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There is no better way to promote a business than customer loyalty.
Customer loyalty is turn “fans” to your customers, and that they consume your product or service every time they need it, and associate your brand with the service or product. For example: sliced bread is Bimbo, and we have associated sliced bread with the brand, and we always look for a Bimbo bread, the same happens with Coca-Cola, and in its time it happened with Nintendo.
And that in restaurants is no different: if you manage to make your customers fall in love, and that they go to eat at him regularly, your business will “walk alone”. Of course, loyalty is very complicated, and it is not the result of a day, it is a long and continuous process until reaching the goal: love the customer, although we can always look for “love at first sight”.
The pace of work leaves many bar, restaurant or hotel owners without the time needed to establish strategies for customer loyalty, although it is totally understandable because a hotel or restaurant business requires a lot of work and many hours.
I leave you some ideas that depending on the profile of the clients you have, they may or may not serve you:
LoyaltyPlan
LoyaltyPlan provides you with a mobile application with a loyalty card with a QR code in the main menu.
Every time the customer places an order at your restaurant, present the code to staff to scan and earn points toward discounts or free meals. Points are also earned by publicizing the restaurant on Facebook.
There is a website to manage the application and the customer database.
This app is used by big brands like McDonalds or Pizza Hut. It’s very simple: you create your menu or beverage catalog, and the application shows it, always updated, to customers who install the application.
Here you request more information.
Take advantage of location marketing
Although Foursquare is not at its best, after dividing its functions between Foursquare and Swarm, it is still used by millions of people and logging the sites they visit. Free food could be offered to whoever is the “Mayor” of the month, or week. It is a way of publicly rewarding the most loyal customers.
Another complementary option is to make your restaurant a PokeStop and therefore attract Pokemon Go players.
Communicate with the client
Few actions build loyalty more than effective and useful communication with your customers.
Your customers will like to know your new dishes, the special events you organize for New Year’s Eve, Christmas or Valentine’s Day, if there is a new recruit in your kitchen or if your restaurant is going to be closed for a few days for renovations.
Not everything is Facebook, you can use other communication tools such as email marketing, and if you can personalize your shipments much better. It is not the same to receive a generic email as one that says “Hello [your name here], we are from the Cerro de la Silla Restaurant, we want to tell you that we have improved our menu …”, right?
Make a VIP customer plan
Are you an Amazon customer? You will know that there is a program called Amazon Premium, which consists of paying an annual fee, and the shipments of your purchases are “free” and preferably in the order of shipment, saving you a day or two of waiting for each order.
In your restaurant you can create the same program: preference when assigning a table, preference in the delivery of food, drinks or exclusive dishes without them being available to the public, or even reserve the best place in your restaurant for VIP clients .
Amazon Premium has twice the revenue of Amazon with normal customers.
We have seen simple ways to build customer loyalty in a restaurant, which will not take much time to implement. It’s a matter of choosing the one that best suits your way of understanding your business.