Since more restaurants now provide delivery services, eating out is no longer a daily activity for most customers. In addition, as restaurants adopt new technologies and services, like working food delivery services, India online food delivery market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 28.9% during 2022-2027.
Both good and bad news follows from this.
It’s good news that customers and restaurants are interested in using the delivery service. But, it could be better because more delivery services are vying for that market share.
1. Continue to Enhance your Services
Most businesses believe that the quality of their service sets them apart from the competition. This is because quality service always helps in drawing customers. Maintaining that quality will allow you to keep those customers.
Here are three services that, whether your food delivery business is just getting started or has been around for a while, you should never stop enhancing:
1. Superior Customer Service: If you haven’t already, you should become an expert in this crucial business function. Remember that your customer service representatives and delivery personnel are the company’s public face. What they say and do to customers from their initial inquiries until their orders are delivered can make the difference between an angry and loyal customer.
2. Quick delivery: About 27% of customers are willing to pay more for a quick delivery. Regardless of the cost, customers are unlikely to use a slow delivery service. Find a way to increase the speed of your deliveries, such as by hiring more staff or designing more efficient routes.
3. Tracking and Updates: In addition to providing excellent customer service, it’s important to provide updates and to track when food is running late, there are too many orders, or a delivery person is lost and in need of directions—request emails or phone numbers to keep customers informed about their food delivery as needed.
2. Establish an Online Presence
Hosting a website to represent a company’s online presence has become commonplace. With it, local and international customers can effectively communicate with your brand on social media or by email. Creating a website accessible to anyone from anywhere is critical in establishing an online presence for local businesses.
Additionally, it is always accessible to anyone, broadening your customer base and expanding your reach internationally. Today, the majority of consumers search for goods and services online. You stand to gain from SEO optimization and online advertising opportunities as you establish an online presence, which ultimately aids in your exposure.
Also Read: Omnichannel Marketing & it’s Benefits and Challenges
3. Social Media to Promote Food Delivery
Social media marketing is now a necessity; your company must either get on board or fall behind. Selfies aren’t the only thing on social media anymore. It helps you increase sales and establish your brand as the preferred option for food delivery because that is where your customers reside. More than ever, 40% of consumers now learn about food online.
Produce food-related content since your delivery service is in the food industry. Social media helps in:
1. Enhanced brand awareness: social media is excellent for building your brand and enhancing consumer awareness.
2. Enhanced customer engagement: Since social media, by its very nature, is interactive, there will be numerous opportunities for you to interact with both current and potential clients.
3. Increased visibility: Social media provides many opportunities for people to learn about your delivery service, including through your natural posts, advertisements, and user interactions.
4. Make a Mobile Application
Your food delivery service may have access to a wide range of opportunities thanks to a mobile app. By 2023, the global food delivery mobile app market that was put at $3.78 billion in 2017 should grow to a whopping $16.61 billion in value, which is a compound annual growth rate of 27.9 percent, according to Allied Market Research. Nowadays, people view apps as a tool or business extension that allows them to quickly connect to services with just a tap of their finger. As a result, they are most likely to communicate and buy something later.
If they enjoy your content, you can build a group of devoted brand supporters who will help you promote your business online and offline.
Select a social media network, then start updating your profile with content. Need more certainty about the best social media marketing platform? The best weapons come first!
1. There isn’t a better place to start: start with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. These platforms have been identified as the future front lines in the battle for consumer trust.
2. By allowing users to place orders: whenever and wherever they want without going directly to your website, mobile apps can also encourage new users to become lifelong clients.
3. It’s just math: The sooner customers contact you, the more business you’ll receive. Get people to place orders. A coder or UX designer to make your app work.
5. Work with Food Influencers and Bloggers
Influencers and food bloggers can be your best allies or your worst enemies. We all know how seriously people take their food recommendations, even when they are delivered. So contact well-known influencers and offer them a discount or other incentive in return for a review or blog post. How bloggers and influencers can help:
1.Product Reviews: These are a fantastic way to introduce customers to new stock while being one of the best ways to promote your products.
2. Sponsored Content: Brands can collaborate with micro-influencers or well-known influencers for sponsored content. Your brand will be seen and remembered if various influencers post sponsored content on multiple platforms and formats.
3. Brand Ambassadors and Brand Awareness: They can play a variety of roles. They create content about your brand, promoting it through their brand, hosting events, and generating sales.
6. Participate in Festivals and Food Fairs
Do you want to attract more locals to your food delivery service?
The key to opening up local businesses is finding out if there are nearby food fairs or music festivals. To give people a taste of your food, it is ideal that you participate as a vendor. You must bring marketing materials, such as business cards and flyers, to hand out to customers if you rent a food truck or a stand to sell your food. The information on the materials should include the name and logo of your restaurant, the address of your establishment and the website where customers can place orders.
There are numerous benefits for restaurants attending festivals:
1. Attract new clients: The potential to attract new clients is similar to setting up a pop-up restaurant, except that it does so right in the middle of a crowd of people!
2. Food festivals: You can meet people who have visited your restaurant at festivals. They may be familiar with your food, but participating in events like this gives your brand a face.
3. Try new items on menue: The chance to mix tried-and-true favorites with novel items. If the new items are popular, that may be a sign that you should put them on the menu.
4. Networking: Food festivals offer opportunities for networking with other nearby businesses.
7. Establish a Rewards System
A point-based loyalty program is a great way to enhance the food delivery capabilities of your app. So how can you ensure that diners are content and return for more? Aside from excellent food, ambience, and customer service, nothing makes a new customer more likely to come back than a restaurant loyalty program that consistently offers rewards.
1. Rewards and loyalty: Offer rewards for loyalty at every stop. A restaurant loyalty program offers consistent tips for each visit, such as the ability to accrue points toward a discount or use a voucher after a certain number of visits.
2. Provide personalized experiences: In addition to financial compensation customers adore deals and discounts, but personalized benefits and experiences—like getting a free meal on their birthday—are even more valuable. If you offer appropriate incentives or deals, loyalty members are more likely to participate in your restaurant loyalty program.
3. Design your restaurant loyalty program with a digital and mobile strategy: Customers enjoy and anticipate interacting with restaurants online. This demonstrates a significant opportunity for a digital or mobile system to increase customer retention and foster customer loyalty. In addition, with a digital and mobile presence, restaurants can better understand customer preferences and provide a more individualized experience.
Conclusion
The ball is in your court now that you’ve gathered all this knowledge about marketing a food delivery service. It’s time to network locally and maximize the potential of your website and social media to increase your online sales. Your digital advertising will give your food delivery brand substantial opportunities. You can attract new customers through your restaurant’s website or app and persuade them to place an order.
You need to ensure that your marketing efforts and the quality of your services are on par. Your objective as a food delivery service is to make deliveries on time it is one of the most crucial factors in luring in and keeping customers happy.
