Simple Ways to Increase Sales at Your Restaurant Today

Over the years restaurants have seen hundreds of trends come and go. Some restaurant owners are too traditional in the way they operate, some are too intrigued with new tech marketing trends that just too sophisticated. At the end of each week and each month restaurant owners need to know the margins they need to achieve to cover expenses, payroll and increase earnings.

New marketing techniques are too expensive and there is often nobody with enough time to manage them.  Today you can find inexpensive solutions. The following marketing ideas and tactics below are several ways that restaurant owners can increase revenues. These are affordable solutions.

Check out the ideas, and if you have questions on how to do them please feel free to contact us. These tactics can be achieved with a low budget or you can always obtain a credit card or a business line of credit to implement them.  Let us to start with the simples way to increase sales at your restaurant.

  1. Prepare to Mail.

If you don’t want to get up on technology or digital marketing; keep it basic. Obtain a listing of people that live near your restaurant and send coupons over the mail or place door hangers.  This may cost you anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 in a month.  You can set aside some of your earnings or get as line of credit this way you only pay on what you use and you don’t over extend yourself. uses of a small business loan

  1. Utilize Whatsapp

    On every customer that walks into your restaurant you should obtain their cell number and begin to create a database.  Once you have 50 to 200 customers with cellular you can find one to two hours in a day and send discounts, appreciation messages, and any upcoming specials that you may have.  This only requires time and literally no money to achieve.

    3. Geofilters from Snapchat.

Take advantage of this new-driven app for marketing purposes. These filters are overlays on Snapchat photos/videos that can be used to share where you are or what you’re doing. Your customers don’t care where you are at or what you are doing unless if there is something in it for them.  The good thing about the app is that when you begin to share this, it will appear that you are within a geofenced area of your restaurant.

  1. Marketing and Delivery program.

Not all restaurants have a delivery program.  If they do; they may not be capitalizing on the maximum results. Most delivery services just deliver the food.  When you deliver your food make sure you obtain data from your customers or leave them coupons.  You want your customers information so you can market to them on a consistent basis and what better way in obtaining in it by your delivery person.  Now your delivery person is not only delivering but acting as a market researcher.

  1. Influencer marketing.

Tap into people who are important in your area such as celebrity, an athlete, a politician or someone who has a lot of social media followers in your area.  Invite them an offer them a free meal to them and their guests.  The cost is the cost of the free meal that you will give them.  Let them know you’re interested in being featured on their social media site and that you want a review or video tape them with your smart phone. This will help you build credibility and add new followers.

  1. Social media strategy.

Most restaurant owners think you can just post on facebook or instigram and expect people to come in.  This will not work.  You need to be more sophisticated on social media.  Create content that talks about what makes your restaurant different, discounts, promotions,  and contests that encourage sharing and people to take action.

  1. Email marketing.

Email is not dead.  On an average it will take 7 to 10 emails before new customers pay attention to you. Email is still one of the top ways to communicate with customers and to keep your name in front of them.  Make sure you include your social links, website, and other information.

These few marketing tactics are inexpensive to execute.  Don’t try to do them all next week and if you need help today you can hire inexpensive assistant that ranges from $50 to $200 per month to help you deliver your digital marketing. If you do some of these things on a consistent basis after 3 months you will have a flow of traffic and customers coming to your restaurant.

By Gil Zapata
Gil is the founder of Lendinero and a business consultant.  He is passionate about helping small businesses become more profitable, fintech, and digital marketing.