4 ways to make incentive marketing work for your restaurant

Due to inflation and supply chain challenges, manpower shortages and rising operation costs, prices of food has gone up significantly.

So much so that consumers are looking to cook by themselves at home. The right promotions at the right place at the right time will determine the success of your restaurant’s marketing efforts to attract more customers to dine out at your restaurant.

In this article, we give 4 tips to make incentive marketing work for your restaurant.

What is incentive marketing? It is essentially creating motivation for consumers to patronize your restaurant through discounts, free items or deals etc.

Here are the 4 ways to make incentive marketing work for your restaurant

1. Reach your customers through email
2. Run promotions on pay weeks
3. Use a customer rewards programme
4. Go omnichannel

Reach your customers through email

Have a membership programme ongoing at your restaurant? Why not collect your customers’ email addresses, of course read up on Singapore’s PDPA guidelines first, and send them your restaurant’s latest offers and promotions.

Even though customers may not read every email, sending regular emails to your customers is a way to keep your restaurant brand in your customer’s minds to improve customer retention.

Run promotions on pay weeks

The recent rate of inflation means that many customers have less spending power than before which means that by the end of the month, they will not have much left to spend on a good meal at a restaurant. If your restaurant does a promotion at this point of the month, it will not be the most effective.

On the other hand, your restaurant should try to do incentive marketing when it is pay period for most Singaporeans. By running promotions during popular pay weeks, consumers are more open to trying out your restaurant as they have more spending power when they have just gotten their pay.

Use customer rewards programmes

Allow your customers to collect points every time they spend with you. This attracts them to keep coming back as they know that with each visit they are a step closer to getting a free meal. This is one of the methods which many F&B businesses use to improve customer retention.

This is also a great way to get customers’ emails and contact details as you could require them to provide their email address or phone number when collecting points.

Go omnichannel

Simply sending emails to your customers to promote your restaurant’s latest offerings is not adequate. Many times, marketing emails get deleted by customers without being opened or end up in their spam boxes automatically.

Advertise your restaurant’s offers through various online platforms using the online space such as on search engines where customers can be directed to your landing page and on trending social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok as these are where your customers are spending a substantial amount of their free time.

Also, it is easiest to convey your advertisements to customers when they are in a relaxed state like when they are browsing through social media.

Getting a restaurant POS system & self ordering solutions

Developing marketing strategies requires you to spend some time brainstorming ideas. A restaurant POS system like MEGAPOS features a cloud based backend, integrates with self ordering solutions such as QR ordering, self ordering kiosks and even a hybrid (POS + Kiosk), and integrates with third party CRM solutions and accounting software.

A restaurant POS system like MEGAPOS helps you to centralize your operations, leaving you with more time to come up with exciting marketing ideas to attract more customers.

Click here for a FREE demo on our restaurant POS system self ordering solutions.