Restaurant Marketing Ideas for Your Food Delivery Business

So you have a restaurant, and you’re thinking of increasing its profit potential through additional revenue streams. Most people start by reaching out for the best food delivery system they can find to beef up their sales. But getting the word out about your delivery and takeaway services is more difficult than it seems.

To ensure successful checkouts from your diners, you require a cohesive restaurant marketing plan, and we’re here to get the ball rolling by offering up 5 restaurant marketing ideas that’ll help you grow your sales.

The easiest way to increase online orders is to make ordering as easy as possible. That usually means setting up an order page with a user-friendly interface, and to make sure it’s highly-visible on your restaurant website. This can be done with an ‘Order’ button on your homepage that links to your food delivery system, so that customers are immediately aware of your delivery and takeaway services.

For suggestions on how to create the best food delivery system for your restaurant, jump ahead to our ‘how to’ section below.

2. Attract orders through social media 

In today’s digitally-savvy economy, many customers first discover a business through social media. It’s therefore worth adding a link to your restaurant’s online ordering page on your social media profiles.

Furthermore, you can include this link in your posts’ captions, Instagram stories, and even add tabs to your Facebook page to display your website’s menu.

3. Offer delivery-exclusive promos to drive revenue 

One of the best ways to encourage take-up of your food delivery system is by tempting customers with delivery and takeaway-only promotions. In the short-run, promotions can generate new customer acquisition, boost revenue, and increase customer engagement.

You can also limit the announcement of your promotions to specific media channels (eg. IG-only), as a way to measure the effectiveness of utilising such platforms to market your products. In the long-run, this will help you build a more focused restaurant marketing plan.

4. Widen your reach by listing on third-party apps 

Listing your restaurant on third party marketplaces and food discovery platforms can help improve the ordering experience for your customers.

These apps enjoy great popularity, and your customers’ familiarity with the way they work can help streamline the ordering experience.

Furthermore, many of these platforms run their own discounts to encourage usage. Oddle Eats, for example, offers fully-funded bank promotions that are available weekly to consumers, giving them an extra ‘push’ to checkout. This also leads to higher potential sales overall.

5. Increase online visibility with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 

SEO is an integral part of any restaurant marketing plan as it works to bring more attention to your food delivery system.

You can start implementing SEO by doing keyword research to find out what consumers are searching for. For example, if you’re running a Mexican restaurant, you’ll want to focus on keywords like ‘good Mexican food in Singapore’.

With this, you can increase the chances of your major online assets (website, social media accounts, e-Shop etc.) showing up on the first page of search engines. It also makes your brand more likely to appear in search results of other relevant searches. Ultimately, it makes your brand more visible online and easily discoverable by potential consumers.

How to Build Your Own Food Delivery System

1. Oddle provides its merchants a customisable e-Shop template built specifically for F&B needs, as well as managed logistics services that facilitate the delivery process. Unlike in F&B marketplaces where your brand is constantly competing for a share of voice, Oddle offers your brand its own indexable e-Shop page, helping your restaurant boost its search visibility and SEO ranking online. Furthermore, you’ll have access to your own customer database, a crucial resource for you to craft a focused restaurant marketing plan that’ll target your best customers.

   
   

2. Other third-party platforms and marketplaces. There are many e-commerce solutions that enable you to build your own website. These places might not provide logistics services, but they give you absolute choice over the delivery partners you might want to work with. Conversely, listing on marketplaces is a good way to leverage on an already-existing food delivery services, but high commission rates and the lack of customisation have an impact on brand image and overall costs.

   
   

3. Social media. While social media is generally used as a secondary tool to spread awareness of food delivery and takeaway services, some merchants have taken to such platforms as the main channel of sales. Unfortunately, this decreases the potential of scalability and is mostly effective for small or home-based businesses.

   
   

In Summary: Restaurant Marketing for Delivery & Takeaway

Owning a food delivery system is just the first step towards growing your restaurant’s revenue. There are many other aspects to consider, including how to market your products effectively in order to attract and retain customers.

Oddle believes in helping all its merchants, big or small, maximise their revenue potential. We regularly publish how-to articles and guides dedicated to tackling F&B industry trends and challenges.

Want to join our 5,000+strong community of F&B merchants instead? Contact us today!