Why is it Important to Keep In Touch with your Customers?

Updated: Jun 20, 2020

One of the biggest challenges that a restaurant owner faces after putting up his or her establishment is to attract customers.

As you know it is not easy to get new customers in the restaurant business.

Everybody has their needs met, for instance, they already have a go-to Mexican place or food that they just can’t resist no matter how many times they have tasted it already.

And once you convert these people who live in your community within the 3-5 mile radius of your restaurant into your customers, another challenge comes in.

How do you make your customers go back to your restaurant again and again?

We all know that it is necessary to keep your customers from returning to your restaurant as frequently as possible. And the best way to do that is to keep in touch with them.

We have to admit the fact that in any kind of business, it is crucial to keep posting information to each other for us to gain loyal customers and to attract a new market.

Why do you need to keep in touch with your customers?

Because after enjoying the delicious food you served them and all the marketing efforts that you have done, we have to face the reality that we aren’t sure if we have gotten their loyalties yet.

There are 2 main problems with customers that we have to acknowledge:

1. They may not know you - they don't know that you exist.

2. They forget about you - maybe they have been to your restaurant but they forgot about you.

And that's where keeping in touch comes in, which is very valuable to make sure that we are on top-of-mind and they do not easily forget about us.

Remember that focusing on getting new customers is not efficient. You are not maximizing all the tools and efforts to get new customers.

Whether it's Facebook ads or Instamailers, you must have a strategy in place to bring them back to your restaurant again and again.

How do you keep in touch with your customers?

Everybody is busy, people don't have time and sometimes they just forget about us. So we need to have a strategy in place to be the top-of-mind of our customers.

In marketing, top-of-mind awareness refers to a brand or specific product being first in customers' minds when thinking of a particular industry or category.

And this is exactly what our goal is, to create top-of-mind awareness among our customers for them to remember us by keeping in touch with them.

There are 4 ways to achieve top-of-mind:

1. Email marketing - email marketing includes getting your customers’ contact information, their email addresses, and eventually, send them emails weekly to give them a reason to come back.

2. Text message marketing - you need to grow your database, having people to opt into your text messaging database and give them a reason to keep on coming back to your restaurant every single week.

3. Social media posts (organic reach) - you have to do a lot of effort in getting people to follow you on Instagram or like your page on Facebook. And whatever you post there, you're hoping everyone sees it because organic reach is really low nowadays.

4. Direct mail marketing or mailers - this is a marketing strategy that utilizes a mail service to deliver a promotional printed piece to your target market.

As restaurant owners, it is important for us to always come up with new ideas that will attract more and more customers to visit our restaurants every day.

Aside from excellent food and superb customer service, effective marketing strategies are necessary for our business to make sure that we are always the first choice of our customers and they will never forget us.

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