We have arrived at the final stop on this veritable journey into the world of marketing for restaurants. Over the last few posts, we’ve enjoyed highlighting a few practical strategies that every restaurant owner should consider employing. While it might not be reasonable for each restaurant to go about tackling each of these recommendations in a month’s time, pick a few that sound doable and stick with them. The last thing you want to do is spread yourself too thin — employing a wide range of marketing techniques you are thrilled about in the first couple of weeks, only to not follow through on any of them because you got busy or they became more difficult than you imagined. That’s just a waste of money and time. So, pick a couple and stick with them for a while; don’t bite off more than you can chew.
Online Orders For Local Restaurants
If there was one takeaway from this blog series that you wouldn’t soon forget about, we hope it would be that Online Orders Now provides robust online ordering software for local restaurants. We’ve covered a wide range of strategies in our summer series on beating the “slump months,” but one of the easiest and most effective measures you can take is to implement an online ordering system for mobile orders. When you do so with Online Orders Now, we’ll design you a new website, create a mobile app, offer simple yet powerful ordering interface, offer exclusive features like “My Way,” and do something that no one else in our industry does; offer you a $20,000 Additional Revenue Guarantee! Trust us when we say it’s worth your time to look into our mobile ordering system for restaurants. Every product and feature we offer is intended to improve the efficiency and accuracy of your processes while increasing your overall profits.
Who wouldn’t be a fan of that? Learn more about our online ordering software at your convenience. Now, let’s dive into the meat and potatoes of today’s post!
Source Local
This is an approach we’ll warrant that not every restaurant will be able to employ. It might not be in your budget or it might simply be impossible given the kind of food you offer. However, it’s worth thinking about if you think it’s within your means. A great way to separate yourself from the pack is to source local ingredients. This will naturally, if not organically (sorry we aren’t sorry for the puns), cast your restaurant in a positive light with a significant proportion of the community. And for good reason too; keeping the cash flow local has obvious economic benefits! So certainly consider this option if you can budget for it.
An Attractive, Dynamic Menu
Long gone are the days where you can upload a photo of your restaurant’s menu and throw a PDF of it on your HTML website. We are at the point where you could consider that a Stone Age technique (no offense if that is what you have going right now, our point is that it’s time for a facelift). It’s 2018, and user experience matters more than ever. People are searching for restaurants and meals on smartphones, and most won’t have a second thought about leaving your website if it is difficult to navigate or takes too much time to load.
One of our many included features at Online Orders Now is our Dynamic Printable Menu, which allows you to take advantage of our instantly updated, printable menus! This is an important feature of your restaurant’s website because people, just like in person, want to browse your menu at their convenience before placing their order. Our restaurant menu app allows patrons to print the menu (if they don’t like browsing on their phone). What’s more, the menu will always be up to date as long as you sync it with your online ordering menu! Any time you make a change to menu items or pricing, the Dynamic Printable Menu (DPM) will automatically update. We like to make things easy on you.
A Food Truck?
Look, this one isn’t easy. It’s actually incredibly difficult to pull off. It can also be expensive, but at the same time there is good reason food trucks exist. You can gain exposure to people who otherwise would never know you exist. Being able to set up shop at a local festival or at corporate complexes will typically pay dividends in the present, when they buy your food, and in the future, when they come see you in your brick and mortar restaurant.
Get A Mobile App
Gone are the days where it’s only conceivable to have a unique app if you are a big chain like Pizza Hut. In fact, mobile apps for restaurants have become much more affordable over recent years (at Online Orders Now it’s included in whichever package you choose), and that isn’t the only reason it’s an idea worth considering. Customers can order directly from their phones without having to search for your website on Google or Bing, which naturally improves customer loyalty. Plus, you can improve customer engagement with push notifications when you have a new offer, promotion, or menu item.
Online Orders Now will build you a custom mobile web app with your restaurant’s theme at the heart of it. Like our custom websites, our web apps always include essential features that include:
- Image Slider
- Social Networking Links
- Contact Form
- Google Map Widget
- Embedded Videos
- Search Engine Optimization
Make Sure Your Address Listings Are Accurate
You might be surprised by the number of directories that have your address listed. It’s not just search engines like Google and Bing, either. There’s Yelp, Google My Business, Yahoo! Local, Yellow Book, MapQuest, Chamberofcommerce.com, Cit Squares, Manta, Merchant Circle, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Apple Maps, and more.
The point is that all your listings need to be exactly the same. We’re talking about minute details like the difference between “Avenue” and “Ave,” and other nitpicky items. How do you know which one is the “right” one? Simply use the listing that is on your website, and populate it to all the others. There are services you can use that will automate this for you, but you can go ahead and take care of the heavy hitters on your own, like Yelp, Urbanspoon, Google My Business, and pretty much any directory you have an account with.
Don’t Hire Your Nephew To Run Your Digital Marketing
We’ve mentioned the complexity of Google Adwords and Facebook advertising, among other online advertising channels, but it’s difficult to hammer this point home sufficiently; don’t make the mistake of thinking you can handle online advertising on your own with no background or knowledge on the matter. Five years ago, you might have been able to get by with a rudimentary understanding of things. But my, how things have accelerated in this regard. And while there’s no such thing as a degree in digital marketing, to our knowledge, letting your Nephew Tommy make decisions about where to allocate thousands of dollars each month because he knew how to debug your laptop a few years ago is a very, very bad idea. Think about hiring a professional while educating yourself enough to the point where you can have an intelligent conversation about the topic at hand — holding your account manager accountable is key.
Consider Online Orders Now
We hope you’ve enjoyed this series as much as we had composing it! If you feel overwhelmed after reading this, we’d advise you to go back to the beginning of this blog and think about picking out one or two items that sound feasible for you to follow through on. If you are interested in improving your restaurant’s internal processes in terms of accuracy and efficiency, while adding a brand new revenue stream, consider Online Orders Now and our online ordering system for restaurants. Contact us today!