Turn Casual Customers into Regulars to Build a Solid Customer Base for Your Restaurant
Wouldn’t it be great if you had regulars or customers who use your restaurant’s services repeatedly and more frequently than casual customers who might only use your services once and never return? Today, MHA is presenting ways to turn your casual customers into regular customers for your restaurant, which will reassure your restaurant that it will always have customers and sales every time it opens. The tips and instructions are as follows:
- Give your customers a good experience.
Before we get to the question of how to turn casual customers into regulars, we want you to check whether your restaurant is ready to give your customers a good experience because, however good you are at marketing, if the customers have bad experiences with your restaurant’s services, it’ll be hard to convince them to come back.
A “good experience” in using a restaurant’s services comes from all the components of the restaurant, starting from greeting customers, taking orders, waiting time, good service, the appropriate quality, flavor and amount of food and a reasonable price. The restaurant’s atmosphere, decorations and promotions also play a part.
The mistake many restaurants make is thinking that their services are already perfect in all aspects, so they neglect to conduct a customer opinion survey to improve and make their services even better. Only when customers disappear in large numbers do they start to recognize the restaurants’ issues.
Tip: You should be open to hearing criticism from customers by reading reviews or conducting a survey in the restaurant to summarize the opinions so you can improve your services in the future.
2.Know Your Restaurant’s True Target Group
First you have to understand that each customer group has unique preferences and lifestyles. Saying that your customers can be just anyone isn’t quite right, particularly for restaurants with a unique characteristic or format.
Therefore, you first have to understand the characteristics of your customer group. Learn about their wants, limitations and behaviors when choosing a restaurant. For example, if your target group is teenagers, the snack dishes you offer might have to be fried dishes or dishes with cheese or
food that looks cute, outstanding and look attractive in pictures. That’s how you can access this customer group.
Tip: A restaurant can target several customer groups, but you mainly have to look for what the customers have the most in common with each other, for example, they like meat, cake or spicy food, etc.
3. Conduct a Survey to Find out What Types of Customers Have a Chance of Becoming Regulars
You may have to talk to new customers in your restaurants. (As for how to determine whether a customer is old or new, it really helps to use Line OA or Facebook check-ins.) Once you have some information, you could try to sort the customers out into groups so you can use the proper marketing strategies for each group. You can simply consider them as follows:
Group A includes customers who already like the type of food you’re selling. This group’s behavior already has them mainly choosing the kind of food they like and they usually search for restaurants that offer the kind of food they like on the Internet first. So, the challenge for this group is how to make your restaurant stand out from other restaurants and make the customers come back.
Group B includes customers who either live or work near the restaurant but just discovering and visiting the restaurant for the first time. The challenge for this group, other than how to make your restaurant stand out, is how to make the customers see the interesting things your restaurant has to offer when the customers return.
Group C includes casual customers or customers who didn’t intend to stop by in the first place, such as a group of friends coming for the first time or people stopping by just because they are in the area. You have to impress them first to create a chance of them returning.
Tip: At any rate, some restaurants may think it’s too difficult, marketing-wise, to sort the customers into groups. If it’s inconvenient for you to do so, you can use the same marketing strategies for all 3 of these groups.
4. Customer Relationship Management
Create a customer relationship management (CRM) system by using offline and online marketing tools as follows:
– Check in and Like the restaurant’s Facebook page to boost the page’s engagement rate and to follow the restaurant’s content as well as promotions offered by the restaurant. You may include some discount or a small free dish to make customers Like or Share the page. You may have to offer a small incentive dish or discount at first.
– Add the restaurant’s LINE Official to distribute news about and promotions offered by the restaurant. This also makes it convenient for customers to communicate with the restaurant if they want to make a reservation, order food in advance or order a food delivery.
– Offer membership to customers. The customers will get a restaurant card or rewards card to give them incentive to come back for the promotions that come with the membership.
Tip: Use whichever tool that’s convenient for you as the main tool. You can also learn more about online marketing from => 6 Online Restaurant Promotion Channels, Do Them All for an Endless Stream of Visitors
5. Use Promotions as Incentives for Customers to Come Back
– Collecting points for redeeming for the restaurant’s souvenirs or special dish. For example, if you eat a hundred baht worth of food, you’ll get a stamp on your reward card. Once you collect five stamps, you can redeem them for a special dish. If you collect ten stamps, you can redeem them for another dish or you can collect enough stamps and redeem them for a free menu item, etc. This method is perfect for restaurants where customers can eat regularly and the prices aren’t too high. However, you should clearly establish a validity period for collecting the stamps and redeeming them to encourage customers to visit the restaurant again within the valid time period, for example, a card with a validity period of 3 or 6 months, by considering a frequency that’s possible for customers to visit your restaurant. This method is mainly suitable for Group A and Group B customers.
– Membership discount. The next time you eat at the restaurant, you’ll get a 5% – 10% discount when you show your membership card. This method will make the customers remember your restaurant’s name and encourage repeat business. This method is also suitable for Group A and Group B customers.
– If you don’t have a membership system or if the customers aren’t interested in becoming a member, try giving them a discount for their next visit. You could specify this on the receipt. This method is good for encouraging repeat business on a visit-to-visit basis. It’s great for restaurants with a high customer turnover rate every day and too many customers to offer a membership card to everyone. It also lets you save on the cost of making membership cards. This method is better for customers in Group C than the other groups.
Tip: Before choosing which promotion is good for encouraging repeat business, you have to carefully calculate the cost and profit. Otherwise, you might lose money.
6. Make the Customers Feel Special
The customers will feel like they are important to the restaurant because of the special attention they get, which is different from casual customers. This can be in the form of souvenirs on special occasions for members. For example, if they eat at the restaurant on their birthday and meet the minimum price, the restaurant will give them cake or ice cream. It doesn’t have to be anything expensive, but it still makes a good impression.
If it’s not convenient for you to give out the aforementioned discounts and freebies, try customizing or adjusting your services to satisfy the customers on a person-to-person basis because customers feel more impressed by restaurants that pay attention to their regulars than other restaurants. You could customize the flavors to suit customer taste by adding/reducing/omitting the ingredients they don’t like or you could have them specify the details on the menu if it’s a menu written by the customer or you could ask the customer when taking the orders at the table.
There are plenty more tips for turning casual customers into regular customers. In short, you have to truly know and understand your customers, distinguish them to meet the right needs of the group, create a communication with the customers, give them incentive through promotions and make the customers feel important. When you put all of these processes together with your restaurant’s excellent service, you can definitely increase the number of regulars you have. You can learn more marketing tips for restaurant with MHA in our next article.
