In a highly competitive market, running a restaurant is challenging enough as it is. When a worldwide pandemic and other unforeseen economic factors come into play, it can really throw a wrench into the works.
Surviving and thriving during tough times hinges on getting people to patronize your establishment and spend their hard-earned money there. The best way to increase your customer base is through robust marketing strategies (don’t forget the awesome food and superb guest service, though).
Look no further than technology to pave the way for better restaurant marketing strategies and ways to generate more business while potentially increasing revenue. Text message marketing is ideal for increasing your business and obtaining more customers. Here are five benefits of using text message marketing at your restaurant.
Benefits of Text Messaging Marketing to Your Restaurant
#1: Increases Customer Spending
One of the key drivers of operating a business is making money. It isn’t just for the sake of profit, either. There are overhead costs, ingredients to acquire, the need for supplies, payroll, and other financial considerations that you worry about every day.
There are many different ways to generate revenue, including promotions and quality customer service. Increasing customer spending can lead to generating that much-needed revenue. So, how do you do it?
Start by building a “mailing list.” These are the customers who sign up for your promotions and texts. When sending these texts, you want to engage with recipients to give them a reason to choose you over the competition.
Text message marketing platforms handle most of this for you, allowing you to focus on content and understanding customer behavior. Better open rates and engagement with the right deals to match will lead to more spending in the long run.
#2: New Promotions Each Week
If there’s one thing that rings true about obtaining repeat customers, it’s giving them an extra reason to come to your establishment over somewhere else. Promotions and coupons are extremely useful for building brand loyalty and acquiring new customers.
With a text message marketing platform for restaurants, it’s easy to set up promotions, align them with your desired timetable, track their use/shares, and prevent redemption fraud, all from a single dashboard. You can see how well certain ones are doing and adjust your messaging as appropriate thanks to built-in analytical tools.
#3: Retain Subscribers
Building a subscriber base is only part of the challenge. You also have to retain them. It’s inevitable that you’ll shed subscribers over time. Sometimes you might experience customer churn, where customers stop patronizing your establishment entirely.
To prevent this, you need to engage your customers. Give them a reason to interact with your messages and click through them. Incorporate images, links, and video that appeals to them or makes them feel like they’re not a mere customer; they’re “part of the family.”
Adding a personal touch to your messaging is a great way to appeal to a wider variety of guests. With a good text message marketing platform, you can start small, build a database of first-party information, gain customers, and eventually see a higher number of return visitors over time.
#4: Make Online/To-Go Ordering Easier
Text messaging and having an app available to your guests can dramatically simplify the online/to-go ordering experience. You can even use text message marketing to leverage a few gains here by making it more viable for customers to use these services.
Perhaps it can be in the form of a discount or additional points for your loyalty program. Maybe it’s a message of a social media campaign to drive these kinds of sales. Whatever the case, you can use text message marketing to create a sense of urgency and potential fear of missing out that will drive business to your organization.
If a customer sees what they can get through your messages and sees a compelling reason to engage with it, they might be more tempted to actually patronize your restaurant. Another key to succeeding here is to use your analytics to send you messages at the optimal times when customers are more likely to visit you and try to focus on advertising something they’re likely to buy based on previous transactions and purchase history.
#5: Superb Returns
When it comes to marketing, who doesn’t want a great return on their investment? Getting the most out of your marketing plan means understanding where you’re gaining the best returns.
Summer marketing platforms offer another record that you can use to assess your marketing plan and make adjustments as needed. This way you can see how fast your messages are being checked, whether they’re being open at all, and what you need to ensure future messages get the job done.
All of this leads to assessing what your ROI will be at the conclusion of the marketing plan. On average, a solid marketing platform can help restaurants boost the return on marketing spend by 10% or more, but if you’re not paying attention and following the data, you won’t accomplish much at all in this regard.
