02 Aug How to get started with Digital Marketing for Caterers in 2020
Catering is and has always been in demand across the world. If you’re starting a catering business, or expanding your production to be able to manage larger orders; get ready for a challenge! While word of mouth and referrals are great, it is now possible to be ‘top of mind’ for customers through a good strategy using digital marketing for caterers.
You’re well aware that it’s crucial that you stand out of the crowd to truly scale your business. For this, you should not only have to be excellent in the food, but also your catering marketing must play an active role to make your business successful.
- Discovering your ideal Customer:
There are three phases through which digital marketing for a catering business works. This is true of any online conversion funnel.
- Awareness Phase: Putting your food and brand in front of the customer- preferably through an event they are attending, or otherwise immersive imagery helps online. Social media and branding are important here.
- Consideration Phase: In this phase, a customer has a need and may be actively on the look out on for catering companies.
Listings on Aggregators and Ranking in Search Results are important here.
- Taking Action: The process of conversion funnel completes at this process when customer selects the best catering option and hires them (hopefully you!) for their occasion.
Readily available and up to date information, an easy contact process are important here.
Having a well rounded approach on Search Engines, Aggregators, and Social Media platforms can help you be the first choice for your customer.
- Local Searches:
If you want your catering business to build organic traffic over time, then it must have strong presence in the local community. Google is the most popular platform which most people use for searching, so make sure that you’ve Claimed your Google My Business Page (read about how to do that) and optimised your profile too. Read our piece on SEO for your Restaurant to learn more about the best practices.
- Website:
Since you’ll want to convert high value clients, a nice website can add a professional touch for your catering marketing strategy. To market catering company online, your website doesn’t need to be cutting edge or overly complicated. Go to wix.com, Weebly, or WordPress, and select a template of your choice, and make it your aim that you have to bring something into market which is unique to you and your business.
Furthermore, highly optimized landing pages to support your marketing or promotion plan is another crucial factor for successful digital marketing for your catering company. Your landing page reflect your branding, have appropriate content (text and great images) to get and direct the viewers attention. Also, link your social media links on your website; this helps to establish your authenticity and generally garner more exposure.
Your landing page should be user-friendly, so your customers can easily contact you or submit their information.
Follow these steps to excel at Digital Marketing for Caterers:
- Social Media:
Stay up-to-date on social media platforms, especially Instagram and Facebook. Do post your daily (or at least bi weekly) posts, Special food items, offer updates, and videos. Interaction with your customers regularly helps increase sales.
- Pay Per Click:
This advertisement will help you to target a specific audience on particular occasions. For instance, Birthday Catering, Office Party Catering, Occasions such as Christmas, Diwali, Weddings, and so on.
- Online Aggregators and directories:
Adding your catering in relevant food directories can help to lift your catering marketing. Try and get included in blog ‘lists of best caterers’ or featured in a category as well.
- Get Personal:
Interaction with people apart from digital marketing is a great and old school way to promote your business. Try to build connections with wedding planners, business communities, sports club, golf clubs, and numerous such organizations which can be helpful for your catering business. The thing which works the most in this strategy is that you take your special dish with you and let them try. “People forget faces, but not TASTE.” If your food is delicious enough, then you will see their interest increase. This is also an opportune moment to share your menu so that they can see what else you offer.
Following are ideas which you can use for catering marketing in your locality:
- Banks and financial offices:
Banks and other financial institutes have a long chain of employees working there for hours. Therefore, they usually need a catering service for their company which can supply daily food to them, or also in meetings and larger events. - Law Offices:
Legal teams can be a great target customer for your catering business, as they work long and late hours. Therefore, go to some Law office and offer them your catering menu and offer them one of your tasty dishes. If they like it, then the chances are that they will hire your Catering service for a large number of employees.
- Ad Agencies:
Ad agencies are also working long hours, and they do require any catering service which can supply them daily food. They also host and promote events and are bound to need your talents and delicious food eventually.
- Hire Food Influencers:
If you have a friend who is a food blogger and have large following, get help from him/her to cover your catering business through their point of view. Consider our piece on ‘Influencers for your Food Business’ to learn more about this.
- Find Popular Blogs:
Finding a blog that fits your catering niche is also a great way to increase your business. First you have to search for a blog, which covers your targeted audience, and once you find it, then approach the owner of the blog and send him a proposal. For example, if the blog is updating content about sugar-free dishes, then tell the owner that you can make delicious yet healthy dishes. If you help a blogger with what he is already doing, they are more likely to partner too.
Once you get connected with the blogger and they put your content, make sure to provide your by-line (your company name and city), and give a backlink to your website. It will help you to get potential customer coverage and increase in number of followers.
- Target wedding blogs:
This niche always remains in the mainstream for most caterers. Define your blogger that you want him/her to write a blog in which you want to show that “how brides can cut down catering costs to spend more money on that gown,” “how they can cut cost in catering Bill without spoiling menu.”
- Use Reviews and Testimonials:
Using testimonials for your business develop trustworthy relationships with your audience, and they become more likely to hire you. Therefore, utilize your website in the right way, and collect all the positive feedbacks of your customers and post them on a testimonial section of your website. Also, make sure to deal with negative review professionally so that the customer can observe both sides of stories.