Before you launch another marketing campaign for restaurant-specific offers, riddle me this – what happens when offers begin to cost you more than they are worth? Promote your restaurant, bring in new customers, make the old ones happier and do it without losing a fortune.
As competition has risen significantly, restaurants often turn to discounts to attract customers, but it’s definitely not a sustainable strategy for growth. You may have an inaugural discount or offers during festive periods but running offers around the year can be detrimental to your business. Discounts being a prerequisite to acquire and retain customers is a myth many bigwigs in the restaurant industry still believe in. Let’s see what can be done to promote your restaurant without offering discounts:
Offer an Additional Quirk
Between 2014 and 2015 in the US, people bought 110 million more combo meals than the previous year. 62% of Indian football enthusiasts, as per an Ipos poll, were watching the FIFA World Cup 2018 at restaurants or bars. A study by North, Shilcock, and Hargreaves presents that customers spend more in a restaurant playing classical music than in ones that play pop or no music.
What does that tell you about marketing for restaurants?
Host Events
What’s a real crowd puller apart from discounts? Attract your diners with gig nights, stand up comedy performances, food tastings, DJ nights besides other events. If you call prominent artists or offer something out of the ordinary, you wouldn’t have to resort to discounts in order to get more business.
Seasonal Specials
In order to keep things interesting, you must add seasonal specials to your menu. For instance, in summers, restaurants curate special menus with mango being the essential ingredient. Similarly, you can have a special festive menu, a seasonal menu or introduce new dishes overtime.
Make Your Food & Space Instagrammable
There’s a great probability that an influencer or blogger may decide to pick your restaurant for their next meal just to jazz up their Instagram feed.
In order to achieve marketing through Instagram, you must be highly active through your own restaurants account and you must give your customers a reason to feature your restaurant on their feed. You can have an unusually plated dish, dry ice to make your drinks look mystical or delicious fusion dishes to catch people’s attention.
Keep Your Customers Happy
88% of diners are less likely to return to your restaurant if you leave the complaints on your social media pages unhandled. 95% of adults between 18 and 34 years are very likely to follow a brand via social media. And, by 2020, price and product will be replaced by customer experience as the key brand differentiators.
The point – when guests leave a review, work to make sure it’s a good one and invest in an unbiased feedback system. You must ensure that every complaint is taken care of and nobody leaves your restaurant unhappy.
Stop Offering Discount as an Incentive, Right Away
It’s more of a concluding argument; nevertheless, you must stop looking at the faces of price-slashing offers to get to new or old customers. Gradually, they’ll read into the pattern and wait for you to lower the prices before they put in the order.
Bad for business!
Instead, when you begin to invest in constructive ways of acquiring and retaining customers and offering them a content dining experience, you’ll condition them to believe in your service.
