Top 10 Ways to Promote Your Restaurant Mobile App for Free

The food delivery industry always finds its customers being unstable and disloyal. The taste and liking of the diners keep changing with time and season. The competitors are always on the lookout to grab this opportunity and work it in their favor.

The world is changing and adapting to technology faster, so is the way we order and take food. The restaurant industry should adapt to the new norms to have a fulfilling clientele. The restaurant business’s main objective is to ensure the quality of food that is cooked and served/delivered on time to the customers. The ‘time’ plays a crucial role in this industry as your competitors are waiting to grab the opportunity and serve your potential customers.

Have you checked for online food delivery apps?

OrderEm helps you to launch your own custom app for your restaurant which can help your customers to place online orders for takeout/curbside/delivery and help track their delivery. This blog is intended to help our merchants that published an app in the Apple AppStore and Google Play Store. 

A Quick Guide to Promote Your Mobile App

1. Engage in Social Media

Smart mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives. They come with pre-loaded social media apps like Facebook and Instagram.  The millennials of today want to mark their presence through these social platforms.
 
Hence, the customers prefer to check for the restaurant on their social media. This makes it mandatory for you to have an official presence of your restaurant on social media. Your own custom branded app can help you promote your business. Allow your tech-savvy customers’ be aware that your business has a custom app that can be downloaded through social media.
 
To become socially active on networking sites, you may follow some of these rules.  You should start working on the social media trends that will help promote your restaurant in a great way:

• Create hashtags for your restaurant app
• Upload high-resolution pictures and tag the special menu along with images on your app
• Hold a contest to download the app and congratulate the winners, post their feedback and success stories
• Create and review your content regularly and use push notifications to your customers
• Push your special offers and packages to both social media and your custom app. Make sure these offers can be utilized only through your app, so it is required for customers to download the app. 

2. Create a Promotional Banner on the Website

Your website is the go-to destination for customers to check about your restaurant. Get your restaurant app link embedded on the webpage for easier access and showcase. To get your app the desired traffic, you need to ensure that your website is most sorted out among your customers. Only an engaging website can draw customers to check on the embedded app link.
 
You may highlight your app link by incorporating a pop-up banner on the website; this helps grab the viewer's attention. You can also include a direct link on your website that directs the customers to download your restaurant app. 

3. Help Customers Promote Your App

Loyal customers can help you build your business by letting their friends and colleagues know about your restaurant. Build an in-app feature like “refer a friend” or “tell a friend” that they can share with their friends, family, co-workers, and colleagues. You may consider giving a loyalty credit or gift coupon for this kind gesture of your customer and also extend a welcome discount to the new subscriber who has joined with the reference.

4. App Payment

The usage of digital money has made payment apps a reliable source of attracting customers. OrderEm integrates your menu and your restaurant app with the payment gateways, which will attract customers to try out your restaurant.

5. Coupons/Discounts

The app should allow users to use coupons or discount codes to pay the restaurant through the apps and offer discounts or vouchers. This will enable the clients to have a cashless experience along with deals, a great way to attract and retain clients.

5. Using Crowdsourced Review App

Reviews and feedback are the primary sources through which customers learn about your service. Many communities help each other by posting reviews of the places they have visited and the services they have availed of late.
 
Diners do a random search of the restaurant to find the reviews and ratings given by other users and then make a decision. The review apps usually display enticing images of menu items prepared in the restaurant, the decor, your staff in-service, etc. These good reviews can be used for the promotion of your restaurant.

6. Build Your Restaurant App 

Having an app of your own can add value to the restaurant. This shows that you are improvising ways to promote your restaurant. With this app, you may offer services like online ordering, takeaway facility, online reservation, tracking the food delivery, etc. It also helps the customers to discuss, share, and post their reviews about your services. You may develop an app for your restaurant with the OrderEm.

7. Work on Staff Efficiency

You are missing something important if you did not know that your employees are your best brand ambassadors. Your employees or staff are the best efficient channels to make your customers known about your restaurant's mobile app. Train your staff efficiently to reach the customers and make them understand the importance of installing your mobile app. For this, you must ensure that you give your employees all the possible motivation and recognize their work with some perks as a token of appreciation.

8. Advertise on Food Parcels

It is one of the easiest ways; get customized boxes or food packing material for your food delivery. An advertisement about your mobile app on food parcels represents a great valuable advertising option. Make people know about your mobile app, along with highlighting the ease of ordering food from a mobile app.

9. Reach out With an Email Campaign

It is always a wise option to maintain your customers' database that helps you promote offers and many other things that cater to grow your business. With the wide use of social media, we generally tend to overlook the power of an email. Email is one of the best ways to promote your mobile app to customers. 
 
Create an attractive call to action (CTA) embedded in the email to send across your customers. Let the attached CTA direct to your website or directly enable the customers to download your mobile app. Let your email create anticipation among your customers that make them visit your website and install your app.

10. Push Notifications

It is one of the best ways to reach the end-user and promote your restaurant app. But you should always ensure that a message you send should add value to your app promotion rather than just being an advertisement. Sending an alert at the right time in a smart way can promote your business and your app. It would be best to compile your messages by throwing light on your services, menu options, and other aspects you think can grab your customer’s attention.

How Food Delivery Apps Help the Customers

The food delivery app gives the comfort of choosing the food of your choice from the comfort of your office or home. There are more facilities added to the app than just ordering food.

Comfort and Ease

The foremost reason being, the comfort and ease the app gives to the customer to choose a wide variety of food. With the pandemic, the restaurants heavily depend on these apps as the business is focused on takeaway delivery and online orders. The challenging times have made the restaurants adapt to new ways to deliver the food safely. With the focus on keeping the customers in mind and also adding to the revenue.

Time-Saving

The most crucial reason why food delivery apps are successful is the joy of the saved time and effort. The reason customers are happy to use the delivery apps because it lets you choose food and reserve a table even before you reach the venue. Hence you save your time in the sanitization process and avoid standing in the queues at the restaurant. The changing times have seen a marked trend in the way diners choose food. They prefer to do other tasks while saving time at the restaurant.

Discount Cards and Vouchers

The food delivery apps have lured the customers by offering huge discounts and vouchers for every purchase done by them using the app. The customer is benefitted at large as they get cashback or coupons for the next visit.

Digital Ordering System

Being digital is the new normal. All customers have a digital presence and find it more comfortable to handle and place orders online.
 
The digital menu cards make the process simpler for the diners to place orders. They get to choose different cuisines and be in the comfort of their homes. Digitalization is the go-forward for both happy customers and restaurants.

Secure Payment System

The way people transact has changed drastically over the last decade. Digital money has taken over cash transactions. All businesses have started adopting various payment options that will help the customers in placing orders with you. 
 
Try to have more than one payment gateway as customers will find it easy to make payments. Customers hate it when they realize that your app is not offering them a seamless transaction. This can lead to losing out on your regular customers. It is good to have multiple payment options, like credit cards, debit cards, and net banking.

Order Tracking Tool

Every diner gets impatient when he places the order. Quick delivery is expected from the restaurant. Hence to have a clear understanding of the process, let the customer be able to track his order. 

Setting up the “order tracking option” using the OrderEm can help diners know about the status of the food they have ordered. This option allows an array of functions such as order-initiation time, current tracking, and time to reach the destination.
 
The customer feels overjoyed when he gets to see his order reach the doorstep. This will save your time and energy in communicating with the customer, as the customer gets to see his order’s current status.

Bottom Line

The food delivery app makes the process of delivering food as easy as a cakewalk. Getting your customers hooked to the app is the deal-breaker. Once the diner is comfortable with your app, you can see more orders coming in. A robust and customized food delivery app is the key to success in the food delivery business.