Online Marketing for Restaurants

We encounter different customers everyday. Most of these are businesses who are newly starting up or someone who is switching from a very basic level software to a completely autonomous system like Althea Suite. Simultaneously most of these businesses are perplexed by the thought of how to establish an Online presence in the market.

Here at Althea Suite, using the right tools we want to give the power back to the customer hands on how they can progress cohesively with their Online and Store Sales.

What’s the Need to Market Online? 

It’s a proven fact that mostly or even 90% of customers check through search engines or some other search tool to look at available options when it comes to ordering food. Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, the whole world is going Online to sell and purchase products online. Business owners need to capitalize on this huge opportunity that may come as a disguise.

Althea Suite comes with such an easy-to-setup Online Shop that you wouldn’t believe. You can literally get everything setup within 3 days.

Here’s a basic outline on how you should be thinking

Think of a Goal
It can be as simple as for example generating a certain new number of customers every week or focusing on how to take in the local crowd’s best preferred dishes for Breakfast/Lunch. Just set a goal and get started.  

Look at your current customers

Look at their honest opinions on what they feel was left out in providing them the best experience. It could be small things like ensuring food safety standards in this Pandemic time. 

Set-up a Plan
Talk to your staff and outline a stringent plan engulfing all the surrounding factors. And start executing it with active responsibility of each and every employee.

Keep Customers involved through Offers and Loyalty Programs

Even though the Menu might be perfect that still doesn’t mean that the customers will be driven to order from your Restaurant. You need to always keep customers in the loop through new Offer strategies and Loyalty programs. Something that will always keep a customer wanting to go back/order online from that restaurant.
Here again Althea Suite can help you with Email and Marketing campaigns.

Track your Progress
Tracking progress has been made extremely easy through Business Analytic tools inside Althea Suite. You have a customized Dashboard to look at things like Overall Profit Margins or reports showing you how were your Online Sales vs Restaurant Offline Sales. 

How to Optimize your Website for Maximum Customer Acquisition

The complete Restaurant Online Ordering experience is  based around the fact that how well does the Menu pop out to customers and pulls them in to add items to the cart. There are again several aspects to what will get a customer’s attention.  

Convey a message through Website Content

• The content you place on your website is just as important as the design. Both should work in harmony together to create a unified message that speaks in the voice of your personal brand and your Restaurant experience.
• Every Restaurant businesses’ website should include in-depth pages like About Us page, Customer Testimonials, FAQ page, social share icons. 
• People spend a substantial amount of time on websites that are easy to navigate, so keep the navigation clean and uncluttered. 
• When writing content for your Restaurant website, brainstorm what a consumer would want to know, or in what structure it would be easier for them to order a Menu item.
• Convey your message in a concise way that includes relevant keywords; wordy websites bore consumers. 

Show them what Safety Procedures your Restaurant is following during this COVID-19 pandemic

• In this Pandemic since most Restaurants and businesses are closing, to stay afloat you need to capitalize on what the current scenario demands. Most people are working from home and will do the same in the months to come, and hence they are surely tempted to try out tasty new delicacies if served safely.
• Show them how securely you are handling the complete order management cycle and how actively are your employees ensuring the safety standards.
• Have a highlighted section on the Home Screen of your website depicting the COVID-19 measures taken by you to handle orders.
• Show customer reviews talking about how they feel your Restaurant is safe to order from. 
• Have more pictures or have a workflow section to depict the order is managed contactless.
• Show how the raw materials are safely procured.
• Take a call with the Althea product team to know how using Althea you can give customers a contactless experience.

Increase your Restaurant’s Visibility through Social Media 

Social media is always something that can create loyal customers for you. Once a customer is hooked you can reel him in through various promotional content and schemes. Social media hence acts as a very valuable platform in this sense. 

Instagram, Facebook and YouTube: These platforms are where small Restaurants can really have some fun. Keep the customers involved with newly created seasonal Menu items and relate them with customers.

• Creating themes based on different campaigns or product offerings will help you ensure your business refrains from repetitive self-promotion. 
• Aesthetically pleasing images will also add a high value to your Restaurant’s main theme.
• You could even stress more here on behind the scenes images of your Restaurant managing orders with all safety standards for COVID-19.
• Add Recipe/How-to-make videos on youtube and share with the local community.
• Show how your Restaurant is actively involved in social causes.

Email and SMS Marketing Campaigns

You will see that Restaurant businesses are now dedicating the largest segment of their marketing budgets to Email and SMS campaigns. This is something that doesn’t require a very in-depth knowledge as well. Business owners can intuitively create their own Email and SMS marketing strategies themselves since it’s not time consuming and easy to track.

• Email marketing is also a low-cost option that provides powerful and lasting results when done right. 
• Email marketing allows Restaurants to connect with its customers at an intimate level, and give them information based on their current relationship. 
• For example, promotional campaigns can be sent to customers who haven’t haven’t ordered from your Menu again in a certain amount of time.
• Customer-nurturing emails can be sent to potential customers to keep your Restaurant at the forefront of their minds. 
• Just like your website, your emails should ALWAYS be mobile-friendly, as 80.8 percent of users report reading email on mobile devices. 

How Althea Suite helps with Email and SMS Campaigns

Althea Suite doesn’t just provide you the tools to manage your products and business operations but also how to market them:

• For all of your customers who order online, Althea Suite will store all of the customer information like Email, Address, Mobile Number etc directly in your CRM.
• Easily navigate customers into Marketing based customer groups.
• You can even add Custom attributes to Customer information like what Cuisine they like, what are their preferences etc. Use these custom attributes for Marketing needs.
• By the click of a button, bulk emails can be sent out based on your campaign absolutely free of cost.
• Connect any Bulk SMS gateway with Althea Suite and send Transactional and Promotional messages to your customers.
• Send pre-created Feedback Templates to customers immediately after they place an order. 

• Take payments for orders seamlessly using Click-to-Pay links. Also add marketing content to these Emails in the background.