If your restaurant is currently offering food delivery online or is planning to in the near future, this article explains how you can use the best tried and tested marketing strategies to get the word out.
Why Spend Time & Money to Drive Online Orders?
Making the decision to enter the food delivery business and then having to figure out how to improve sales isn’t always an easy task.
However, food delivery can be a very lucrative income stream for restaurants. Which is why restaurant owners and managers should work to better understand which marketing strategies drive the most direct online orders. Figuring out the new trends in restaurant industry, and the best way to promote a food delivery service.
Create an Offer They Can’t Refuse
The very first thing you need to do is create a special offer for online food ordering. Depending on the platform used for promoting your service, you may have to alter your offer.
Here are some promos that work very well:
- Loyalty club
- Bundle deals
- Discount on orders over a certain dollar amount
- Discount codes
- Buy-one-get-one (BOGO)
6 Ways to Boost Your Restaurant’s Online Food Sales
With your promotion in hand, consider how it (they) can be used with the following online food delivery marketing strategies.
#1 Your Website
When promoting online food ordering on your restaurant’s website, the key is making sure everyone sees the offer, regardless of the page the visitor is on. Do this by adding a brightly colored or highly contrasting banner to the top of your website.
Make the top-fold of your homepage a call-to-action that directs visitors to your food ordering system.
Your call-to-action needs to feature your offer as the headline, accompanied by a big button that reads, “Order Online.”
Create a new webpage that features your promotion. This page needs to explain the deal, any caveats associated with it, and why people want it.
In order to add more depth to the page, and to boost your page’s ad quality score, discuss popular menu items, share customer reviews, and provide a map with driving directions.
#2 Third-Party Online Food Ordering Apps
Although third-party ordering apps, like UberEats, GrubHub, DoorDash, Postmates, and others, charge significant fees for using their service, they’re still a great way to drive new customers to your website for future direct orders.
Many restaurants are forced to charge more when customers order from one of the aforementioned food apps. It makes sense that loyal customers would want to pay less by ordering directly from your website, which is why you should educate them to order directly from your website next time.
One surefire way to get more of your newfound customers to order directly from you is to include a flyer, or full menu leaflet, to each order you fill.
The messaging can be direct, alerting people to a specific offer, or more generalized by instructing customers to go to your website to, “get the daily deal,” “save money on your next order,” “get free delivery,” etc.
You can also leverage many of the third-party delivery apps listed above by running paid promotions, leading to additional customer acquisition opportunities.
#3 Social Media
Start by updating your company’s header image across your major channels with one that features your special offer for online orders.
Then, remind followers about your new online ordering system and promotion three to five times per week via sha#online ordering pillarring updates.
To make social media really work for your restaurant, set up a paid advertising campaign. With paid ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitter, you can:
- Target audiences with pin-point accuracy
- Reach new audiences in your geographical area
- Send qualified visitors to your website
Many social media platforms allow you to add an ordering link and run campaigns specifically designed for food orders.
#4 Google Ads
If there’s one thing Google is good at, other than being the world’s largest search engine, it’s delivering highly-targeted, low-cost ads for their advertising partners.
At this point, you should already have a landing page on your website that features your online ordering service, and the offer you came up with, encouraging customers to place their orders online.
With paid ads on Google’s search network, you can:
- Target hungry people looking for restaurants in your area.
- Bid on terms with strong search intent and high profit potential.
- Set specific times throughout the day for your restaurant ads to be shown.
- Increase your restaurant’s exposure by using ad extensions.
Run remarketing ads at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).
#5 Email
If you have a list of customer’s email addresses or phone numbers (below), use them! If not, it’s time to start growing your list(s).
Fortunately, emails and phone numbers can be collected at checkout (online). They can also be collected via form on your website and the rate at which people voluntarily offer up their personal information can be greatly increased with the use of a special offer.
When it comes to email marketing, Mailchimp and Constant Contact do it better than most, thanks to their suites of useful tools.
#6 Texting (SMS)
Use the aforementioned tips for building your phone number list and be sure to get those digits, as SMS marketing is one of the, if not thee, most effective on this list.
If you’re wondering why texting is so effective, consider that text messages have a 99 percent open rate and 97 percent of texts are read within 15 minutes of being sent.
Furthermore, 75 percent, or more, of your customers want to receive deals via text.
The frequency at which you send texts and emails should be tested.
Different types of restaurants may get away with more frequent notifications than others. Start with one or two a week, then, with all things created equally, try sending more or fewer and see if there’s a noticeable difference.
When it comes to text message marketing, give TextMagic, SimpleTexting, or Sakari a try. Each makes text message marketing very affordable and straightforward.
Resource Links:
https://www.sba.gov/blog/what-call-action-why-do-you-need-one-your-website
https://ads.google.com/intl/en_sg/home/resources/improve-quality-score/
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2393094
https://www.wordstream.com/google-remarketing
https://zapier.com/blog/best-sms-app/
https://techjury.net/blog/sms-marketing-statistics
https://www.redeye.com/resources/sms-marketing-vs-email-marketing-who-wins-the-battle-for-effectiveness/
