Let’s face it, you’re running a business and you need to keep a healthy bottom line. Do you rely on getting new customers through the door or getting your regulars to spend more? Well, it makes sense to do a combination of both. Try not to focus on the larger parties who’ll be bringing in most of your monthly revenue, but more on increasing the average spend of the infrequent customers slightly. If everyone who comes in spends £25 instead of £20, you’ll soon see your revenue mount up. Here are some tips on how you could achieve results.
1) More loyalty. We’ve mentioned this before but it might be time to talk about the financial results of a loyal brand following. It’s not just about keeping revenue coming in from regular customers, but also about using them as a test-bed for new ideas. Perhaps you have a new menu coming that you’d like to test out? Your regulars are going to be ideally placed to give you feedback on your new ideas, products and services. As you already have their loyalty and trust, you can make them feel valued by only offering the new products to them. Perhaps invite them all for an exclusive pre-launch taster lunch or evening meal and get feedback from them afterwards. A great way to contact your customers offering this exclusivity is through your social media pages – your Facebook fans are usually your loyal customers.
2) Measure, measure, measure. Working out average spend per customer can be pretty difficult but it’s essential to finding out which parts of your business are not performing as well as you’d hoped. Let’s say you offer a menu including starters, main and desserts. You should break down the spend on each course by customer so you can measure whether your dessert menu is performing as well as the other two. If not, you may need to offer a wider range of desserts, or maybe even reduce the size of your main courses so people have room for more! Either way, using revenue per transaction won’t give you the results you need. You’ll need to train your staff to enter the number of people in a party so that the bill can be further sub-divided. It only takes a second but will be very important to get accurate data.
3) BOGOF. Everyone likes a “buy one, get one free” offer. How about combining products to increase the range of goods you’re selling? You could offer a large coffee for 99p with every baguette, or the obvious Happy Hour drinks offers. The key is to get people to buy in bulk and feel like they are getting a good deal. They’re likely to stay longer as well, especially if you combine this with other benefits like free WiFi.
4) Discount offers. This might seem counter-intuitive but by offering discounts to your customers, especially if they involve referring a friend, can increase customer overall spend by increasing feeling of value that is placed in their mind. For example, a 25% discount on pizzas might lead a customer to buy extras that they normally wouldn’t, like side dishes. So overall, their spend may increase. Couple this with the fact that they have to bring a friend to qualify for the offer and you may see some good results. Using the power of social media here is a good way to reach more customers, especially if a condition of the offer is a social media share.
If you’re interesting in hearing more about how Social WiFi can help your business, just give us a call on 01202 912 202 for more information.
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