Edited by Riccardo Binaco
Even past the Pandemic emergency, deliveries of food delivery, now remain a widespread habit in different Italian cities.
Restaurants, during lockdown periods, have seen demand for the food delivery and they had to supplement this service to the restaurant marketing strategy. Although now, it has partially diminished, there is always a target group of customers who occasionally prefer to have their lunch or dinner at home.
Another positive aspect for food delivery lovers is that restaurants have constantly improved their organization and service. In addition, technology, makes ordering faster and more intuitive.
Today you can choose from a wide variety of restaurant types, and with very competitive costs, receive your dinner in minutes. If you want to improve your food marketing strategy, to promote home delivery of your restaurant business, I will share some useful tips with you in this article.
1. Analyze the sustainability of the delivery service
Before deciding whether to implement home delivery service, you need to answer a few questions:
- What dishes on your menu lend themselves most to home delivery?
- Have you done a target audience study, to assess the needs of potential customers in your restaurant's area?
- Have you assessed the human and strategic resources you need to prepare and deliver food to your home?
- Have you evaluated the ratio of service implementation costs to potential revenues?
In any restaurant business, profit margins are low, which is precisely why it is good to evaluate all these aspects to the best of our ability and get definite answers from these questions.
2. Organize logistics, staff, and plan for everything
Create designated spaces for delivery logistics. A packaging preparation area for domiciles and a dedicated area where delivery workers can move around without causing inconvenience to customers in the restaurant. Consider whether you need to hire extra staff for preparation or deliveries. Organize the service with the most appropriate means of delivery and write a protocol to follow.
Also study well the times you make the service available, the areas you can cover, delivery methods, and policies for handling any complaints.
Remember that you can also delegate deliveries to an outside firm, but the percentage you will have to pay with each order can vary from 18% to 30%.
3. Implement your home delivery website.
Add online delivery order functionality to your website. Develop a mobile web app to make ordering from your restaurant convenient and direct. This way you will have to yes, invest a budget to make your website functional and fast for home deliveries, but you will have direct control of orders, your customers' data, and you will not have to pay commissions to outside services.
You also have greater flexibility in the types of services and payment options you provide. You can also control all the marketing of your delivery business and brand,
including customer loyalty programs. That said, you may also decide to implement the strategy by affiliating with external Apps, as long as it is not the only communication channel to promote and operate the home service.
4. The Restaurant Brand always prominently displayed.
Don't forget to customize your home delivery service. Home food delivery, it's something you don't just do. You are competing with many other restaurant businesses that have come up with the same idea. That's why your food delivery marketing strategy should differentiate itself. The first thing to do, then, is to create your own, clear, cohesive brand that fully identifies your venue. Possibly, arrange to register it in such a way that no one else can use it. Just the creation of an original brand name that is all your own already gives personality to your
restaurant, it will promote brand recognition and create trust in your customers, giving them a sense of professionalism and reliability.
A good idea, especially if your brand is already known to many, would be to leverage your current logo, customizing it for home delivery. In this way you would create a kind of continuity with the past while distinguishing your delivery service.
Finally, ideally you should have delivery bags and uniforms made for runners with your logo imprinted on them. Not least imprint it with a sticker or a magnetized sign on the means of transportation as well. All this will make your venue stand out even more, both to the people who have ordered and to those who see the delivery person passing by.
5. Let your customers know that you make home deliveries.
Posters, flyers, QR codes and more, inside and outside your venue, are just some of the ways by which you can let your customers know that you have started offering food delivery service. Therefore, don't forget to include the way to order; through the website? Through a web app? Via email? Over the phone? Other marketing tactics to consider are loyalty programs, incentives through free delivery, and customized boxes with your logo.
Today you can create your own advertising materials, even with basic tools readily available online; with Canva for example, you can create business cards, flyers, and posters without having to wait for the graphic designer to prepare everything. On Canva there are ready-made ideas in a variety of formats, from business cards to posters, as well as customizable images to exploit on social media. You can even use a QR code generator to add your own to business cards, flyers, and everything else so customers can reach you online easily.
6. Continue to improve the quality of your service
Most companies believe that the quality of their service is the determining factor between them and their competitors. This is only partially true. Marketing studies have shown that service quality contributes 50%, while constant service improvement makes up the remaining 50%.
There is always something more you can do. Quality service will always attract customers, but improving the same, will allow you to avoid the flight of all those customers who, wanting to try something new, end up becoming loyal to your competitors.
One of the strengths of any food delivery service is speed. But we know that it is not and cannot be the only one. Here I point you to 3 services that you should try to make better as much as possible.
1. Customer service: Excellent customer service is a key feature that every venue should care for and improve. Remember that customer service, in which we also include delivery employees, are the face of the business. What they do and say to customers can make the difference between an angry customer and a forever loyal customer.
2. Quick delivery: about 27% of people who order food are willing to pay extra to have quick delivery. Waiting a long time for the rider to arrive doesn't appeal to anyone. Find a way to improve delivery speed. Perhaps by hiring more employees or studying the best routes in your area.
3. Monitoring and updates: consider starting to alert customers when food delivery is delayed. It may happen that the rider gets lost or hits traffic on his or her route. To do this always ask for the customer's phone number or email. This shrewdness, which costs you 1 minute, will make customers more likely to forgive the delay and return to order from you. Then instruct your riders to notify you whenever an inconvenience happens to them that slows down their schedule. Only then will you be able to monitor delivery times.
7. Create a website to make the delivery service work better
Lo digital marketing specialist Leland Dieno once said: "Your website is the center of your digital ecosystem.". The site has become a real virtual venue that represents the restaurant in every way. Without a site, it becomes more complicated to interact with customers even on social media. Therefore, implement the ability to order delivery on the site, without forcing them to call and wait for you to answer. Make the act of ordering delivery through the site easy for them. That way, they order easily in a few clicks, and you don't have to distract the waiters in the room by engaging them with long phone calls.
8.Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine marketing, (local SEO and location-based Google Ads), is an effective way to increase the number of customers who order home delivery.
These strategies allow your restaurant to be found by customers for Google searches that have become common, such as "restaurants near me," "home delivery restaurants near here," and so on. So take care to always optimize and keep the restaurant's Google my Business tab alive, and remember to activate the order button there and include your menu.
9. Social Media
Promote your new home delivery service on your social profiles. Add an online order button to your Facebook page. Consider using social ads to draw customers to your website or app where you allow ordering. The social media marketing is no longer an option; your company can join it or fall behind. Social media has long ceased to be just for taking selfies. It is where your customers live, a place to sell and solidify your brand, trying to make it
To become a benchmark brand for the home food delivery. On your social pages then, try to create written and visual content about food. People are always willing to share and appreciate photos taken of food.
When people see a brand active on social media, they are very likely to interact and make a purchase at a later date. If people like your content, you can start building a community of customers restaurant worshippers that can act as word of mouth online and offline.
Choose a social platform and start posting content on your profile and restaurant page. Not sure which social platform is right for your business? Start with the most popular ones! As of today, there is no better place to start than Instagram and Facebook.
Giants like Finances Online have chosen these platforms as their future battleground to increase the number of their customers.
10. Use a third-party delivery app?
As you know there are numerous apps to sign up for to start selling food in online delivery. However, these services are not free for restaurants. They earn from fees charged to customers to whom food is delivered and impose percentages on each restaurant owner for each delivery made. Before COVID-19 and the pandemic, many third-party home delivery services charged up to 20%-30% per order. During COVID-19, these percentages were temporarily lowered to 10% or 15%.
Recently, DoorDash changed its fee schedule to offer basic service to the restaurants with a commission of 15%, with the possibility of paying higher fees for marketing and other additional services.
All these commissions reduce your margins. Once the pandemic is over, if the rates return to what they were pre-covid, will you be able to afford to pay the 30% on commissions? Will your customers be willing to absorb the increase to buy your food at home?
It is certainly true that relying on a third-party service for home delivery has its advantages. For example, you don't have to hire the rider and you don't have to pay a developer to update the restaurant's website. It is also very true that these third-party services are also useful for acquiring new customers. However, you might consider using them for a push in the beginning, with the goal of getting new customers used to switching to direct ordering on your site or web app.
11.Collaborate with Food Bloggers and Influencers
Food bloggers and influencers can be your best allies or your worst enemies. As we know, people take their opinions about food very seriously. In the case of the same delivery service, it is the same thing. Hire a celebrity influencer who has many active followers. Of course, not everyone can
afford Benedetta Rossi or Cracco. But on social media there are many within reach who are just as good and have a significant following. Try contacting them and telling them about your restaurant and offer them something in return for their review or social post. Don't delude yourself into thinking you're getting away with a free lunch because almost everyone asks for a commission, but even that should be within the budget you've decided to invest in marketing.
12. Entering into agreements with local companies
Try to get in touch with companies in your area, proposing a convention for its employees. I can personally attest that lunchtime is one of the most important times of the day for any employee, second dolo to closing time. If, with your establishment, you offered them home ordering at the office, at affordable prices, you would solve two dilemmas they face daily: Where to eat lunch? Do we have time for lunch? Offering them your services allows them the flexibility to choose their preferred time and avoid moving every day to go to lunch.
I am not saying you have to sell out your food, but if you already offer discounts from a certain number of orders from the same company, the initiative is likely to be successful.
Also, by virtue of word of mouth, if employees of other companies know that you offer this service, the business is likely to expand in a short time.
13. Try email marketing
Do you already have a database of your customers' emails? Can you harness the power of theemail marketng. Use it to inform customers about your home delivery service, to let them know about offers, such as free delivery, loyalty programs and various promotions. About 40% of B2B marketers say that e-mail newsletters are the most
effective in achieving their goals. Email still holds an important place in strategies, so much so that 73% of millennials prefer communications from companies to arrive via this medium. You can use the features of email marketing of Maichimp to create professional and eye-catching e-mails, as well as e-mail automation software for
create triggers, reminders and follow-ups to increase sales. If you have never recorded your customers' emails instead, you should start doing so so that this important component is not missing from your marketing strategy.
Conclusions
Today's consumers tend to be lazy and want, above all else, convenience. With the global pandemic, many customers have become accustomed to having all the things they need delivered directly to their homes, including meals. Even though people have started eating out again, statistics say they continue to order food online and have it delivered to their homes. True, third-party companies can eat into your margins. However, savvy restaurant owners can increase revenue by using their own online ordering system and maintaining 100% of profits.
Apply the above suggestions to devise a effective marketing strategy for your restaurant and make your food delivery service.
