Recently, restaurant owners started working on growing the sales of their restaurant with online ordering. While it’s a great solution that acts as a contributor to success for your restaurant, there are different strategies that you should check out to maximize its potential.
Customers are eager more than ever to order food online because aside from that it’s the safest and most convenient type of food service, they also want to support local restaurants by ordering from them directly. With the current situation of the Restaurant Industry, it is important to focus on how you would make something out of the circumstances that are being handed over.
Learn more about the different simple but proven strategies you can try to increase your revenue with your online ordering service.
Strategies in Increasing Business with Online Ordering
Start working on how you’ll incorporate these strategies and track their performance on your restaurant operations.
Social media marketing
One of the most cost-effective types of marketing. Through social media marketing, you can easily market your online ordering and delivery service. An average adult in the UK spends 102 minutes on social media daily. Customers are now accustomed to using different social media platforms through their phones, make good use of this and try selling your menu items digitally. This way your customers will be constantly updated about your restaurants and your offers.
Give them something that they could make a habit of. For example, offering a complimentary dessert or cup of coffee in every order of steak for some time could lead them to spend money for dessert every time they order a steak. People are creatures of habit and they would most likely adapt to new things introduced to them.
Keep restaurant website updated
Your website is the extension of your physical restaurant. It should always be updated to avoid misinformation about your restaurant. For it to be considered optimized, it should be updated, functional, informative, and easy to navigate.
Being online, your customers expect an uncomplicated and straightforward process from you for them to achieve a convenient experience from your restaurant website. Always update your website with your latest menu, promotions, and special deals. Allow your customer to complete a transaction easily, and always keep your customers informed about the essential information about your restaurants such as operating hours, delivery area, contact number, address, and the like.
Consider creating a mobile app
If you have extra resources to spend, why not try creating your mobile app for your online ordering and delivery services? It’s a good opportunity for you to reach greater heights and gives your restaurant a higher market potential.
You also have to consider the growing dependency of consumers on their smartphones and the internet. As of January 2021, the total number of active mobile internet users was approximately 65.32 million in the United Kingdom, which represented 96 percent of the overall population.
It is also ideal to give your customers options to avail of your online ordering service.
Offer delivery and curbside pickup option
Allow your customers to choose whether they want their food order to be delivered or they want to pick it up. An online ordering system for restaurants accepts every order online, whether it came from a family staying at home or from a busy businessman driving his way back home.
Your customers feel a deeper sense of control over their orders if you give them the same options.
Provide multiple ways to order
It is your responsibility as a restaurant owner to learn how to bend and cave in according to the demand and behavioral changes of your customers. Giving them multiple options leaves an impression that you value their convenience over anything else.
Be flexible and give them different ways on how to complete their transaction. It can be through your social media pages, SMS, email inquiry, or through your “Contact Us” option on your website.
Prepare multiple payment options
Don’t limit your customers by limiting your payment options. Convenient service is the one thing that your customers crave the most and you can’t provide that if you’re asking them to pay in a different mode while they have their trusted payment gateway.
Make sure that you’ll install software that will secure the payment process of your restaurant. You may start offering the most common payment options used by customers such as cash, credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, and Google pay.
Monitor how these payment options will work for your restaurant and consider adding different payment options that may work for your restaurant as you move forward. Listen to your customers to know if there are other preferred payment options.
Upsell and cross-sell
You may think that upselling and cross-selling digitally is a tedious task, but it’s the opposite. It’s easier for businesses to take a subtle approach for upselling online rather than appearing to be pushy when done in person.
Adding options for additional items before check out is one of the most effective ways of upselling, yet your customers don’t feel the burden of being forced to spend additional for an extra sauce or garlic bread.
Monitor repeat business
Remember the saying “You lost the moon while counting the stars”? While the acquisition of new customers is a great way to grow your business, you must not ignore your loyal customers who helped you bring your business into its current position. Make sure that you always provide the best customer service to ensure that they’ll do business with your restaurant again.
You have to reach out to them (collect data from them before they leave) and encourage them to come back by updating them using the data you have from them. Some indirect ways to gather data are through your POS, through a survey, through a QR menu, and a Wi-Fi connection.
Now that you have a customer database, you can start to retarget ads towards their preference. Make use of email newsletters if they’ve given their email to you, send them SMS reminders if they provided their numbers. Always look and apply different ways to reach out to them and encourage them to dine with you once again.
Reach out to a new audience
This is an absolute approach if you want to increase business for your restaurant. While your current customers help you stay afloat, adding a new set of customers will keep your restaurant thriving.
You can utilize the customer database that you have and adjust the metrics for your ads and promotions online. Through this approach, you’re targeting the right set of audiences for your ads. Just make sure that you understand the goal of the platform you’ll use.
For social media platforms such as Facebook ad Instagram, it aims to show customers contents that they consider relevant to their preferences. If you carelessly launch ads without understanding the basic metrics, your marketing will be all over the platform. Your ads may appear to customers out of your target location reach which is a waste considering that you want as many customers as possible.
This increases the chance for your restaurant brand to be given negative feedback, and won’t show your ads that much, leading you to waste your investment on this ad. Be consistent in adjusting your ads according to the metrics and understanding the platform you’re using, will provide you better insight that you can use to improve your ads and marketing.
