As a restaurant owner, attracting customers can be the most challenging task. Even the best food venues with the lowest prices find difficulty in filling all the tables on a cold and wet evening. If you are looking for ideas to attract more customers to your restaurant, here are some affordable marketing tips that all types of restaurants can implement in their marketing strategy.
Packages for Local Businesses
Many Local businesses organize events and for that, they may require catering. If you are a restaurant owner, you may have the expertise to provide great food on these events. Corporate catering can be a great way to enhance your bottom line.Most of the restaurants that provide catering services have certain offerings that they provide and you can be more flexible in providing such services when you have sources. You can offer different packages to these businesses including buffet-style food selections or pre-prepared food.
Before you offer catering services for these businesses, you need to consider a few things such as do you need to buy extra equipment like utensils, portable cooking equipment, packaging equipment, etc. Do you have sufficient area where you will prepare food or will you prepare it on-site? Will you be providing staff to help serve during the event?
Some examples of restaurants that provide packages to local businesses:
Subway
It provides sandwich platters that consist of mini sandwiches so that businesses can share it at their lunch or meetings. It is a perfect idea as catered food is the same, the food is cut smaller than what is served in the Subway outlet. Hence, the outlets don’t need extra work to deliver the food on these events.Buca di Beppo
It provides special catering services along with a full menu. Also, the restaurant goes the extra mile by offering to provide napkins, utensils, and plates.Meejana
It provides various catering options including sandwiches and buffets. This makes the services of the restaurant suitable for different types of events.Run Attractive Promotions
Promotions can be a great idea to attract customers to your restaurant. These offers can be used in various ways and help increase the footfall on days that are quite otherwise. This also helps you generate extra revenue for your restaurant.Take benefits of events or holidays, offer special menu or meals at events like Mother’s Day, Valentines’ Day, and other special occasions. Using some type of loyalty card by using a digital punch card app to provide special deals to loyal customers can be another way to promote the business of your restaurant.
Offer promotions to customers who share their reviews and feedback on social media. In this way, your restaurant will also get publicity on social media sites. Also, promote new items or meals on your menu. It will create excitement in the mind of the customer for your restaurant. If you offer an SMS discount on new items, it is more likely that people will try them.
Communicate with the Customers
To get more customers into your restaurant, you need to give an enjoyable experience to them. To ensure this, always openly speak with your customers to know about their disliking and liking about the restaurant.Post your links on social media sites and encourage your customers to participate in the survey and offer benefits who complete it. Ask your restaurant staff to create a note of compliments and complaints of the customers and try to resolve their issues, if any.
Track reviews of the customers, it helps you know what they say about your restaurant on social media sites. Always try to communicate with the customers who come to your restaurant. All the people may not be interested to talk, but you can ask them if they want to. Place some comment books or suggestion boxes to collect feedback from the customers.
Put Events to Attract More Customers
Another good option to attract more customers to your restaurant via doors is organizing events. Give your customers an extra element to experience eating out. Customers get excited about the events and it can help with marketing and spreading the name of your restaurant. It can drive more customers to your restaurant even on non-event days. Some of the event ideas are explained below:
Entertainment: Live comedy, sporting events, live music, movie nights, board games, quizzes, and a performance of a celebrity guest
Food experiences: Wine tasting, food and beer pairing, regional food nights, and guest chefs. Chinese restaurants can organize an event focusing on cuisine, vegan night, cheese, and wine night.
Get Media Coverage
Getting media coverage is another way to create excitement for your restaurant. Invite different social media influencers or local media outlets to the opening of your restaurant to encourage press coverage. But it may not be a great idea to just invite them to your opening. To make it more successful, you can combine it with an interesting menu or promote the additional feature of your restaurant. Invite some celebrities to your restaurant in the press coverage. Community events can be another great way to get media coverage and hence, generate more publicity for your restaurant.
The above tips can help get more customers to your restaurant. These tips can enhance brand value as well as your revenue. Use these tips in your SMS marketing strategy and promote your business on social sites.
