Who hasn’t used their mobile device to search for a restaurant location or look up a menu? As such, restaurants are businesses that can benefit from focusing on mobile marketing.
There are plenty of tools that can enhance a restaurant’s mobile marketing strategies, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and revenue.
From allowing customers to text their delivery order to optimizing your website for mobile to allowing for mobile pay and embracing Yelp, here is a list of tools that will put your restaurant in the mobile winner’s circle:
This customer engagement platform helps restaurants integrate the data they collect across platforms to construct successful marketing solutions. Their mobile services include:
• Geotargeting - To bring nearby customers to your establishment
• Push notifications - Increase your up-selling and cross-selling results with relevant, real-time offers
• Automation - Automated marketing is proven to increase efficiency and profits
• Analytics - Get a close-up view of relevant data on your guests’ preferences and behavior
• Mobile ads - Get the word out about your restaurant on the device where customers are most likely to see it
• Mobile apps - Increase loyalty by engaging clients with your mobile app with features such as ordering and reservations, promotions, menus, photos, and videos, social media, gift cards, restaurant locator, and nutritional information
This tool recognizes the importance of mobile marketing in the restaurant industry and offers like services such as:
• Mobile-first design to make sure that customers have an easy time accessing a restaurant’s site including one-click reservations, directions, and images that help promote an establishment
• Social media and newsletter sign-up allows customers to easily sign up to get posts and offers from a restaurant
• Search Engine Optimization makes sure a restaurant shows up first in relevant searches
SMS is a great way to use mobile for customer service and marketing a restaurant. Restaurants can use text to:
• Send personalized messages to loyal customers including offers and that are based on their preferences
• Share polls asking customers to rate a restaurant’s quality
• Allow customers to text take-out or reservations
• Send customers reservation reminders to ensure attendance
Along with the popularity of mobile devices comes the increasing use of mobile pay. Restaurants can make special use of this convenient form of payment by integrating Zapper with their payment method. Let your servers concentrate on serving customers and let customers pay at their own convenience. Zapper allows customers to use their mobile device to pay for their meals by scanning the QR code on their bill.
In 2015, Yelp had over 83 million mobile visitors per month with restaurants being the second most searched for category after retail shopping. If a table is happy with the food and service, make sure your staff encourage patrons to post a positive review and preferably post photos taken on their mobiles.
Don’t ignore bad reviews; the best way to handle them is to respond and thank the reviewer for bringing your establishment’s weaknesses to your attention and, of course, fix drawbacks they pointed out. Apologize and, if appropriate, offer a comped meal so they can come back and have a better experience.
Google AdWords helps you get noticed when patrons perform mobile searches. The benefits for restaurants wanting to up their mobile game are endless:
• AdWords automatically formats your ad for mobile
• Your mobile ad gets a spot when a customer performs a Google search for a restaurant like yours
• With video being the new trend in marketing, your YouTube video should bring in some great customer conversions
• Display ads will show up on Gmail as well as 2 million other Google-connected websites and apps
Did you know that there are more than 200 million posts with the tag #food and 23 million with #drinks? Food and drink photos are some of the most followed and shared photos on Instagram. Social media presence is an essential factor in any mobile marketing strategy, especially when you consider that 80 percent of social media time is spent on mobile devices.
Sprout allows restaurants to conveniently schedule posts to publish to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook; segment and target audiences; and receive easy-to-understand reports with data that show you the results of your marketing efforts.
Mobile has a big impact on restaurants and any place that focuses their marketing efforts on mobile will see the pay-off. I hope the tools I listed will help you enhance your mobile presence and increase your restaurant’s revenues. What other apps or software do you use to market your business on mobile? Share in comments!
