If you’re looking for a successful marketing strategy that accomplishes everything you want in a promotion, good luck. It ain’t easy to find one thing that you know will work.
You want something that will make you money with the least investment possible, the least amount of work for you and your staff, something that generates fun and excitement for your customers and drives them back to your business, quickly spending more.
That’s a tall order and might sound like the unicorn of the marketing world. Well, I have something that you can use in your own business, a marketing technique that you can copy that is highly effective, and with several ways to implement it to increase revenue for your business that accomplishes those exact goals.
Before I spill the beans, you must understand that your marketing must encourage repeat customers.
There are three main ways to make more money in your restaurant:
- Get more new customers
- Get your current customers spending more each visit (increase transaction size)
- Get your current customers to come more often (increase customer frequency)
The question is, how will you get them back again spending more? Preferably sooner than later.
The challenge is they are busy people. They get distracted by life and other options available to them or by cooking at home. Sorry to report, but none of them wake up in the morning thinking about your restaurant and how they are going to spend more money with you.
You need to find ways to encourage them to return- keep you on the top of their list when dining out. That’s why the loyalty program was created – they have been proven to increase visit frequency and transaction size. But points and awards aren’t enough.
You need a beaver and a ukulele.
One of the simplest, and it’s tried and true is a bounce back offer.
What Are Bounce Back Offers?
You are not giving a discount to get people to come in; you are rewarding those who have come in and spent money to encourage them to return.
Nobody gets this offer who hasn’t already given you money.
The Secret Sauce
Bounce back offers work because they create a sense of urgency for customers. They provide an incentive for customers who may have been slow to visit your restaurant again to come back sooner rather than later.
They also create a sense of fun, and if you design them right, they have an element of curiosity by not revealing the special offer. Bounce backs can help engage first-time guests and keep your existing customers returning.
And importantly, the cost of the campaign is low. If you hand an existing customer a printed promotion inside your business, many good things happen. Two important points:
- There is no postage required since your staff hand them out directly to paying customers.
- It’s guaranteed delivery right into the hands of your best customers! The ones already giving you money.
The results are a great ROI since redemptions tend to be high, and it is a limited-time offer, forcing a quicker repeat visit.
You want to start to develop a habit with your customers. That’s called reoccurring income for your business.
Using Curiosity As A Marketing Strategy To Increase Success
People are naturally curious. It’s a survival instinct that has helped us learn and grow throughout the ages. And when it comes to marketing, harnessing that natural curiosity can be a powerful tool.
By using curiosity as a strategy, you can get people to engage with your business in a way that they wouldn’t ordinarily do. You can peak with the goal to make them curious about what they might miss out on and tempt them into returning to find out.
We have two ways of creating bounce back offers that create a sense of curiosity – a sealed “no peeking” envelope with a prize inside, and a scratch off prize card. It’s like the money birthday cake when you were a kid. Who would get the slice with the quarter, and who would be the dime? (Do they even do that anymore?)
Both of our methods require the customer to return again with the bounce back before finding out their prize. Who could resist!
Maximize Repeat Business With A Faster Turnaround.
Just like you know that if you turn a table more times in a night, the more sales you will generate, the same holds true for repeat visits.
If your guests come once and month on average, and you get them to come back twice a month, sales will double.
Bounce back offers work best when they have a short time frame – ensuring that guests who have come in return again before the expiry date.
To maximize the impact, an expiry date is CRUCIAL. The use of expiry dates is essential in order to create a sense of urgency for customers.
This is important because it can be difficult to get customers to act on their initial interest, so you need to give them a compelling reason to take action right away. By setting an expiry date for your offer, you’re essentially creating a deadline that will motivate customers to act quickly.
Expiry dates also give you a reason to communicate with your customers. A week before the expiry, you can post on social media or in your customer emails reminding those who received your bounce back offer to come in before it expires on XYZ date.
Get Bouncing!
You need to check out The #1 Restaurant Bounce Back Promotion Of All Time. The No Peeking/Red Envelope Promotion.
See how one restaurant owner increased his sales by $110,000 using this promotion, and a bunch of other owners that have doubled or even tripled their sales.
All in January – the slowest month of the year.
This is, hands-down, the most successful promotion of the year for restaurants.
Michael Thibault
Known as “The Done For You Marketing Guy for Restaurants.” International Speaker on Restaurant Marketing. Published contributing author of 4 Marketing Books. Industry expert on Google Searches and Review Sites. Recovering Independent Restaurant Owner and Caterer of over 21 years. And, all-around good guy.
