Every restaurant has days of the week and times of the day where there are lulls and while most restaurateurs will shrug this off as “just part of being a restaurant owner” there are some steps you can take to reduce the number of quiet times you have. Firstly, considering the hype around social media, it is equally important to mark your presence online. For this, you can reach out to a Restaurant Website Design Company such as Gourmet Marketing to build up your own online community of customers. We all search for things online nowadays and therefore if your restaurant does not have a website or a social media presence there is a chance that you could be missing out on potential customers. For now though, let us discuss a few key marketing ideas that all restaurateurs need to know.
5 Restaurant Marketing Tips to Get Customers When You Need Them
These tips for restaurant marketing work great to increase orders in the short term. In addition, we’ll share some fantastic ways to grow long-term business at the end of this post.
- Focus on Existing Customers
Most restaurant owners (as with most business owners in general) tend to focus most of their attention on getting new customers when in fact your greatest source of revenue exists with customers who have already experienced your restaurant.
They already know your menu, how well your wait staff treat them and what to expect – this is a massive advantage that any owner can use to create more revenue.
Counter popular belief “new” is scary to customers – people prefer what’s familiar.
Step 1: Get yourself an online SMS account.
Step 2: Collect the mobile numbers of your existing customers
Step 3: Create a promotional calendar for offers that you can promote on your slow days to get people in.
- Build Up Your Front End
While you’re driving new bookings from your existing customers you also want to make sure that you’re bringing in fresh new customers by using text in offers.
For example: text FREEVINO to 123456 and get a free glass of house red wine with your meal.
This can be done very easily with text messaging, all you need to do is have an amazing offer that you attach to your existing marketing efforts.
For example, if you’re running flyers, local newspaper ads, etc. add your text in offer to these channels.
Also, make use of your existing real estate, add this text-in code to your sandwich board, windows, outdoor menu, social media posts, etc.
- Be Consistent
People have very short memories, you need to be proactive with your promotions. Create a promotional calendar and keep to it.
- Test different promotions
- Create promotions that target specific demographics
- Text different times of the day
- Schedule these campaigns in advance so you don’t need to think about it and make sure your staff are aware of what promos are dropping when
- Use “National Food Holidays” to Drum Up Excitement
Leverage existing food days and come up with interesting ideas to get people to come in. Hold wine tasting for National Pino Grigio day and make sure you have a menu that pairs well with those wines for example.
- Be Preemptive
People generally have no idea what they’re going to have for lunch or dinner so be the person who has these ideas already sorted out for them.
Send out text messages with lunch and meal ideas from your restaurant.
- Combine Social Media
Food works amazingly well on social media because it is highly visual so post up delicious looking meals on social media and make sure you reach more people by boosting those posts and don’t forget to add your text-in promotion to turn those views into new customers.
