Many restaurant owners are engaging in such activities, creating groups and inviting their customers to join. However, after observation, we found that most of the groups have gone through the following stages: mass-adding people, sending red envelopes on time every day, giving benefits, and gradually becoming an advertising group. These restaurant owners want to do a good job in community operation from a good starting point, but they found out that things backfired. So, in today's article, we will talk about how to do catering community marketing.
This article mainly discusses the gameplay of community marketing from the following aspects:
1. The positioning of the community.
2. Group regulations and operating norms.
3. Promotion and management of the community.
4. Content planning of the community.
5. Development and fission of the community.
1. The positioning of the community
Examples of different community groups (Image Credit - Google)
Before starting a community, you must first know what the purpose of the group is, and what the core work is done around this purpose. This is the positioning of the community. Common dining community positioning includes the following:
Welfare group: The purpose of the Welfare group is to provide benefits every day, attract customers into the store through benefits, and bring passenger flow to the store.
Promotion group: for the purpose of publicity and promotion, you need to interact every day, so that people in the group know your store and come to consumption in your store.
Membership group: mainly for member recharge, member after-sales service, and member welfare distribution, and through members to increase customer participation.
Order group: mainly provide table reservations, takeaway, and other services in the group.
Feedback group: collect customer feedback, comments, and suggestions on in-store products and services.
Most of the catering community is mainly based on welfare. In the actual operation process, all of the above work can be taken into account at the same time. It is not necessary to set up a separate group to collect customer opinions. It is only for ordering meals. Clarifying the purpose of community positioning is to clarify the goal, which will help to adjust the operation method and better achieve the operation goal.
2. Group regulations and operating norms
After the goal is clear, we will start building a group. The most important job when building a group is to formulate group operation specifications. At this stage, pay attention to the following issues:
Group name. Under normal circumstances, the setting of the group name can refer to the name of the store, generally using the brand name + group function. For example, Meal Creation Planet · Member Welfare Group.
Group announcement. Group announcements are generally divided into three parts: the positioning of the group + group rules + group activity announcements. For example, "welcome to join the catering exchange group of the food creation planet. This group aims to provide a learning and communication platform for small catering entrepreneurs. The group will regularly share information on catering management + marketing + technology + store opening. Advertising is prohibited in the group, and topics unrelated to catering are also prohibited." Through such announcements, you can clearly tell new friends what we do and what our rules are.
Group chatbot settings . If the scale of the community and the number of people in the group is relatively large, you can consider using some community operation tools to manage it. With these tools, you can set the content of welcoming new people, reply to keywords in the group, and set up automatic kicking and automatic sending of warnings. If you encounter someone posting advertisements or irrelevant content in the group, you can respond as soon as possible.
3. Promotion and management of the community
Invite people to join the community (Image Credit - Google)
After the community is established, it is necessary to start adding people to the group. Before promoting it to the public, there must be the first batch of seed users. Seed users are generally s employees, friends around them, and some loyal customers. Since these people are relatively familiar, after the group is established, they can be guided to speak in the group, arouse discussion, and boost the group atmosphere. Generally, the number of seed users does not need to be too many so, around 20 or 30 people is enough. After we have seed users, we will start to promote the community. We have summarized the methods of community promotion as follows:
Let employees and friends invite their friends and existing customers to join.
Promote the QR code of the group administrator in the store.
Promote the QR code of the group administrator under the official account article.
Add the QR code of the group administrator to all event posters.
Promote group administrator QR code in all other groups
Launch promotion activities in the store to guide customers into the group.
Generally speaking, except for loyal customers, or customers who are engaging in micro-business or new media entering the group with the purpose of advertising, it is difficult for ordinary people to join the group actively. At this time, it is necessary to do some activities to guide customers to enter the group. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, most stores use discounts and benefits to attract customers to the groups. Another way is to actively attract, and post posters, table stickers, etc. to inform the customer group that there are activities in the group, so that customers can actively scan the code to enter.
After a new customer joins the group, the administrator must greet and interact in time, just like the customer must say hello when entering the store, and the new customer must be informed of the group's purpose, group activities, and how to participate in the activities. If you don't do the first interaction, many people who come to receive benefits may quit after eating and leaving, so there is still a key step at this time which is the administrator should actively add the customer's WhatsApp account as a friend. After adding their WhatsApp account, the customer is not only a WhatsApp group friend, but also a personal friend, so there is a new publicity channel, that is, through the friend zone.
How to add a customer WhatsApp account without them feeling uncomfortable? The answer is: give benefits. Add friends as an administrator, tell them to thank the customer for joining, and give them a membership benefit, so that people will apply through friends.
4. Content planning of the community
The core of community operation is content. If there are only a few red envelopes and discount information occasionally in a group, then such a group will gradually be forgotten by customers, and will eventually become an advertising group. A good content plan should include two parts: one is the content of the daily active group atmosphere and the second is the content of activities.
The daily interaction in the group and the content of the active atmosphere should be carried out around the theme of catering, such as:
Show delicious food in the group. You can post food pictures with good quality to arouse customers' appetite, you can also post photos of large quantities of products in a row to highlight the good business. Different dishes should be set at the right angle to shoot. When publishing, you can beautifully highlight the effect, but you should not overshoot them too much. If it is too distorted, it will reduce customers' perception.
Post the dining scene in the store in the group. When there are many people in the store, you can take photos or videos to highlight the booming business on the spot. There might be some warm dining scenes in the store that can be taken photos or videos to be released in the group, which can help to shape the sense of brand value.
Share health-related life knowledge in the group. In addition to posting content related to products and scenes in the store, you can also post some content related to food and health based on the age characteristics of customers in your store. For example, living in a small city, gourmet recipes, recipe videos, and some new ways to eat food, etc., can make customers acknowledge that this is a store that pays attention to delicious food and health.
Organize offline activity information. You can also regularly organize some member gatherings, new tasting meetings, holiday activities, etc. in the store to attract some existing customers to communicate in the store.
5. Community development and fission
The maximum number of people in a WhatsApp community is 500, but it is generally recommended not to exceed 140. The number 140 is Dunbar's number, which is a number with a scientific basis. Too many people will be difficult to manage, and the operational effect will be poor. Therefore, after a group reaches a certain number of people, community fission must be carried out.
The fission of the community is the same as the establishment of a new group, and it also requires seed users. At the beginning of the establishment of a new group, you can invite users who are familiar with the existing group to join or be an administrator. At the beginning of the establishment of this group, the interaction of existing users can mobilize the atmosphere of the group and enhance the solidity of users in the group.
In the process of community development and fission, it is necessary to formulate certain incentive policies to encourage store employees to learn about establishing and operating communities and to combine community operations with employee work assessments. At the same time, it can also formulate user incentive policies, regularly organize offline activities, invite positive group friends in the community to come to the store for dinner, and also give members privileges to show encouragement.
Finally, here are some helpful tips on how to run your restaurant community:
The group does not depend on the size but on the quality. If you find that there are advertisements, or people entering the group for other purposes, you must clear the group as soon as possible.
The group leader must add friends to each group. When there are many groups, avoid the situation where one person joins multiple groups at the same time.
In the process of operation, look for those truly potential customers, who can develop to become valuable customers. Meanwhile, customers who can be developed into members, separate them from the large group and build small groups to operate (that is, VIP groups), The small group slowly builds up, which is your most valuable resource.
There should be some of your own people lurking in the group, cooperating with you.
Groups should not post too many advertisements and activities at one time.