Fall usually is the busiest season for every restaurant. But covid-19 made it different for every sector that includes restaurants. How tough the upcoming season for the restaurant could be, the one marketing strategy that restaurants can easily benefit from and rely on is SMS Marketing.
Why is SMS for restaurants important?
Every restaurant thrives on attracting people to their doors. Traditional marketing methods such as radio ads, flyers, commercials, emails have an effective place in marketing, but they can be very expensive and attain fewer results. That made businesses turn to text messaging for reaching more consumers.
SMS for restaurants is made to be in touch with their consumers and informed about their latest specials menus or events rather than other communication channels such as social media or Email. SMS offers a quick way for businesses to reach those distracted consumers. Even researchers proved that 98% of SMS are opened by people over a few minutes, making SMS an ideal option for a restaurant.
- Discount Coupons
The most effective marketing tactic that can easily gain consumers to your business can be discounted. No matter what your business is, you can enhance awareness of the restaurant and can attract new consumers. Covid-19 bombed everyone’s financial troubles. They all needed a good discount that could provoke them to order or dune at your restaurants and their family. So, design exclusive discounts that they can’t say no to.
Send out these coupons notifying them regarding exclusive discounts as an SMS. Ensure these coupons are delivered to the ones who are on the SMS list. You can also send these days when your business is running slow that can boost revenue and sales.
- Reminders and updates
With Covid-19, people might have many things going on daily. So, remind them about their reservations which they made at the restaurant before. Or even the updates about your store opening and closing can entice people, not just that you can also let them when you are suddenly closing the store. An SMS ensures that they will be reminded about reservations and everything you want them to know about your business.
- Gather feedback
Collect feedback regarding your consumer services and safety practices by using SMS. After you start collecting the list of opt-ins, please send your message and a forum or link to the consumers to fill them out via mobile phone.
The main goal you need to follow while sending SMS to collect customer feedback is to make it as simple as possible to finish the survey, so they are likely to participate in it. COVID-19 is another great opportunity to engage more as many people are on their mobile phones than before.
- Send about dine-in seating methods
Finally, the time comes to re-open the restaurant. It would be best to remember that things might not work the way they did before with good delivery apps and stay-at-home orders.
When your state accesses done-in services, then you can think of limiting the people to dining. You can also use the outside seating area for maintaining social distancing. Make sure your customers know what to expect before they come to dine in. So, you can offer them the details on social media, websites, or anywhere else.
Make communication easy
Texting for the businesses allows you to talk about anything in one SMS within just 160 characters. So in case if you want to tell a lot more than that, try to add a link that can direct your consumers to a page where they can get the details they need. If the restaurant is situated in a high traffic place, try to hold a board before the restaurant. That advertises any SMS keyboard that people could text to get information regarding dining options.
Use SMS for food delivery by sending detailed information regarding consumer deliveries that include updated arrival time and also about the process of hand-off. These quick details in a text message could be more convenient for your consumers than actually sending them by Email. If the consumers order by using mobile, you can ask them if they like to get any information in SMS.
So, the people can access a written record of it. Simplify the SMS lines by accessing people to place their orders through text. You could even add instructions on the website such as Google business, Yelp page, and many more. Would you please reply with a confirmation order and details of where they came to pick it up after it’s ready? If you provide curbside pickup, consumers could text the business when they come to pick up their order.
Guni SMS is an industry-leading SMS Marketing service for restaurants that access to get more consumers to the door that generates great business year-round via targeted engagements and automation.
SMS Broadcast helps the venue reach its goals either by enhancing buyers, developing service, or a reputation. Now you know the basics, contact us now to try out our service.