Today’s blog is a guest article from ecommerce expert, Rodney Laws.
Online marketing has been a core concern for ambitious eateries for some years now. The internet made it possible to purchase food from so many different sources that anyone selling through the internet has [arguably], had to make some noise or risk being overlooked; the category of online eateries has now seen explosive growth due to COVID-19.
It used to be possible for a restaurant to get ahead through good food alone. Secure a good location, get in a handful of customers, impress them, and start to pick up direct referrals: soon enough you have a buzz that keeps people coming back. But as restaurants turn to online ordering and deliveries, they need to adapt to survive.
One of the most common mistakes in modern marketing is concentrating exclusively on just one marketing channel, neglecting the potential in others. In this post, we’re going to run through five tips to help restaurants and takeaways make the most of multichannel marketing — so if you’re trying to market such an establishment, pay close attention:
Even masterful multichannel marketing won’t achieve anything if every channel leads to a mediocre ordering experience, so the first thing you need to do is ensure that you’re making it as easy as possible to order from you. That’s one of the core goals of the Preoday platform. By providing an intuitive mobile app, you can make great use of location information (something that’s extremely useful if you intend to offer a click-and-collect service).
It’s perfectly possible that someone will make it through your marketing funnel without being quite ready to order, so your website has to be in a good position to win them over. What could be holding them back? Well, they might want to check if there are any extra costs they’ve overlooked, learn about how your business operates, or — as is quite likely — get some kind of assurance about the ingredients you use. Are they fresh? Are they ethically sourced? Do you use gluten? At a minimum, build a great FAQ page and make your homepage as attractive as possible — having appealing photos of your food looking great is essential.
Multichannel marketing is warranted because targeting just one channel is myopic, but that doesn’t mean that the opposite approach — targeting all channels — is ideal. In actuality, it’s wholly unrealistic to think that you can make good use of every viable marketing channel. Should you attempt it, you’ll discover that it’s far too much work and will lead to mistakes. Instead, pick the two or three channels that best suit your target audience: that way, you can give each one the time and effort that it needs.
Responding to feedback is mission-critical for a collection and takeaway service, because one scathing social media review at a vital juncture on a busy night could tank your business. Use a service to track all your brand mentions (Brandwatch is a popular choice), highlight positive comments, and address negative comments with calm professionalism — if you make things right, then you might end up looking better instead of worse.
Every channel does different things well, and you should take advantage of those strengths. Instagram, for instance, offers Instagram Stories, so why not create one that takes the viewer through your entire process from sourcing ingredients to delivering orders? And if you market through Google Ads (meaning you can’t use images), then use callout extensions to highlight notable points about your company or service.
Guest blogger profile
Rodney Laws has more than a decade of experience providing marketing advice to online entrepreneurs and businesses. He’s set up and marketed his own businesses and consulted on crafting campaigns for established companies. See what Rodney can do to help you or your business by heading over to EcommercePlatforms.io and visiting @EcomPlatformsio for even more news and views on marketing as an ecommerce brand.
It’s not as catchy as: ‘When is a door not a door?’ (answer, when it’s a jar) but it speaks to the idea that in-car collection, and the technologies that support it, are flexible enough to bend to the needs of a business and its guests.
Delivery can be daunting to the uninitiated, and it might be tempting to sign up with a third-party ordering aggregator that offers the service, such as UberEats, but other options could suit your business and brand better. Here we present three different ‘levels’ of delivery, starting with the most basic – and cheapest method: doing it yourself.
