As per researchers, restaurants are the most searched industry by people on mobile devices, outperforming other extensively searched industries including hotels, entertainment, and retail outlets, among others. Around 80% of consumers find it appropriate to search for restaurants through their mobile phones and see their menu options before deciding on whether or not they should choose a restaurant to dine at. If you don’t have an idea about an effective SMS advertising for restaurants, simply have a look around your restaurant’s venue and you’ll find out that there are mobile phone devices everywhere. Since people are using their smartphones or otherwise for searching and deciding where and what to eat and even what to eat with, this means that restaurant text marketing represents an ideal communication channel to interact with as well as attract customers to your business.
Kind of an interesting thing is that bars and restaurants, compared with other high demand industries, have quite a slow approach to adopt SMS marketing. In our previous article, we clearly outlined the good reasons why your restaurant should try SMS or text message marketing. Well, that was just to reinforce some useful facts and benefits of restaurant mobile marketing, but one can really think that how they can utilize this marketing channel?
How Your Restaurant Can Leverage Text Marketing
For restaurants and other businesses in the food & beverage industry including coffee shops, text message marketing is quite simple. Just think of it for a couple of seconds – consumers around your venue must be thinking about to have food during some times of the day. It’s very likely that they might be doing so with the smartphone in their hand because almost everyone owns a phone nowadays. Why not appeal to them by advertising a tempting offer, deal, or discount?
Read below to find out a few ways and ideas you can consider for your restaurant text marketing campaign:
1) Increase your brand awareness via text – SMSes are short and sweet and can be used to create awareness about your brand. Send texts with shortcodes to redeem special offers and prizes within a certain timeframe. When you entice consumers with exciting deals, highlight your brand name in every text with a link to your website. Never make this assumption that your consumers actually know about you. There might be certain who know and understand who you are but there are many you would like to tell about your brand.
2) Send messages about the uniqueness of your menu – SMS marketing gives you the power, which no other marketing channel does, to let consumers know about your unmistakable menu and new dishes with velvety tastes by just delivering them a marketing SMS with an enticing promotion. With an open rate of 98%, there is a rare chance that your marketing message goes unseen.
3) Bring in new customers with exclusive promotions – Though it’s usually tough to win new customers, one of the best ways is through exclusive promotions. You can send special restaurant offers, student deals, text to win contests, and last but not least, the mobile coupons that are a great way to drive foot traffic to any restaurant. Customers who receive vouchers and coupons generally spend more and come back to their favorite restaurants again and again. Sending a daily SMS blast with exclusive discounts just prior to the lunchtime or dinner rush can be a great option for your restaurant.
4) Use text alerts to stay connected with your customers – As a business owner, you may be emphasized on attracting new customers, but if you want your restaurant marketing campaign to be a successful one, it’s important to retain your existing customers and stay connected with them with regular SMS alerts.