The website dedicated to the success of takeaway restaurants
Welcome to the Market Your Takeaway blog, a site dedicated to helping you get the best out of your takeaway by increasing orders, customers and so making more money.
Time to Party!
Let’s discuss parties! The festive season seems like a good time to do this. But like dogs, parties aren’t just for Christmas. Parties bring in lots of customers, of course, but here I want to talk about how to market parties for the maximum benefit of your restaurant. Parties make you happy Parties are very [...]
On Holidays
The country is on its Summer holidays at the moment. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your restaurant is closed. But you may be finding it a quiet time of the year as the students move out and as families are away or having more picnics and barbecues in the fine weather. Families have more time on their hands right now so let’s take a moment to work out how we can entice them to your restaurant.
Restaurant Marketing: Strategy and tactics
If you are going to use outsourced restaurant marketing, make sure it is a system that is builds your brand – and only your brand – and creates the most value from your customers by developing a direct relationship between them and your restaurant.
The Marketing Whole
What marketing works best? Is it advertising on the Internet? Emailing your customers about your restaurant? Your Facebook page? Distributing your menu in the neighbourhood? Your shopfront? Your website? Your loyalty club? And don’t forget the menu itself? The answer is all of these things. And that’s because marketing never works in isolation. Every thing [...]
It’s a Goldmine!
0Customers sign up to your restaurant’s Gold Club to take advantage of your marketing promotions. As Gold Club members they feel valued. But your Club is pure gold for you too. Let’s take a moment to mine this rich seam.
What is your Gold Club?
Your Gold Club is a reward programme available to registered members. Regular customers get loyalty points for each online order or booking that they make. Your Gold Club is where members go to redeem any promotions you wish to run.
Why your Gold Club is so valuable to you
Your Gold Club gets customers to return and spend more. Indeed, it gets them to come in the first place. Quite simply, the more members you have, the more marketing you can do .
For example, once a week you can email your members to tell them about your restaurant or takeaway. Sometimes there’s an offer, if you are running one. Each email contains a link to your online ordering and booking page. Gold club members clicking those links add about 7% to your turnover. But the value of the emails is much greater than this. Many customers don’t click the link but go direct to the ordering page. They also order or book later. The purpose is to get them to think of you first when they want a meal.
Here’s more Gold Club value: members spend about 7% more than non-members. And they come more often. Each Gold Club member is worth another £90 or so of repeat sales each year. Get a hundred or more Gold Club members and that adds up to an extra £10 000 of business a year. Not bad.
Mine that gold
Your Gold Club is a business generating machine. Consider this. If a hundred or so Gold Club members get you £10 000 of extra business, what will 200 members get you? Or 300? Think of members clicking all those emails, leading to more orders and bookings. Think about members spending 7% more than non-members.
It’s all about the numbers. As owner and manager you can take a few simple steps to recruit members to your Gold Club. It will give your restaurant’s business a huge boost. Here’s a summary:
- Recruit all customers as members, no matter where they came from – off the street, phone bookings or via online services such as Just Eat, Toptable
- Train your staff to mention your Gold Club to your customers
- Set up a registration promotion
- Just one website for your restaurant. Everyone goes through your Gold Club.
- Promote your website address on your menu and in your restaurant
So, are you getting the most from your Gold Club?
Time to Party!
0Let’s discuss parties! The festive season seems like a good time to do this. But like dogs, parties aren’t just for Christmas. Parties bring in lots of customers, of course, but here I want to talk about how to market parties for the maximum benefit of your restaurant.
Parties make you happy
Parties are very profitable. You get a lot of people into your restaurant and more diners’ means more total profit. Bigger groups are cheaper to service per diner – one order, one service, several repeat dishes – so profits per diner are also bigger. Parties happen in addition to your regular diners, so you get more customers. In short, parties are happy events. You want more of them.
Market parties to your regulars
Regular customers who know and love your restaurant are most likely to book parties and bring in other diners. When customers join your Gold Club or loyalty programme, make sure to ask them for their birthday so that you have their permission to email them about coming to your restaurant for their birthday. This is a great opportunity for you to tell them about your restaurant. Make sure to email your Gold Club members about any other party times such as Christmas, office parties, stag and hen parties, or sporting events taking place near your restaurant. In addition to email however, you should also promote your party packages on the Internet and your Facebook page.
Market your restaurant to your party go-ers
Parties consist of all kinds of people, many of whom won’t have been to your restaurant before. If they enjoy the occasion they will want to come back. Now is a good time to get them to become regulars by joining your Gold Club.
Hot Tip: You may want to distirbute promotional cards at your parties so that your new customers have a reason to join your Gold Club.
All the best for the holiday season.
What’s going on?
0Why do people come to your restaurant or takeaway? It’s not simply because they are hungry. They have plenty of choices for their meal tonight: other restaurants; supermarket ready meals; cook for themselves. Several of these options are likely to be cheaper than you. And if they’re not, they should be, but that’s a topic for another day.
Why people choose you is a question I often talk about, but a key reason is a simple one: customers like you and they like your personal touch. Job interviews often have a dreaded question, “Tell me about yourself”. The fact is, most of us hate talking about ourselves. But telling customers about your restaurant is one of the most effective forms of marketing you can do.
Tell them about it!
As I said, customers like you. Being human, they also want to know what’s going on. They are interested in hearing news about your restaurant. Restaurants are busy places with lots happening. If you tell customers what’s new and exciting at the restaurant, they will have another reason to come more often!
You have a new menu: point out some of the new dishes. You are closed for a refurbishment: Drop them an email to tell you have re-opened. They may not have noticed you were closed, but it doesn’t matter. It’s nice to be remembered and just getting the email may prompt a visit. Have you been back to your home country? People will be interested in hearing a short report – believe me! Staff member got married. You get a favourable review in a catering magazine. These are all newsworthy items.
Let’s celebrate!
As well as news that just happens, you can create your own events. These can be theme nights: Elvis nights, regional cuisine gala dinners, karaoke, midweek specials, early bird. Events create excitement which you can build on in your conversations with your customers.
Talk to your customers
Send out emails to your Gold Club members telling them about your events and major news items. And by the way, remember to keep recruiting customers to your restaurant’s Gold Club. This is when you will reap the benefit of more people to market to.
Facebook is also a great place to keep customers abreast of all your news and everyday events. Simply go to your Facebook page on a regular basis and add your short news items. If you don’t have a Facebook page, get one! If you need help, I have created a guide with step by step instructions for setting up a Facebook account. Send me a note if you would like a copy. To get the most out of it, you should update your Facebook page regularly with the latest news about your restaurant. It’s all really easy to do.
Sustainable Marketing
0Jessie, owner of Posie’s café explains on her blog: “ Today one of our most loyal customers, Lucinda, came in and asked if she could use her Groupon that had expired the day before. I felt terrible, but I had to say no. She came to tell me later that she was really disappointed and that she never wanted to come back. I explained to Lucinda, and now to all of you, how Groupon works for businesses, and why it has been the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner…”
Jessie made the mistake of starting a promotion that could never make her money. The more business she got through the promotion the more money she lost. She ended up counting the days until the expiry date so she could pull the promotion .It’s too easy to make this kind of mistake. Let’s take a moment to discuss the right kind of marketing: sustainable marketing.
What is sustainable marketing?
Sustainable marketing contributes to your long term business value. Sustainable marketing pays for itself from first use. Sustainable marketing concentrates on getting customers to come to your restaurant in the first place and then keep returning. Sustainable marketing is not so interested in one off orders. Sustainable marketing builds your brand because that’s where the value of your business lies.
Tactical marketing
Another kind of marketing is tactical marketing. This picks up orders and bookings where it finds them. Groupon mentioned above is an example of tactical marketing. There’s nothing actually wrong with tactics: restaurant goers tend to be opportunistic and we need to find customers where we can. However, do make sure that your tactical marketing pays for itself first time, as there likely won’t be a second time. Second, put your main effort into switching these orders into long term customers – ie your sustainable marketing. This is where a sustainable marketing system in your restaurant or takeaway comes in.
What does sustainable marketing look like?
It is devoted to increasing your business value. It promotes your brand and your restaurant whether they order online, book by phone or come off the street. It gets customers to return again and again through email and Facebook.
How to convert tactical orders to sustainable customers
Very simple: point your customers towards your loyalty programme or Gold Club. Whether they have come off the street, via Groupon or Just Eat for example, they will benefit from the one-off registration promotion. This encourages them to return and we now have their details to continue marketing to them.
On Holidays
6The country is on its Summer holidays at the moment. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your restaurant is closed. But you may be finding it a quiet time of the year as the students move out and as families are away or having more picnics and barbecues in the fine weather. Families have more time on their hands right now so let’s take a moment to work out how we can entice them to your restaurant. (more…)
