You have most likely established your new restaurant or takeaway or are simply looking to improve your profitability by taking advantage of the power of promoting your business online.
Doing so is no longer a hard to understand or expensive task these days and thankfully there are people out there creating online services that are free to use too.
1. Your Own Website: You need a website to be able to promote your business effectively. People are searching at all times of the day and it is important to be found. Your website is quite literally a marketing and sales tool that works 24 hours a day, even when your restaurant or takeaway is closed.
Websites are no longer expensive to create and neither do they need to be complex to set up. For example, a typical website should ensure that your logo is visible, that your menu or menu’s are easy to find, that your restaurant or takeaway is also easy to find (many mapping systems are available to plug into your website), how to contact you and importantly, how a customer can either reserve a table and order their meal online. More on the latter later.
How do you find someone who can set this up for you?
Check out Restaurantwebsites.co.nz whom have produced many websites for restaurants and takeaways. They have packages starting at no cost, yes FREE. All you pay is for your domain name management and hosting. You usually find great hosting promotions too – just ask to see how much you can save.
Depending on your requirements, we recommend on starting out with a basic package that cover at least the attributes mentioned above. As you understand more about what you want later, you can always request updates of your developer or website company when you are ready and are firmly in control of what you really want.
2) Search Online For Restaurant Enthusiasts : In today’s online world you will find there are friends out there that can really boost your bottom line and whats more you need not have to invest any dollars. You just need to be smart to take advantage of this opportunities, they really are out there.
An example is Dinein.co.nz which was established to enable customers to view restaurant and takeaway menu’s from their home, work or from any device they are carrying. Accounts are free on Dine In and you can also set one up yourself too. On Dine In you can add your logo, address, menu’s, news, photo’s and a whole load more.
Dine In actively promotes your business to enable customers to view your menu and webpage on its very successful website, social media and other related websites all the while creating more opportunity for customers to be able to find you.
Use these services to your advantage, accounts are free and can be deleted at any time, which is reflective of their trust that you will love how they will work with you to grow your business.
3) Enable Online Ordering – Luckily today you do not need to spend thousands of dollars investing in sophisticated online ordering systems that enable you to customise your menu settings, online marketing and payment facility requirements. In fact, today in New Zealand, you can have such a service with no investment at at all. This has also been made available by the kiwi company Dine In.
Dine In have developed a fantastic service that really opens up the market to you by enabling customers to order their meals online. It is just so simple and easy for customers and is a way for you to also get to know your customer base too.
There are no subscription fee’s for online ordering, only a commission fee per order introduced. This is a really special deal because it not only saves you thousands of dollars in development cost, it will only incur a fee when an order comes in. This really optimises your cash flow. It is hard to find a pricing structure out there like this when you have to consider that each business has its own resource, marketing, sales, finance and development cost to boot.
Today consumers are increasingly ordering online due to its ease. It is also shown that customers order more when they find it easy to order, have the time to view the menu and any promotions included. They tend to also become loyal customers too as they see that your business has gone out there to make their life easier. Leaving work after a hard day, what is better than ordering online and having your meal delivered to your door or even picking their meal up on the way home, all without the wait in the queue.
If you have a takeaway in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, in fact anywhere in New Zealand, make sure you take advantage of their offering. Contact details are here.
4) Social Media – Engaging with your customer base is vital, you already know that. Utilising social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ enable you to reach more potential customers. One of the reasons is because these platforms have managed to attract literally millions and millions of account holders.
When you attract a fan to your facebook page and they happen to like your comment, or you display an ad or promote your posting, the fans network of friends see your post and so do a vast number of other potential fans by virtue of the promoted story or posting.
This really enables the small businesses of the world to be able to reach out to customers that previously would have cost thousands of marketing dollars to attain the same level of reach.
Accounts are free and they do require a degree of maintenance. What I mean by this is that once you have set up your account, you do need to add posts/ news/ stories or other interesting facts to amuse or educate your fans. It need not be every day, in fact you probably dont want to do that in any case as several postings in one day would likely be rather annoying to your fans, especially on Facebook and Google +
Once you have set up your account, it is advisable to invite your friends and ask them to also reach out to their friends to like your new Facebook page or Twitter account. On Facebook you can then set up an ad to encourage people to like your page too. Watch your fan base grow and learn how to engage them.
Kiwi online marketing companies can help you establish and maintain your accounts if you are not familiar with how to go about it. The guys at Dine In currently provide such set up for free when you set up your online ordering facility.
I hope this article has helped and I’ll seek to provide more information in the near future to help you on your quest in driving your bottom line.
Check out further posts relating to this article here that outlines how you can market your restaurant or takeaway online.