Text Message Coupons for Restaurants ? A Powerful, Cost-Effective Marketing Tool
Text Message Coupons for Restaurants ? A Powerful, Cost-Effective Marketing Tool
In our economic slump, restaurants are finding it harder and harder to market themselves. The fact is that people are going out to eat less, and spending less when they do. This has placed a heavy burden upon restaurant owners to get people into their restaurants without spending a lot of money. Conventional means of advertising (Print, TV, radio) are extremely expensive and have limited response rates. However, there is good news. A new from of marketing is sweeping the marketing world by storm: text message marketing.
Text message marketing reaches the user via standard SMS text messages. This creates a very personal medium that is always a “vibrate away” from the consumer. In order for the consumer to receive these messages, they must opt-in (sign up) for the service. This means that they have shown enough of an interest in the service to be willing to receive further information from it on their cell phones. This brings us to the world of text message coupons for restaurants.
Text message coupons give you the benefit of being able to send your discount or promotion instantly at the exact time you want. Imagine this: a dad is on his way home from working, thinking about dinner. His phone goes off and it is a coupon for your restaurant offering an incentive to come in for dinner (ex: “PizzaPlanet: Family Night! 25% your entire food bill with a party of 3 or more. Valid tonight only! Tell your friends!” ) His decision is practically made for him! An hour later he shows up at your door with four hungry customers.
For a very low cost, restaurant owners can send text messages to their prospective customers with an incentive to come in, with the imperative call to action to show up today. With very little effort, a text message coupon service for restaurants can send the text message coupons for you.
So why look into text message coupons? Studies put text message advertising response rate at 20% with some response rates up to 75%! (Carrabba’s Italian restaurant recently ran a promotion and got a 62% response rate on their promotion!) At a time where people are spending less at restaurants, you have to be different and implement new and creative ways to market yourself. For restaurants, text message coupons are the best alternative to tired and worn out conventional advertising.
Jeffrey W. Arnold is a text message marketing expert, an innovative thinker and an expert consultant in the field of ‘new media’ marketing techniques for small businesses. After a successful career as a financial industry executive, he has launched his own mobile marketing company and is helping clients successfully navigate the marketing options in a Web 2.0 world.
