This simple marketing plan can be implemented right away whether your focus is delivery, or in-house patronage. The food type doesn’t matter. This is something that you can have in place, and begin using within a few days time.

What you will need

• An Email account and/or a Twitter account, which is optional, but recommended.
• An Aweber account to manage the list.
• A very, very simple opt in page where people can sign up to be on your list.
• Some flyers and/or business cards printed up announcing the new deals.
• Gas money to drive around and drop off your printed materials to local businesses.

What We’re Trying to Accomplish

The goal is to build an email list and/or a Twitter campaign with our local market which will keep you in state of near constant (and welcome) contact with your customers. You should start to take over a significant portion of your local market, especially if your competition doesn’t have anything similar in place. They will eventually.

The Offer

This is perhaps the most important part of this campaign. You have to come up with a reason for people to give you their email addresses, and it has to be a good one. It can be free food and/or drinks, or a free desert, or a coupon for a huge discount on their next meal.

But it has to be an almost irresistible offer. Your goal should be to make the customer feel as though you’re making a sacrifice to them, in exchange for being able to contact them occasionally. I can’t stress this enough: MAKE THE OFFER GOOD, EVEN IF YOU LOSE MONEY ON THE INITIAL TRANSACTION.

The Flyer or Business Card

The card will give a very brief, but compelling detail on the offer. Which will be followed by a forceful call to action, which is for the reader to sign up on your email list. I would get the card professionally designed, and make sure the call to action is the central function.

When and Where to Make the Offer

If you’re in a bricks and mortar location you’ll make it either at the check out time. Your servers can make the offer as they tender the check, or your cashier can take care of it at the counter.

To increase your delivery and take-out business, drive around to local businesses and drop off the flyers and/or business cards. Make good personal connections with people. Let them know with your own voice about the offer. Drop off some free food – along with the cards – for everyone in the store. Do everything in your power to get them to sign up.

Twitter vs Email in this Campaign

Email is fantastic. It is the single greatest connection that you can make with your clientele – that is if you can make it, and therein lies the problem. People do NOT part with their email addresses easily.

I’ll touch in Twitter in a moment, but first…

Tips for getting the email:

1. Ask for it bluntly. Don’t preface it with a bunch of salesy if-then goblity-gook. “What’s you email address?” Keep it simple.
2. You could also present them with the irresistible offer. “Would you like to get 50% off of your bill today?” Don’t be afraid to lose money on this transaction. This will be part of your marketing budget, and as far as I know this is a tax write-off.
3. If the answer is yes take their email and give them the discount. Give them a small stack of cards to give to their friends.
4. If the answer is no, thank them and give them a card. Hopefully they will eventually find the offer compelling.

Beyond that, don’t ask anymore. They’re not giving it up right now.

I prefer to use Twitter over email for this type of campaign. Here are the reasons why:

1. Twitter is a conversation piece. If someone isn’t familiar with Twitter they may sign up on sheer curiosity alone.
2. Twitter is safer for the customer. If someone doesn’t want to follow you on Twitter, they have complete control over that, whereas email addresses can be bought and sold, and spammed to uselessness.
3. People are very warm to the idea of following you, as opposed to giving something up like an email address.
4. Twitter is just plain simple to use for you and your customers.
5. Twitter can also be used to eventually pry the email address from your reluctant prospects.

You can say something to the effect of “Hey take this card and follow us on Twitter. We give away free food stuff every day to our Twitter guys”. A lot of times, in the case of Twitter, you don’t have to have a free offer, but it’s a good idea if it will get more people to sign up.

The difference in email and Twitter, in this campaign is that people can give you their email addresses on the spot. But Twitter is a do-later kind of thing. You can’t very well give people a huge discount for something they may do later.

What you can do though, is tell them just what I said above. Let them know that you Tweet huge offers every day.

Keeping in Touch “Without Being Spammy”

Now comes the meat of the program. We will spend the rest of our time making small connections with people through email and/or Twitter.

Our constant goal is to ensure that every email, tweet, or connection with them, provides them with something of value

Don’t just send out a menu of your daily stuff. Give them, your subscribers, deals no one else gets. Don’t take up their time; keep the emails short. You can send out a PDF menu once or twice a month, but no more. We want our emails downloaded fast, and a PDF will slow that down. Keep the email short.

Something like this:

Hey I just thought I would let you know what our email specials are today. We’ve got Roast Herb Salmon with Chickpeas and a rice pilaf. Let us know that you got the email and we’ll give you a free coke and a free chocolate pie all for $8.97+tax. We’ll be offering the meal from 10:00-1:00 PM, or until we run out of salmon and/or deserts which usually happens quickly. Call us at 555-5555 ASAP and we’ll hold one for ya.

Later!

You’ll notice that toward the end I used a tactic called scarcity. We want them to act, and we have to give them a reason to act. The food might sound good, but we want them to take ownership of it. The thought it going pretty quickly means they don’t have time to mull it over. If they want the deal, or are even remotely interested in the meal, they’ll have to act quickly.

With Twitter, you only have 140 characters to play with so make it something like this:

Herb Roasted Salmon Today with Free Coke and Chocolate Pie! It’s almost all reserved, so call and get yours before its gone. 555-5555.

If you have a website you could, instead, link to a web page which shows the special in glorious detail.

An Ongoing Thing

Just following the steps above you’ll see an incredible improvement on your takeout and delivery orders. But, if you’re a mom and pop organization, and do a lot of homemade cooking, then occasionally you can send them out some of your favorite recipes, maybe even some of the recipes you use in your restaurant. This will only serve to endear you to your customers even further.

The point is to build a relationship with your customers which more closely resembles a friendship. This will help ensure that, your subscribers think of you first when their stomachs start growling.

You Don’t Need a Web Site But…

Having a web site helps immensely. It’s just one more avenue that you can use to announce the things you have going on. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but you do have to make sure that it’s used. Websites can’t be relied upon to bring business just because it’s there. Make an offer to them when they arrive, no matter what your business is. Make an offer, and give a call to action.

Furthermore, the website gives you a central location to house all your delicious content, recipes, and whatever else you can think of to provide value to your patrons.

Conclusion

So there you go. That’s a simple email/twitter marketing plan that you can implement today to drive more business to your customers, and keep your restaurant on the tip of everyone’s tongue the next time breakfast, lunch, or dinner comes up.

If you’d like help setting this up, and running drop me a line, and we’ll talk turkey.