It’s a jungle out there in the fast-food world. There are so many options! And more just keep coming because people are demanding convenient, accessible, and affordable food that fits into their crazy lifestyles. But you’re not just competing with other fast-food joints; you’ve also got to find a way to make yourself stand apart from other locations within your franchise.
You may get help from the co-op for marketing and advertising. They may even have specific programs you can launch in your area. But those marketing efforts drive new customers to every location within your franchise, not just yours.
How To Market a Restaurant?
Restaurant marketing helps you promote your food and services to your potential customers in order to boost sales. Whether you run multiple fast-food restaurants or a fine-dining restaurant, you need to use the following measures to market your business and attract customers.
- Improve your online presence
- Create your business account on Bing, Yelp, and Google My Business.
- Use social media to your advantage
- Post updates about your business regularly to stay connected with your audience
- Start loyalty programs
- Promote user-generated content through blogs, social media posts, etc.
- Work on improving your restaurant reviews
- Collaborate with influencers
While you need to keep on using these aforementioned practices, here are five effective fast-food marketing strategies that you should focus on.
Top 5 Fast Food Marketing/ Advertising Strategies That Drive Traffic Like Insane
1. Paper Coupons
The power of a discount is amazing. Not only do they attract new customers, but they actually make a profit for your specific fast-food location. Plus, people literally love using coupons, with 64% of Americans stating that they use coupons frequently at restaurants and brick-and-mortar stores.
But just telling people about a discount isn’t always enough to bring them through your doors. And it’s not often that you have a good email database of customers who have come into your fast food restaurant. Paper coupons are a physical reminder of the great deal customers can get at your location specifically.
And because coupons have been around for decades, this is something many fast food franchises will allow you to do, and may even encourage, to help grow your business’ profits.
High Volume Coupon Distribution: Grocery Store Receipt Advertising
Since most people will hit the fast food places closest to them, and they also shop for groceries nearby, it makes sense to have your fast food restaurant coupon on the back of the register tape. These are your customers or potential customers, and they’re totally coming to your place if they can get a better deal with you versus going somewhere else. Using receipt tape advertising also ensures that your advertising dollars aren’t being spent to benefit someone else’s store in the same franchise. Just make the coupon redeemable only at your location so that your investment will get you the reward.
Interested in how grocery store coupon advertising can work for your restaurant? Learn more.
Repeat Customer Coupons: Bounceback Certificates
A bounce-back certificate is an incentive to bring customers back to redeem a specific offer. For example, if you want to drive mid-day sales at your restaurant, you can give customers bounceback certificates that they can only redeem during those hours that are slower. For fast food restaurants, you usually give these out as part of the checkout process. For those who are coming into the restaurant (versus the drive-through), you can also collect emails or phone numbers so you can send out information that will bring customers back for a great deal.
2. Off-Peak Pricing
Is your fast food restaurant busy during weekends but slow on weekdays? Or maybe you have huge traffic during lunch, but dinner sales are negligible. It’s totally normal to have peaks and valleys throughout the day. But did you know it’s an opportunity to increase sales? Off-peak pricing is meant to offer incentives during the times you’re not so busy. For instance, if your fast food business is slow on weekday mornings after 9 am but before the lunch rush, you can offer something that will encourage customers to come at that time rather than during the busiest hours.
If you have control over pricing, you could offer unique prices during off-peak hours. But if you are part of a franchise, you may not be able to actually change menu prices. Consider offering a free coffee with every order over $5 or a buy one get one half off. You can even think outside the box and offer an incentive that is unique to your restaurant and customers.
If you seem to have some dips in sales volume that are bigger than others, you can separate dining times into three segments: “off-peak,” “mid-peak,” and “peak” hours. During off-peak hours, offer the best discount, and during mid-peak hours, offer a slightly lower discount.
3. Social Media for Individual Fast Food Locations
Most franchised fast-food restaurants already have some level of social media operation. At least they should! But what you may not know is whether it’s for the whole chain or just for your location. Having your own unique social media presence is incredibly important. When potential customers search for you on social media, you want them to find and dine at your location, not the one down the street owned by someone else.
Check on corporate rules to see if you are able to create your own Facebook Business page or if it needs to be a location page that is linked to the corporate page. If you can update your own store’s content, get to it! It’s great for sharing specials, publicizing holiday hours, and gathering feedback from real customers.
Here are examples of a franchise that has a “location” listed under the main McDonald’s Facebook page. It’s still very customized to their location, but they benefit from some of the things that corporate does for them, too.
The other way is for each location to set up an independent Facebook page that doesn’t link to other locations’ pages. Chick-fil-A is able to set up its own stand-alone Facebook Business page that isn’t directly linked to the main corporate page.
Once you have a page for your location, be sure you continue to post pictures, respond to reviews, and interact with those who are on your page.
Be sure you tell customers you have a page that they can like and/or “check in” to tell others where they are. It’s a good way to get your location in front of your customers’ friends on Facebook and to build a local following.
Learn more about Facebook advertising for your restaurant.
4. Ask for reviews
Today, a majority of consumers do a certain level of research before making a purchase. The same goes for fast food restaurants. They rely on reviews from other customers to gauge the restaurant service, ambiance, and, most importantly, the quality of food. You must take advantage of Internet reviews and start building trust with your potential customers.
Every time you serve a new customer, ask them to leave a genuine review on platforms like Yelp, Google, or other social networking sites. To encourage your customers to leave a positive review on such platforms, you can offer them a decent discount on their next visit to the restaurant.
5. Loyalty and Reward Programs
If you have a restaurant app, you can use it to create a loyalty and reward program. Whether customers dine at your restaurant or order food online using your online ordering system, reward them with freebies or loyalty points. This will help them boost their loyalty while also giving them a reason to visit your restaurant again.
If your business is not in the position to start giveaways at this moment, you can consider hosting regular events to make the customers feel included. You can also try different strategies to stay relevant and attract new customers as you project your business as friendlier and more relatable.
You can also celebrate fast-food-related holidays at your restaurant and offer items at a discounted price. For example, “National Fast Food Day” is a great occasion to offer your menu at a more affordable price.
The Bottom Line
Using one, two, or a combination of these three tactics can add profit to your bottom line by boosting new sales, increasing returning customers, and increasing business during off-peak times.
If you’re ready to generate new customers and increase sales for your fast-food restaurant, find out how we can help you!
Finding the best ways to advertise in your local area is key to driving new customers through the door every single day. Learn more about some of the top restaurant marketing tactics and how to apply them to your restaurant.
By Eric Shafer
By Talitha Turkin
