Authored by: Matthew Volpe (Product Management)
I know what you’re thinking. How can marketing help when your restaurant is struggling with limited resources?
It just depends on your perspective and how you use marketing to your advantage. You don’t need more staff. What could help is focused marketing.
Sure, marketing initiatives have proven to increase the number of customers visiting your restaurant(s), but used strategically, they can also do a lot more with less, including:
- Boosting the average order per customer
- Increasing orders on historically slower days of the week
Still skeptical? Let’s look at a specific example so you can see what we’re talking about and how it could work:
Lauren owns a local pizzeria. While she’s happy that her restaurant is open for in-house dining again, she’s unable to hire enough people to build her staff back up to pre-pandemic levels. And her pizzeria’s customers have remained loyal and are returning in large numbers to support this local restaurant. How can Lauren ensure she maintains the high level of customer service and satisfaction her restaurant is known for and increase revenue?
Here’s how marketing can help Lauren and potentially reduce the impact of her labor shortages too:
- Encourage customers to dine during slower days. For example, you can offer a discount or free appetizer on Tuesdays, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m.
- Offer incentives for higher order sizes. For example, you might consider this offer, “Spend $20 or more and get a drink free”, or “Spend $20 or more and get 10% off your next order.”
- Encourage repeat orders from existing customers. Marketing can be highly effective in influencing current customers to return to your restaurant; nurture campaigns use both email and SMS text messages effectively to achieve this goal.
- Use data to drive marketing. Mine your existing customer database to target customers and use technology to automate the marketing.
HungerRush 360 Marketing is a full-service marketing solution that can help you with these initiatives. You don’t need more staff or time to achieve your marketing goals. HungerRush does the work for you by creating SMS and email nurture campaigns, seamlessly transferring customer data from the HungerRush POS to the HungerRush 360 Marketing system. Learn more about the benefits by downloading this datasheet.