Running a food business will only be fruitful when you have a multitude of customers to sell to. And you may only attract more customers to your business if you are smart about your marketing strategies. There are multiple ways that you can tap into so that you have more customer footfall.
According to research conducted by US Foods, an American dines out 3 times a month on average, and they get food delivered even more frequently, at an average rate of about 4.5 times per month. It is your job to market your business to these fractions so that your business can contribute to these statistics as well!
I’ve been running a food business of my own, and I only started getting an ample amount of customers once I paid attention to marketing strategies. I thought I’d share my two cents with you, so keep reading to learn more about some effective marketing strategies that can help bring more customers to your food business.
Tap into Social Media Marketing
One of my favorite strategies is to put social media to good use. If there’s any place where your potential customers can find your business, it’s online. Therefore, it is high time that you make social media handles for your business on platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Business, X, TikTok, and so on.
You can create a community for your business where not only can customers find details on your business, but they can interact with each other as well because you will be surprised to know how effectively word of mouth works.
Also, you get the opportunity to channel your visual creativity by taking aesthetic and appealing pictures of your food products and then posting them online for your customers to see. However, do make sure that the images that you take are believable and don’t seem too edited. The closer to reality they are, the better.
Set Up an Online Ordering System
You can’t expect to have a lot of customers if you only opt for a dine-in system for your restaurant since a lot of people prefer ordering online and having food delivered rather than going to a restaurant to eat. Therefore, it is essential that you set up an online ordering system for your food business as well. An easy way to execute this is by creating a website for your food business.
Customers will browse through your food products and order them online. It’s as easy as that. That isn’t all that an online ordering system helps with; you may also set up an online table reservation system to save you some hassle and so that your customers can book a table well in time.
However, you will have to keep a sharp eye on the reservations to avoid any overlaps, since that can leave a bad impression on your business. You’ll have to monitor your website like a hawk, but it would only make sense to do so if you have a reliable internet connection to run your website on. My Xfinity Internet connection rarely lets me down with its reliable performance! It’s a great option to have public internet for my customers too whenever they visit.
Remember that running a successful website is crucial for your business. There are also some other things that you can do with your website besides taking online orders and reservations, such as adding a blog, which you’ll find out more about in the section ahead.
Start a Blog
Not only is a blog great for food promotion, but is an excellent strategy for brand awareness, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone! All you have to do is add a blog section to your website and write content that goes in line with your products.
For instance, if you have a seafood restaurant, you can add blog posts about the history of seafood or even some quirky recipes that can help you create unique dishes at home using seafood! Not only will this provide knowledge to your customers, but they will also be compelled to buy something from you!
Writing helpful blogs can also bring more credibility to your brand, especially in the niche that your business is following. They can also help your website from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective by increasing your search engine rankings and bringing more traffic.
Take Reviews and Testimonials
Having a review and testimonial section on your website can add another layer of credibility to your website. There are a lot of people out there who read reviews before they order something, which gives you all the more reason to add a section to your website.
You can add star ratings to your website and ask your customers to leave a review. These ratings and reviews can be added to the website to enhance credibility. You will be surprised to know that around 84% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as they would trust personal recommendations.
An Extra Tip
As a little bonus tip, you can also consider starting a loyalty program for your customers. For the ones that order regularly, offer them additional discounts and coupons so that they would be motivated to buy more from you. They can also put in a good word to the people around them, giving you the chance to increase your customers!