SMS Marketing for Restaurants: What Every Business Should Know

As in every type of business, consumer wants and needs must be determined and planned in food and beverage businesses. Marketing is a planning and implementation process related to the development, pricing, distribution and promotion of goods, services and ideas to create an exchange that will enable achieving mutual goals. Marketing is an activity and a process for the development, communication, delivery and exchange of proposals that have value for customers, buyers, stakeholders and all members of society. The marketing definition is included in marketing management. The Market is the place where supply and demand intersect, in other words, where buyers and sellers come together. The two basic characteristics of the market are being large and heterogeneous. Those who buy the goods and services of food and beverage businesses are called actual customers, and individuals who are likely to purchase are called potential customers. The market is a combination of actual and potential customers. For the customer group to create the market: They must share a common want and need, be sensitive about this want and need, have purchasing power and be willing and active in spending that purchasing power.

Marketing mix elements are used in food and beverage marketing. These are; product, promotion, price and distribution. Product represents a whole where tangible and intangible qualities are created. Goods are explained as a substance in which a series of physical and chemical properties are gathered and combined in an easily visible way. Price is the value that the business determines for its product. In other words, it is the amount of money that consumers have to pay to obtain a product. Distribution is all activities necessary to take a good and service from where it is produced to where it is consumed. Distribution channel is explained as the path followed by a good and service in its movement from producer to consumer. Promotion is the effort to persuade customers, carried out under the control of the producer or marketing business in order to facilitate the sale of a business's goods or services. This is a communication whole consisting of conscious, programmed and coordinated activities.

• Marketing in restaurants
• SMS marketing
• SMS marketing features in restaurants

Marketing Work in Restaurants

Marketing in restaurants are strategies used to attractively promote services and products to customers. Marketing activities aim to attract customers, create loyalty and increase sales. In other words, it is a set of activities that bring new customers to the restaurant, ensure that those who come return, that is, bring the return for the service. There are many activities that can be done to avoid the difficulties that may arise if insufficient marketing is done. Some of these are as follows:

• Make your brand standards concrete. This includes business, purpose, vision, logo, texts, various visuals, videos and business guidelines.

• Make a marketing plan. Plan activities for 3, 6 or the whole year by taking small steps.
• Use a website that looks proper on every device (desktop, tablet, mobile phones) that technology brings us.
• Take an active role in social media. Organize digital marketing.
• Create a digital customer database. Create a database based on your customers' email, SMS, social media profile information.
• Think creatively about marketing. Whatever your budget, there are always affordable ways to market your restaurant.

SMS Marketing

Rapidly developing technology has made internet and smartphone use increasingly widespread. In this case, both shopping and marketing methods have also been updated in accordance with these developments. SMS marketing is a marketing method that businesses do with permission-based or preference-based short and action-provoking messages along with reminders or coupons. All texts prepared within this method should contain a maximum of 160 characters. Studies conducted for SMS marketing give positive results without messages turning into spam when conducted with an effective strategy. SMS marketing is a method suitable for both existing and potential customers. Moreover, businesses can choose this marketing method to reach consumers who are interested in their products or services or people they want to remind their campaigns. Brands can use this digital marketing method by generally sending discount codes, special promotions and notifications to their customers they target or have obtained necessary permissions via text message. There are some factors to pay attention to in the preparation phase for this. When preparing an effective SMS marketing strategy, these are paid attention to:

• First, the customer audience to whom SMS will be sent should be determined and a list should be made.

• Messages should be clear and understandable, in accordance with character limitations. On the other hand, care should be taken to use keywords.
• In SMS marketing, redirection must be made to the message to be sent. For example, if the recipient is being directed to online shopping, the business's link can be added to the message.
• If you will create a first impression about your business, attention-grabbing and appealing expressions about campaigns should be included.
• The campaign conducted in this marketing method should be integrable with the business's other campaigns. For example, when SMS and email marketing are used together, you can get more efficient results.

Areas Where SMS Marketing Is Preferred

SMS marketing is mostly preferred by businesses, e-commerce sites and corporate companies. Many people who want to introduce products they offer for sale at their physical stores or e-commerce sites to large audiences and grow their business use this marketing method. Moreover, educational institutions, politicians and municipalities also implement this method with short messages. Areas where SMS marketing is preferred are as follows:

• Product Promotion: This is the most suitable method you can choose for marketing when you launch a new product or service. On the other hand, the number of people you can reach with this strategy is quite high. Thus, you can inform many people about your new products. It is much more functional compared to traditional methods in informing potential customers.

• Discount News: Various discounts can be made to attract your customers' attention to your brand and products. However, if you do not announce this effectively, it may become difficult to make as much profit as you targeted. With SMS marketing, you can reach your campaigns to very large audiences. Moreover, you can create coupons or discount codes according to your customers' activities and lead them to shop more frequently from your brand.

It is mostly possible to see SMS marketing examples in banks, restaurants, gyms and tourism. They use this method to strengthen the interaction between customers and brands in advertisements, warnings, notifications, reminders, product information and many more areas. All businesses from small-scale businesses to world-famous brands can reach their customers with this marketing method.

SMS Marketing for Restaurants and Its Advantages

SMS marketing features provide many benefits to restaurants. By sending bulk SMS, you too can make your communication with your customers stronger and increase your customer potential. The advantages of SMS marketing done with bulk message sending are as follows:

1. Compared to email open rates averaging 17%, you can understand why most restaurant owners prefer bulk SMS marketing.

2. Approximately 85% of messages are viewed within the first 3 minutes. This advantage will be quite efficient especially when you have short-term campaigns, when you want to evaluate your restaurant's availability, that is, within that day.
3. SMS marketing includes not only the times when your customers are in front of the television or at the computer, but also the times when they spend time outside, perhaps in an environment very close to you. Therefore, with SMS advertising, you can reach your customers through their mobile devices, which are closest to them, in the fastest way and see its effect in the fastest way.
4. Everything about SMS sending is measurable. You can find a lot of information from which customers received the restaurant's SMS message to the number of clicks on a link or phone number in the message.

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