We bet you’ve been working hard on your restaurant menu to offer the best specials around. Even though you probably did an excellent job in the kitchen, your marketing efforts could be a bit better, and we know how to fix this.
Your clients, just like all of us, fall in love with aesthetically beautiful content. People want to see an excellent visual presentation of the dishes you offer. Otherwise, they’ll just never think of ordering those based just on the naming or ingredients. Thankfully, there is a set of tips that you can apply to your restaurant menu to make your specials more appealing and desirable.
Do research and learn more about your target audience
First things first, let’s make sure you’re not knocking the wrong doors. Before you work on your menu marketing, you need to learn more about your restaurant visitors. Here are a few questions that you might need to ask yourself as a result of your research:
- Are you sure your specials are not too experimental for your visitors?
- What is the demographics of your average visitor?
- How much time do your guests review the menu?
Everything matters at this point. You need to know more about the underlying preferences of your guests; you need to see if they make it to the menu page with the specials or not, etc.
This is your groundwork, the starting point. Let’s say you’ve already done that; then it’s time to go further.
Gather feedback from your clients
This is a great chance to understand what may be wrong with your specials or why people actually ignore some of the menu items. For the second part of your research, we offer you to divide your clients into two separate groups:
- Those who decided to try your specials.
- Those who did not.
Just have a quick chat with them and learn why they ignored your specials or decided to give it a go. Learn whether they liked them or not.
Expert tip: Don’t forget to reward your respondents with a free dessert or a tasty discount. Make sure they understand how much you value their attention and help.
Forget about the lame and boring paper menu
Your research quest is over; now it’s time to make your first changes. Some of them may sound radical, and some of them will be surprisingly exciting. We offer you to start with the actual restaurant menu format. Just change it.
The era of the traditional paper menus is almost behind. If you’re not digitizing your business, you’re playing the catch-up game with your competitors. Consider this as a major innovation that will be a game changer for your menu specials struggle.
Going digital is not hard. All you’ll need is a set of digital signage menu boards and a few displays to market some of your dishes in the lobby and the main hall.
Thankfully, modern digital signage software is very scalable and convenient. It allows you to work with tons of menu formats and deliver different types of content at any given minute. It’s like getting yourself a magic stick that makes everything digital.
Work on your photography for dish presentation
When we talk about the digital menu board content, we tend to forget that it’s not just about texts these days. Now it’s time for you to prepare good visual materials showcasing the dishes you’d like to market to your guests.
Yes, digital signage software allows you to deliver photos, videos, powerpoint presentations, slow-mo shoots, etc. But it’s up to you now to work on preparing these materials.
Make sure you work with the industry professionals and arrange a few photos and video shoots to get yourself a great dish-portfolio to show to your customers. This is crucial.
Use your happy customers’ feedback
This is actually a great way to encourage new guests to try something new. Help them see that this is not just new; it’s a hot new arrival that gets positive feedback and is sold out faster than light.
People tend to consider something less risky or just more trustworthy if they see that someone else tried this and had an excellent experience.
Shoot short videos to support your specials presentation
Photography is not the only type of content that will help you sell out your specials like hot potatoes. Basically, all kinds of visual content will be great, but only videos will give you enough dynamics.
Videos allow you to showcase your specials from different angles or maybe even show the actual cooking process to tease your clients’ appetite. Digital menu signage software will help you rotate the video content in a second. Speaking of the content rotation...
Rotate your digital signage menu board content
Digital signage menu is exciting, convenient and more practical, but what’s the key to success? We’d say content rotation.
So let’s say you’ve got yourself a digital signage restaurant menu, but did you prepare enough content? That’s what you’ve got to work on. Your efforts will pay off, cause content rotation will be a visual treat to your customers, and they’ll be able to make a more informed decision.
Conclusion
We genuinely believe that digital signage restaurant menu is the best solution for your restaurant, cafe, bar or even pub. Basically, whenever you want to bring your clients’ attention to your new specials, you’ll be able to run comprehensive marketing campaigns utilizing your signage displays and software.
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