Marketing Restaurant Online

We have Superbowl going on today. Everybody is going to be at home watching the game. Lots of people will be ordering pizzas and wings from the local pizza restaurants. Last year, Pizza hut alone sold over a million of pizzas. Papa johns and Dominos sold little less than Pizza hut but the number of pizzas sold by the pizza chains just in few hours on that particular day blows our mind. It is natural that they have big pockets so they can offer to throw millions at the television networks and get their commercials run during the Superbowl.

Well for the small independent Pizzerias and other small restaurants, getting commercials at Superbowl might not be at their reach. But have you thought how you can take advantage of the event -Superbowl and have your guerrilla marketing work for your local pizzerias or any other restaurants. If you are smart you don’t really have to spend millions but can pull a great video marketing virtually for free or very low cost.

Watch the previous video of Papa Johns and find out how Papa Johns has been creative in taking advantage of the events like Superbowl. They understand that lots of people will be making their own predictions about the game. They also know that many of them will be ordering pizzas and wings online at the comfort of their living room sofas. They put a commercial announcing their contest and requesting the Tv viewers to submit their predictions to win the Papa Johns wings. This does two things. Papa Johns will create excitement during the game and in the process will gain potential customers contact info who are interested in the contest. Who ever wins after the game, they will offer their wings as they promised. More importantly, the second thing that it does for Papa Johns is that it gives them an opportunity to engage with the potential customers and persuade them to order Pizzas or wings by providing some incentives or deals. With out their email or mobile phone numbers that they acquire during the process of registration there would be no way for Papa Johns to target directly for the sales. Now they have competitive advantage over their competitors. Now think for your self. You are watching the game. Papa Johns gives you a deal on your pizza purchase there is no way that you would not take it. Because you are going to buy pizza any way from one of the pizza place. But now you are more attracted to Papa Johns because there is something in it for you. That is some price discounts or meal deal where they provide you everything from pizzas, wings, bread sticks to drinks all in one low reasonable price.I am sure you would choose Papa Johns instead of other Pizza chains that didn’t provide you any sort of deals.

Same thing applies to your customers. So the question is have you thought of any prediction contest or any other sort of competitions where you engage your customers online. If you are not then you are missing a whole lot. It is not that difficult as you might think. You can simply start by announcing some sort of prediction contest with your in house customers if you had their email addresses. If not then you could simply make a video announcing about the contest and the details and how they can participate in the contest.  Now you don’t have that kind of money to run those ad on tv network like Papa Johns. However you could buy sponsored video advertising which you could get it for few cents per click through You Tube. Remember that people are ordering pizzas online so they will be with their laptops or internet enabled mobile devices. So that means you have an opportunity to attract them via online whether it is on Youtube or through Google Local search. Follow the similar strategies of Papa Johns. You can create your own contest like lets say ” Predict the winning team and get the wings for free” But make it conditional like for the first 50 or 100 people. This will do two things. It will create urgency for the online viewers to register for the contest as early as possible.That way you will get even more than 100 entries. May be 1000 or even million who knows. Second thing you will only have to give away limited chicken wings. Take that as your advertisement investments. Instead of wasting it on newspapers or radio why don’t you give that to your own customers. They would be happy and more importantly you would get so many business from that that 50 or 100 chicken wings-free give away that it would turn not as an expense rather an investment.