The season of gifts and offers is on the roll. So what are you waiting for?
People are waiting for their Santas to bring them presents, to make their holiday season a happy season.
And you are their Santas, who would get back a lot of happiness (sales and profits) by giving out gifts (offers and deals).
Knowing this, you are still confused with your creative level of offering?
Don't worry, dear Santas...
We have planned out some creative holiday offers for your beloved customers.
Just have a look, get your way of present and offer it...
1. Plan the Holiday rush
Putting a plan in place as soon as the holiday slump starts is an important step to generating sales throughout the year.
With a plan in hand, create various promotion ideas and considering the best one, execute accordingly.
Planning beforehand will give you an overall insight of the promotions, of your targeted audience and the sales figure.
You can learn what works best for you and apply those during the holiday season.
2. Offer special meals
Every celebration starts with specials. So this holiday season provides customers with some special meals.
As Singaporeans love varieties and food, they would love to taste your new food experiments.
Offer some special meals catered for the holiday week. A special combo set with drinks or a lunch or dinner meal set.
Idea: Create a combo set of starter, drinks OR a meal set with a soup, main course, dessert that would be available only for holiday time.
For National Day, create a set comprising of Thai, Malay, Indian, Chinese flavors and taste, and name it something related to the day, say 'Singaporean Flavor Set'
Introduce some new dishes in your menu and bring it on this festive season.
3. Special deals and discounts
Though the moto is to bring the value, sometimes we need to give out discounts to bring on the value.
You can even offer BOGO 'Buy One Get One' or other discount deals like 10% off etc to make your customers holiday - the perfect.
By offering BOGO, you can easily sell the products that are not doing great. It would be an advantage for your inventory, sales and as well as your customers.
With offers, they may taste the dishes they never tried and what if they found it delicious?
Just think of the Positive Profitable Side!
Idea: A dessert free on orders of 5 OR Buy 1 and Get 1 drink on the house.
Offer a 10% discount on all meal set.
4. Flash Sales before a holiday weekend
Similarly like a discount sale, flash sales offer products at a sale price.
You can use strikeout options that would display the sale price as the original price with a strikeout option.
As National Day is on its way, you can offer some meal sets or drinks at a flash price to celebrate the nation's unity by giving out advantages to your customers.
Idea: Drop the price of your signature recipes and exotic dishes and give each and every food lover a taste of your specials.
For example, the meal set that costs S$ 16.50, offer it on S$15 or S$14, etc.
5. Show some urgency
As the holiday season is for a limited time, why not offer them a time-bound offer?
Just like an "Available for 4 hours" with a count down timer. The fear of slipping the offer from the hands make customers order more to avail those offers and deals.
Idea: Offer some exotic drinks on discounted prices for a limited time offer, just like the happy hours, etc.
6. Loyalty Programs
When it's about promotion and sales, loyalty programs have always been a hit.
Giving back customers in the form of loyalty points incentivizes them to come back to your restaurant again.
For this, you can present loyalty points to new members, as 10 points on new sign up, 5 points on online table reservation, etc.
For existing customers, you can provide say 10 points on DineIn, or on referring a friend, etc.
Idea: 10 loyalty points on registering and ordering,
10 points to a loyal customer on referring a friend,
5 points to those who subscribe to your mailing list.
Keep these deals valid for a finite time.
7. Hold a contest
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter play a major role in everyone's life at present.
So to make your and your customers holiday time interesting, arrange some contest at your place or some online game contest on social media.
And add some offers and prizes with the contest so that a lot of people would be willing to take part.
Idea: To organize a contest, you can offer a game at your place with a meal set that customer needs to finish in 20-30 minutes and the winner would get 20 loyalty points or 10% discount on next visit or 2 drinks free, etc.
For social media, post a pic and ask for some fancy names and the winner would be getting say free desserts for 3 or a special combo set with some exciting offers and deals.
8. Customer support / Shopping cart deliveries
Many times, customers abandon the cart with the products in it. The main reason is the slow delivery and inappropriate customer support.
It's holiday season and something that upsets your customers cannot be good for your sales as well.
So try to provide some effective delivery methods, in fact, provide free delivery that allows you to beat your competitors.
9. Sending Thank You or Welcome Wishes via auto emails
Use technology to boost up sales and to trigger ad campaigns.
Based on your customer's preferences and activities, invite them for new offers or thank them for their valuable participation, send them wishes with exciting deals and discounts.
Many marketers are unaware of the value of a perfectly timed email or push message.
In the era of smartphones, where everyone is addicted to phones, no one would miss out on these notifications and emails.
Idea: Send out "Celebrate Diwali with Indian Specials" email wishing customers a Happy Diwali and inviting them to taste your delicacies with an offer in hand.
While sending out emails, don't forget to check your email format, if you don't want it to get spammed.
10. Take part in activities
One of the best ways to attract customers is by engaging in various activities or arranging some events at your place.
You can participate in some festival celebrations going around in the neighborhood and serve your specials at an offer price. This way you can meet new people, upsell and as well stay connected with new changes going around.
If not participate, what about arranging some event at your place, like a Halloween themed party or such?
Make sure that customers are all over in the theme. To make the customers participate more actively, declare a 20 loyalty points to the winner of the Halloween party of which 50% can be redeemed on current order, etc.
11. Make your user-friendly website
Nothing works if you don't upgrade your business with the technology, i.e. a user-friendly, fast and eCommerce website that allows easy shopping.
It's necessary to have a website that has an attractive design but along with that, you need a website that has all the basic and advanced features and functionalities.
With an eCommerce section, you can provide take away or online order offers and deals.
Just don't get away with vendors designing, don't miss out on these webdesign features.
12. Post-holiday offers
Once the holiday season is over, patrons get upset as they have to wait for the next special day to get on the offers.
In such a situation, providing offers that customers can avail even after the holiday festive is a hit for sales.
Idea: For this kind of promotion, offer some loyalty points which they can redeem on their next visit or you can distribute discount coupon to the customers who visited or ordered during the holiday season, stating that this discount coupon is valid for 4 days after holiday spree.
Final Thoughts:
Along with these ideas, you can plan on some more like, participating with another business or pricing it right!
Until then, get your hand on some cool reasons to market digitally.
And
Learn how to start a food blog to get the customers into the door.