a Loyalty Program

While this might not work for all restaurants, it can be a good option for many. Loyalty programs are a fantastic way to get your customers to keep coming back for more. It is also simple to implement. You can simply print up some cards that you stamp whenever the customer comes in and makes a purchase. After a certain number of purchases, they can receive a discount or a free item. Plenty of places have had success with this including sandwich chains and coffee chains. It can work for you, as well.

4. Social Media Marketing

Social media is important for all types of businesses today, including those in the food industry. You should have a strong presence on the most popular sites, including Twitter and Facebook. Utilize other social media sites, such as Pinterest and Instagram, as well. You can upload photos of your restaurant, your food, and more to help capture the interest of people on those sites, who can then share the information and talk about your restaurant. This is the digital word of mouth marketing mentioned earlier.

5. Great Photos and a Great Website

Most people are going to want to check out your website before they come to the restaurant. It will give them a better idea of what they can expect when they arrive. If you don’t have a website up and running yet, you are behind the pack. If you do have a website, you need to make sure it is fully functional and that it provides the visitors with a good experience. It should be easy to navigate, have a good layout, and all the necessary information about your eatery. This includes a menu and photos of your restaurant and your food. It is a massive part of your marketing today, and you can’t do without one. It doesn’t matter if you are a large restaurant or a small food truck. Want to set your restaurant apart from the crowd, offer online ordering on your site! This is not only convenient for your customers, but lets you save time/money not answering calls & also your customers don’t have to resort to the food portals to order from you through the food ordering portals.

Marketing is one of the aspects of your business that will continue to evolve, and you need to continually look for new and effective ideas to use. Start improving your marketing today.

Tips to Help Increase Your Restaurant Sales

Leave a Comment / Restaurant Management, Restaurant Marketing / By

The goal of any business is to increase sales, but it can sometimes feel as though your restaurant business is stagnating. You might not be losing sales, but you aren’t doing anything to get ahead, either. It is time to work on some different tactics and strategies that can help you improve your profits and surge ahead of the competition. Fortunately, many of these tips are relatively easy to implement. The following tips have the potential to help you increase your sales.

Learning to Upsell

The upsell has been an important part of the restaurant business, and any business for that matter, for ages. However, you’ve probably been to plenty of restaurants where they never even bother with upselling. This is something you need to teach your staff. Upselling can increase the average ticket amount by up to 10% in many cases, and it is simple enough to do.

They simply need to ask the customers if they would like to try any appetizers, or if they would like a dessert or some coffee after the meal. They could let the customers know about other additions that they could get for the meal, such as extra fries, as well. Every little bit helps, and an additional five to 10% on even a fraction of the tickets can make a difference. You might want to give your servers an incentive to help them with upselling, such as a prize for those who have the most upsells in a month.

Do You Offer Online Ordering?

Do you have online ordering available for your customers yet? If you don’t, you could me missing out on a huge opportunity. Many people would like to get food from your restaurant, but they do not have the time to get out. They might be working, they might be at home and simply don’t want to go out for dinner, but they would still like to pick up some great food.

By offering online ordering for pick up, as well as delivery if possible, you can reach a large group of consumers. It is easy to get set up with a site such as 247waiter, which takes care of much of the work for you.

The average amount ordered online tends to be larger than what is ordered in the restaurant. In addition, those who order from you once are very likely to order again, if they had a good experience the first time. This can help to increase your sales without bringing more people into the restaurant. It is a fantastic way to increase your sales without needing to expand your business.

Are You Mobile Ready?

When people are looking for a place to eat today, many will simply pull out their phones and start searching the area for nearby restaurants. You want your establishment to have a good mobile presence. This means you need to have a site that is easy to navigate through phones and tablets. It should be simple for the users to find your address, to search through your menu, and even to call you if needed for reservations or to check the hours. In addition, you should be active on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as this can help you to reach even more potential customers.

Offer Catering, Parties, and More

Another way that you can increase your restaurant sales is to offer catering. You could make the food at your restaurant and then have the customers pick it up, or you could provide full catering services. In addition, you might want to host parties, events, and the like at your restaurant. If you have a separate room that could be used for these events, even better. Offering these services is a good way to increase your business, as you can host all different types of functions including birthday parties, anniversaries, office parties, meetings, and more.

Offer New and Exciting Dishes and Drinks and Promote Them

By adding some new and interesting items to the menu occasionally, it can help to breathe some life into your business when things seem like they are stagnating. While the old tried and true items on the menu might never leave, that does not mean you can’t be creative. In fact, you should be creative and start to add new items, including food and drinks. You might want to have holiday specials or seasonal dishes that you can promote, as well. With some great descriptions and photos, and the right marketing push, it can help to bring more customers into your restaurant.

Have a Special Event at the Restaurant

Consider some of the different types of special events that might work well for your establishment. Perhaps you could have a live musician come in once a week, or on the weekends, to entertain your guests. Maybe you could have a karaoke night, or a half price drinks night. Depending on the type of restaurant or bar you run, there are plenty of interesting options that could work well for you. Think outside of the box and make it memorable.

Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is a fantastic way to increase your sales. For example, a reward card that requires ten purchases for one free item means that a customer needs to come to your eatery and order ten times. The more customers who are a part of this program, the greater the chance of return visits. This can substantially increase your sales, and you have nothing to lose. Even with the cost of the free item, you will more than make up for it with those other ten sales!

Increase the Prices

Finally, you can increase the prices. However, you should only increase them a small amount. You want to make a profit and increase your sales, but you do not want to gouge your customers.

With these tips, you can increase your restaurant sales, and it is easier than you might have thought. Always keep an eye out for other cost effective ways that you can boost your sales.

High-Tech Restaurant Marketing

Leave a Comment / Restaurant Marketing / By

If any business wants to remain relevant and profitable there is a need to understand that the customer is the most important part of the whole equation. Without customers, there is no business! Therefore it is vital keep your customers happy.

A restaurant or any other business cannot continue with the most basic of operations without customers. In order to bring customers into a restaurant, marketing is vital and not just any kind of marketing but targeted marketing. Most restaurants fail with their marketing because of the way they go about doing it.

Restaurants are known to mail out their menus blindly to zip codes or go around dropping them off in neighborhoods and businesses. They don’t know how effective this is or whether those people are even interested in their type of food. The result of this is lots of energy & money wasted on marketing that doesn’t help the restaurant at all.

For a restaurant that has been in business for a while there are a signification amount of their business from repeat customers. Some of these restaurants fail to take advantage of targeting these existing customers in their marketing and instead spend all their resources in finding new ones. In any business, it is cheaper to market to your existing customers compared with finding new ones.

An advantage of marketing to existing restaurant customers is that they already approve of your food, so when marketing you just have to give them an enticing offer to bring them back for more. Customers become loyal when they see how they are valued and appreciated; on top of that, a satisfied customer will spread the word about the restaurant and soon enough, new customers will come as well.

Marketing to existing customers becomes a lot easier by embracing technology. Restaurant managers need to understand that if they use an online ordering system and over time build a list of their customers then they can start marketing directly to those customers through mail and email. 247Waiter’s online ordering software gives restaurants access to all their customers’ data which means you can market to them directly. For more information, click on the links above to see other features of our restaurant online ordering platform.

Benefits of an Online Ordering System

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Online Ordering is one of the newest phenomenons to sweep the restaurant industry and is quickly taking over take-out. With all the benefits associated with this process, it’s a wonder that more restaurants have not already implemented online ordering in their restaurant business. This process has revolutionized the way customers can get food to go, and has made ordering hassles a thing of the past. While traditional takeout methods have stood the test of time, everything changes and restaurants that want to keep up with demand, convenience and customer satisfaction need to consider an online ordering system to keep their business up to the standards of competition.

Online ordering eliminates many problems faced by traditional call-in orders. Many times customers are hard to understand, have an accent, or just simply a bad connection. Special instructions can be left out or unclear. Mix-ups and misunderstandings can lead to orders completed incorrectly that leave customers dissatisfied with their take out experience. Since customer satisfaction is the key to repeat business, repeated mistakes can cripple a business’ profits. Online ordering is a clearer, easier way for customers to place their orders to their own specifications, which are then transmitted directly to your restaurant as they are ordered.

See below an order submitted to the restaurant with special instructions:

special-instructions

An online ordering system not only eliminates misunderstandings, but it makes the ordering process much simpler for the customer as well. By having the ability to look at the menu and make their selections, they no longer need to ask what’s available, what side choices are options, or whether or not your restaurant carries a certain product. Customers are free to peruse the menu for as long as necessary before placing their order without tying up valuable time on the phone with one of your employees. Customers can order quickly and efficiently, which means they have to wait less time for their food to be ready. No one likes waiting, although it is a fact of life. Online ordering gives customers the convenience of ordering their meal from home, then driving to the restaurant to pick it up at the scheduled time, with as little waiting as possible.

An example of categories & specials, customers make decision on their own:

categories-and-specials

In addition to customer simplicity, the process of ordering food to go is much more efficient for the business as well. Without needing to spend a large amount of time on the phone answering questions, waiting for answers to options and delays while customers decide, employees can focus on other tasks, like preparing food, seating dine-in customers and ensuring that the service is up to previously determined standards. Having a menu online also makes up-selling an easy and efficient process that no longer relies on one of your employee’s time and effort. By laying everything out in an online menu, customers are easily able to see all the products and options available, and are more likely to purchase.

Options and up-selling:

upselling

There is definitely a reason that more and more restaurants are turning Online ordering to better serve their customers. Many customers would rather order online at their convenience than have to place an order on the phone, and many will gravitate towards businesses that provide this extra convenience in order to ensure their order is correct, quick and delicious. While many chains have already jumped on the online ordering bandwagon, it is predicted that many more will join them in the coming years. The word is out, and customers enjoy the convenience and ease of ordering that was previously missing in the take-out process.

 

Facebook and Restaurant Marketing

Leave a Comment / Restaurant Marketing, Social Media Marketing / By

Social media, specifically Facebook, is a common way to get your business’ name out to the public. There are many benefits for a restaurant having its own Facebook page. All restaurants should have a Facebook page. A Facebook page allows customers and potential customers to get updates on special promotions and events at the restaurant. In addition, it’s also a great way to share menu updates and job opportunities. Making a Facebook page for your restaurant is free and does not need much time to get it up and running. The benefits & rewards gained from having a Facebook page you’re your restaurant is well worth the few minutes invested in getting one up and running.

When creating your Facebook page, make sure to add your restaurants essentials such as business hours, phone numbers, address (any specific directions) and menu information along with specials and customer favorites or special dishes. You shouldn’t add any personal information such as your home address/personal phone numbers or any other personal info that might be misused. It’s also a great idea to add pictures of your menu items and restaurant on your Facebook page. Let customers see & feel the environment and “taste” the food before they come. This will not only encourage them to visit, but visit more often.

People spend a great deal of time on Facebook. Hours are spent searching for people, updates, events and potential deals. People stumbling onto your restaurant page could mean potentially more business for your restaurant. Having a Facebook page for your restaurant is also great for people who use the “check-in” option. Customers visiting your restaurant can “check-in” and add reviews and along with other people with them. The reviews and “check-ins” will show up on both your Facebook and theirs which allows their connections & friends becoming aware of your restaurant.

Special events or promotions, new menu introductions can be displayed on your page’s wall. Your wall is a place to communicate to your customers and also get their feedback.  When you first make your Facebook page, it’s a good idea to promote it. Add it to your business cards; put a sign on the wall at your restaurant to let customers know you are now on Facebook.