In my four years as a bartender, I learned to appreciate the food & bev industry’s need for quick cash and high customer turnover rates. My bosses at work were constantly under the gun trying to find new ways to meet sales quotas by the next day.
We tried a whole host of promotions. Some of them worked, some didn’t. If you’re looking for exceptional in-store promotions, check out Small Business Trends’ infographic on slow night promotions. If you’ve tried these without any luck, we’ve got a new plan.
The roller coaster of bar or restaurant ownership is a tough one, but with the right online approach, you’ll be able to grow new, loyal customers hourly with this foolproof system to drive customers to your restaurant fast.
Before we get started, check out this video on advertising a new restaurant through Facebook. I walk through how to set up a business manager profile (separate from your business page on the front-end of Facebook) and how to launch your first ad campaign, start to finish.
These seven steps, in this order, will make your bar or restaurant a destination and a staple in your community without breaking the bank and while driving consistent sales.
Step 1: Build a professional-looking website
The cost for a custom-built website can be upwards of $6,000, according to websitebuilderexpert.com. Businesses spend a lot of money building their website because they know how important it is. What matters most, especially for smaller locations, however, is that your website have some very specific components attached.
For instance, my website really only needed my own URL, an email subscription feature that I could easily access, posts for my blog and pages for my staple content (homepage, about us page, etc.). Your bar or restaurant only needs those things too, and you can achieve it with a WordPress website (currently $96/year and you build it yourself). That’s a great deal!
Step 2: Always Have An Online Offer
On the homepage of your website, be sure to include an exclusive online offer. Online users are used to deals when they shop via the web. Give them something, even if it’s as simple as a $2 off $20 printable coupon, or they’ll be disappointed. If you offer an online delivery or takeout system, I’d recommend that the offer be limited to in-store use only. That way, you’re encouraging them to come and check out your space, which is an atmosphere they’ll grow to love.
Step 3: Take High-Quality Pictures Of Your Menu Items
…and keep it up-to-date daily! Out-of-stock menu items is the biggest source of disappointment for guests who checked you out online and then came to visit your store. These are people who are prepared – excited, even, to become a regular at your bar or restaurant! You might not guess, but people will visit just for that new beer you tapped or the cheese curds you’re showcasing online. It only takes one menu item out of place for them to never look at your restaurant again, so be smart and cover your butt online!
Step 4: Fill Your Website With In-store Customers
You already have customers that walk into your brick & mortar restaurant, so why not have them check you out online? The easiest way to do this is to ask for reviews. This fulfills two function: number one, they’ll go online and join your remarketing pool. Number two, they’ll stay off Yelp until you get a chance to explain bad experiences and make things right. This is “Restaurants 101,” but always always be willing to comp their meal if they had a bad experience.
If their “service was bad,” use your best judgment on what to offer- these are sometimes insincere. These people just want something exclusive to them, so offer them something like a fast-pass to a table one night, or maybe a “10% off your next meal” coupon. Something incredibly small like that won’t break the bank and will mitigate the slew of one-star reviews to your establishment.
If there was anything specific, though – the kitchen was slow, the place was unclean, etc. – give them the cost of their meal back and work it out behind closed doors. You can get a loyal customer through a bad experience if, and only if, you handle things the right way.
Step 5: Offer an email subscription
People crave the social structure of going out, so why not name your little email list something cool? “Hey man, not everyone’s invited (oh yes they are)… but since you wrote out your email address for me, I’ll welcome you to what’s called the Platinum Club.” No offers, no discounts and you’d still get people buzzing to get in. It’s a cool name, it’s an exclusive club – it’s fun just to belong!
Here’s an example: when I worked at my first restaurant, our email list was called the “Brew Crew.” One of our regulars really enjoyed belonging to the Crew, and I’ve never seen someone so committed to earning points to trade in for a “brew crew” t-shirt. It was outrageous how much money he spent with us, and all because he wanted the chance to promote our fancy email list on his own time!
Step 6: Retarget Online Visitors
This part gets a little tough for users who haven’t installed pixels on a website before, but it’s completely manageable, even if you don’t have someone to outsource it to. Check out my other post on Shattering Sales With Conversion Tracking, but the short version is that you’d take a snippet of code and place it directly on your website. That gives Google the capacity to track users who have visited your site and gives you the capacity to fire off ads to those same users for several months after they visited. That’s what we call remarketing.
You could also use Facebook Ads Manager to attach what’s called a “Facebook Pixel” to your website and remarket to online users via Facebook & Instagram! In these remarketing scenarios, try using ads that draw customers back in. Off the top of my head, I’m imagining an ad featuring an empty chair at your restaurant with the phrase, “we miss you,” taped onto it.
Step 7: Set up display campaigns and increase new traffic to your website for pennies
This isn’t even a joke. I’ve seen and run display campaigns on Google Ads where the client was literally paying $0.08 per click for their ad to show to qualified traffic, and that’s just when people click! The free impressions that come with it are just a beautiful cherry on top. Here’s how you do it.
You should be gaining some serious traction in the restaurant industry by this point, so with your extra pocket money, take a night off swimming in your solid gold pool and riding your million-dollar racehorse. Instead, lay down some money for a graphic designer to create some new, colorful advertisements.
These ads should feature your company colors, your logo and the offer you have on the homepage of your website. Once you have these designs, you can advertise on what we call the “Display Network,” or the online spaces in millions of websites where your ads can show, using these new ads.
Expect an investment of about $1,000 fora package of four to five different sized advertisements. This might also be a good time to investigate hiring an advertising agency to make sure your ads are placed correctly in front of the right audience. If you’re busy running the intricate parts of your company, you may not want to be bogged down learning professional marketing placement platforms.
These seven steps, executed in this order and over the course of three to six months, will create a cycle of new customers to your store and website for years to come. By the time you get to step 7, you might not even want the extra traffic, or it might even be time to think about a second location.
The control of your traffic is your responsibility, and it all comes down to your commitment to staying present online. The days of walk-ins to your bar or restaurant is quickly waning, and even our search engines have transformed for the 40% of adults who use voice search daily (Quora.com). In a world where Siri and Alexa are the new “word-of-mouth” references for your restaurant, you’ll need to appeal to the online universe just to stay in the game. Transcend your competitors in this space and you’ll become an immediate success.
Resources:
https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/building-websites/how-much-should-a-website-cost
Shatter Sales Records With Conversion Tracking
https://quoracreative.com/article/voice-search-statistics-trends
