How to use Twitter to build loyalty
As any wise marketer will tell you, it costs less to retain an existing customer than attract a new one. So it’s a good idea to find ways of maintaining contact with customers long after they’ve left to encourage repeat visits and fill your seats more often.
As you might have heard, there’s a lot of fuss over Twitter in marketing circles at the moment. This is because it offers great potential for building customer loyalty and relationship building.
This means you need to get creative about the ways you can advertise your Twitter address and the benefits customers will gain from following you. A couple of suggestions are to feature the address on your menu, on posters and on business cards when handing over the bill, whilst advising customers they’ll get exclusive deals only available to Twitter followers.
Once you’ve attracted a few customers to your flock, you can start using Twitter to distribute your special offers. The beauty of Twitter is that people can ‘retweet’ your messages and spread them virally, helping to do your restaurant’s marketing for you. In the same way, you could retweet positive comments made by your customers. Because, as you know, endorsements by your diners are restaurant marketing gold.
But Twitter isn’t just for sending out discounts and promotional advertising, because this will soon have your followers yawning and losing interest. So mix your tweets up with a variety of fun and interesting messages. This could include:
• Recipe ideas
• Interesting food facts
• Tweets about the people running the restaurant
• Photos of mouth watering dishes or special events
• A new menu
• Daily specials
• Photos taken by diners while enjoying their meal
• Follow up on customer comments after they dined at your restaurant
Adding a dash of humour can also go a long way because social media is supposed to be fun, after all, and you’ll want your Tweet’s to reflect your restaurant’s personality.
Another popular marketing saying is that ‘people like to do business with those they like and trust’. The conversational nature of Twitter makes it a great tool for building rapport with customers and persuading them to return to your restaurant again and again.
Sources:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-restaurant-marketing/9154/
http://www.restaurantreport.com/Departments/biz_twitter-for-restaurants.html
http://www.marketingrestaurantonline.com/2009/02/18/using-twitter-how-can-you-effectively-accomplish-your-restaurant-branding-online/
http://www.marketingrestaurantonline.com/2009/03/16/7-rules-on-twitter-that-restaurants-can-follow-to-attract-more-followers-and-turning-them-into-customers/
