The recent pandemic has shook the world and has altered our ways of doing things. Through thick and thin, we have observed everything going into an adaptive phase with this ‘ new normal’, and so has the food industry.
Needless to say, the food sector probably above all has been the most affected.
Through all the conditions brought in, ensuring client safety and keeping them assured about it with no compromise in quality is paramount for survival and to maintain your restaurant Growth.
This is where we’d like to acquaint you with WhatsApp Ordering.
Through these testing times, WhatsApp has emerged as an incredible tool in revolutionising the modes of food ordering and delivery.
This great app takes food ordering to the highest levels of safety, firstly, by making the arrangement a thoroughly contactless one. Furthermore, it cuts off a lot of needless time loss, enabling a worry-free transaction between you and your customer.
WhatsApp ordering is the best instrument you can employ with it’s unbelievably affordable pricing, massive and hassle free outreach.
The features of WhatsApp ordering have been well recognised and utilized by some major industries. It is high time that the Food sector incorporates and reaps its benefits for their restaurant growth as well.
Most restaurants, although making use of technology are not adequately updated, using the usual private phone numbers with limitations instead of a business profile.
Switching to a business profile will not only make your job easier, but also, it will cater to your customers with the efficiency that you wish to provide.
Marketing tips for restaurant through WhatsApp business
Before we get into the absolute details, we’d like to get you well versed with WhatsApp business and WhatsApp business API.
Both these tools were developed keeping in mind the convenience that could be provided to various businesses through WhatsApp. While the WhatsApp business is meant for small scale corporations, the WhatsApp business API is a paid version with more premium tools, meant for large scale industries.
These versions have emerged as highly valuable tools to promote and improve connection between brands and their clients. The app allows businesses to create “business profiles” including details like address and contact information that makes them available to their clients in all modes, and at all times.
The platform is used to answer any queries their customers might have, including pre-determined automated replies for FAQs and welcome texts.
As the app works in favour of the growth of your restaurant, it is necessary that you couple it with the right marketing strategy to keep yourself a step ahead.
Timely reminders and notifications
A great use that restaurants can make of this app is using it to send out notifications to their customers well in advance before the set timing. This will allow them to be mindful of the reservation, and also bring in customers to your restaurant.
This initiative will also enable your customers to know that they can rely on you when it comes to their dining activities, thus bringing in more loyal customers.
Keep your customers updated
Let your customers know they’re a significant part of your restaurant. With WhatsApp, this task becomes easier than you think. All that you’re required to do is send out the information to all your customers in case of a new update.
Got a new item added to the menu?
Go ahead and let your customers know all about it, have them visiting your restaurant to give it a try. This has been proven largely beneficial to restaurants because of almost no expenditure on any kind of advertising or marketing.
What makes WhatsApp a perfect restaurant marketing tool ?
One for all
Sure, the world is on the edge of technology that is being utilized to its maximum capability, also by a great number of app developers. The result is a massive number of apps that work only for food ordering and delivery.
The real problem starts when users are forced to download company apps that serve a single cause- ordering food online- too much hassle, right?
Naturally, this drives your customers to look for apps that offer an all inclusive service- features hosted by WhatsApp that you can put to use.
Cut out middlemen charges!
Also, these food delivery apps mostly work as middlemen in the transactions between you and your customers. This prevents you from attaining the benefit of knowing your customers- a requisite to form connections, by understanding their orders when you serve them directly.
WhatsApp allows you to conveniently let you reach out to your customers. The additional money charged by food delivery apps to both customers and restaurant owners for their delivery service can now be avoided with no worries. Of course, money saved is a bliss for any business, right?
Create personalized customer profiles
Now, when you understand your customer, it becomes all the more easy for you to create a personalised report of their likes and dislikes and send them personalised offers.
Let’s say, for instance, you find a customer repetitively ordering Burgers and fries, so the next time, send them personalized offers in relation to these items on the menu. This trick will help you retain the customers you have, and also bring in new customers to your restaurant, eventually leading to a double ROI.
Massive Outreach
A huge number of people around the world make use of the WhatsApp application to text, call and make a wide range of arrangements, including ordering food and other commodities, along with carrying out the payments for these items- all possible through a single app. As the app slowly adds value to many users, take a wise decision and make the best use of its features to level up your restaurant business.
You can also witness a surge in your business expansion, as WhatsApp lets you reach out to overseas customers. Since countless people across the world massively use it, you don’t have to spend extra bucks to expand or setup your business overseas.
Effortless integration with facebook
It is not a surprise to know that WhatsApp has become a social media platform existing as a part of Facebook. This makes it integrated with Facebook as well as Instagram, not to forget their massive popularity. This allows them to have direct links Chat with Us to WhatsApp.
To sum it all into one, this allows your customers to directly reach you through the WhatsApp links provided on the advertisement on Instagram and Facebook.
Automated WhatsApp Chat bots
A great feature hosted by the WhatsApp business API is the integration of chatbots. These minimize staff workload by responding to text messages and queries in an automated manner.
The WhatsApp chatbots makes it possible for you to present complete menus, take orders and payments, and also verify delivery addresses. Alongside this, they are also capable of updating customers with their deliveries and orders.
Besides, your human team can now finally focus on more critical tasks instead of wasting time on addressing the most common queries. If the chatbots finds any query to be critical, it can forward it to any human agent for faster and better solution. Chatbots can never get tired and work without any break even in odd hours. Thus, chances of losing clients by restaurant owners goes down.
Communication at lightning speed
The aspect that allows users to share media through this app makes it highly feasible for restaurant owners to send Pdfs and images of menus, maps, payment receipts etc, to make the process hassle free through its clean interface and scrolling.
Any discrepancy can easily be reported within a few taps. Instant messaging is all set to drive your restaurant business on a smooth road. WhatsApp saves you a lot of the time and money that you would otherwise spend on maintaining an app for your restaurant.
Robust security
An enormous number of customers have had concerns regarding their data safety on the internet. Heeding to this, WhatsApp has solved this issue by presenting end-to-end encryption. This means that the information and data of your customers remains between you and your customer solely, thus keeping them assured about the safety of their data.
Even so, this information is auto deleted in a set time. To make this pact even worry-free and sturdy, WhatsApp has further introduced a two factor authentication and verification badges to help you build trust with your customers.
Track your performance
Finally, the platform provided by this app is a great tool to monitor the progress of your restaurant through the number of people that communicate with your brand on the app.
By collecting the reports of these platforms, it becomes easy for you to track the negative and positive aspects of your restaurants – especially tracking dishes that are doing well and those that need modifications.
It is high time that you switch to a business profile, the steps are simple: upload your menu and let the app do the rest.
Know about customer preferences with shortcut
Let’s admit it. It takes forever to know about customer preference by investing in costly marketing campaigns. Maintaining the previous buying history of each customer further invites a messy problem.
So, skip the tough work and switch to WhatsApp Business to gain detailed and real-time insights about customer preference. Right from the day when a customer makes a query about a product, you can have everything you need about his/her choice while buying.
Accordingly, you can restrategize your marketing campaigns and target your customers with personalised products.
Build trust among your customers
When you offer the right products to right customers, your business is more likely to grow without any hurdles. Well, following the trends of Instagram and Facebook, WhatsApp too rolled out Green tick for the brands who maintain a solid reputation among their customers.
Green tick beside your business name can surely boost up your credibility and help you to build trust among your customers with little effort. Want to know how your business can get a Green badge? Check this one.
To get started, you will surely need help from a business solutions provider like Twerlo to scale up your restaurant business by leveraging the potential of WhatsApp.
So what’s keeping you from reaching out to us? Our team will be glad to help you.
