Growth hacking and creative marketing ideas for the restaurants industry
As part of its restaurant marketing strategies, FiveGuys engages its customers by featuring satisfied dinners on its Facebook page. It’s a great way to show your customers that you care. The well-known burger joint features a “FiveGuys Fanatic” every Friday. The company even asks customers to join the fun by sharing their own burger-eating photos on social.
Sergio Lopez
When Applebee’s teamed up with Tyler Florence, a well-known chef and Food Network personality, they sent an email to customers with his picture, a dish that’s he’s made especially for the restaurant and a link to tour the kitchen with Florence.
Sergio Lopez
When something new is on the menu, Cheesecake Factory tell its customers about it on social media. They take some pictures of the tasty new dessert or frothy beverage and share them on their Facebook page, giving customers a good description of the new item, and being sure to tell customers that the new dish will only be around for a limited time.
Sergio Lopez
Catering is a sector in which it seems that everything important is already known, but there is still a lot to innovate. On the other hand, one of the biggest concerns of any entrepreneur is spending money on actions that will not bring profits. Growth hacking provides a solution to both problems. This methodology is based on active experimentation, i.e., carrying out quick and cheap tests on a continuous basis. In this way, it is possible to test which strategies are effective without wasting resources. This allows us to innovate with effective strategies that we know will make us grow before investing a large budget.
The first thing to do is to define which metrics are key, i.e. which ones best indicate the growth of our restaurant. Clear examples would be the average number of customers per day, cost and price of the daily menu, coffees, soft drinks and starters served, customer satisfaction index, partnerships with quality suppliers.
The next step is to set SMART objectives, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. Raising 5% customer recurrence the next month, decreasing the menu cost by 5% in the next quarter would be good examples of SMART objectives.
To achieve our objectives we will use growth drivers. Since we will not know if these drivers will be effective or not, it will be essential to carry out experiments.
Possible growth drivers for the hospitality sector could be the use of databases, referrals, reviews, special events and personal treatment. Should we focus on them? Which ones? We will test this through growth hacking methodology.
It is possible to generate a large number of customers through booking data - what do we need it for and how do we use it? One of the most underestimated advantages of customer bookings is the database generated. All bookings, whether by phone or via the website, should be collected together in the reservation book. A restaurant must take care of all those who decide to go and make sure they want to come back.
First of all, we can look at how we can ask for opinions or feedback. We can also test how we can offer promotions or discounts or create memories for our customers by congratulating them on their birthdays or on special dates.
Another good way to attract families is to organise events such as theme nights. In the case of restaurants, this could be nights where children eat for free or with discounts if people wear certain clothes or give positive reviews. Organising activities such as a small-scale competition can give parents confidence and keep their children in a safe, clean and fun environment. Other options are to organise activities for children of a certain age. Why are we interested in this extra work? Creating offers and discounts can appeal to the needs of families looking for affordable ways to have a good time.
Being referred by our customers in their recommendations to family and friends could help us to develop the potential of our business. When a trusted person recommends a site, there is a five-fold increase in the likelihood that the customer will go there and discard other options.
For this to happen, customers must be completely satisfied with the service offered. If this happens we can ask them to recommend us to family and friends.
From these questions we will develop experiments which will help us to discover which strategies are the most suitable for growth. After some time and progressively we will understand the business better and we will be able to make it grow.
After all, this process is necessary to find out what works, but if we don´t document the learnings afterwards, we will forget the results. In the long run we will accumulate a lot of knowledge that will allow us to develop more and more useful and efficient strategies.
Want to know more about how to apply growth hacking to your restaurant? Sign up to Hypertry and ask for an individual session.
Sergio 
