When developing a marketing strategy for your restaurant, mobile marketing is a fulfilling main course, considering the ease-of-use, cost-efficiency, and overall effectiveness that text marketing offers.
While traditional marketing tactics, such as print advertisements, web marketing, door hangers, and television ads, still have some effect, mobile marketing offers the unique capability of reaching your entire consumer base with the click of a button. Because the cost and effort needed to send a text blast or voice broadcast is so minimal, ROI is exponentially multiplied when using mobile marketing strategies.
What makes mobile marketing the fruitful substitute for traditional mediums is the fact that mobile devices are now owned by more than half the population of the world. Text messages also have a 97% open rate, making this tactic by far the most effective ad strategy available. And the reason this information is available is because mass text messaging and other mobile marketing strategies are easily trackable through detailed analytics.
As an entrepreneur, you need to not only offer great products and services, but also to incentivize customer loyalty by sharing entertaining or useful content as well as exclusive offers. Inspiring customers to opt in to marketing lists allows for ongoing marketing opportunities and hence increasingly large revenue streams.
Getting customers to opt in can be fun and creative. For instance, you might promote a text marketing campaign in your restaurant window, on receipts, in menus, or throughout the store. Include your shortcode and keyword(s) such as, "Text PIE to 313131 for a free slice on Saturdays." Once customers text the keyword(s), they've opted in to receive future messages.
Check out these creative uses of text marketing for restaurants:
The Couch Tomato Café in Philadelphia used SMS text messaging to let its customers know about a free dinner promotion they were offering. During the text campaign, the cafe received approximately 100 additional orders during a particular day when compared with the same day the previous week. The profit from those purchases far surpassed the cost of the campaign, resulting in a successful ROI. Read more about this Couch Tomato case study here.
Domino’s Pizza utilizes mobile marketing to build its social media channels. In trying to get more Facebook likes by college students, a local Dominos franchise in Charlotte, NC advertised around basketball games with signs that offered a free pizza to anyone who texted in their keyword to the shortcode and then "Liked" their Facebook page. At the close of the semester, the retail franchise had almost 2,000 fans on Facebook, which was used for further marketing and ultimately generated higher revenue. Read more about the Domino’s case study here.
Mobile marketing is the most efficient answer to your restaurant marketing challenges. It's easy, affordable and delivers results immediately. No wonder so many restaurants are now turning to mobile technology to help drive business.