Every business owner wants to witness their business succeed. This is especially true for restaurant owners and cooks who pour their hearts onto every plate they serve. They treat their businesses not only as a livelihood but as their passion project as well.
But of course, businesses will cease to exist unless a certain demand for their products and services exists too. When no one is looking to buy your products, then you cannot make a profit, which can cause your businesses to fail. This is simply the rule of supply and demand at work.
While it is easy to believe that the lack of customers means your product has low demand, this can also be a symptom of poor business reach. With that, business owners should find ways to expand their reach.
What Does This Mean?
For every business to function better, it must have a target market. Your target market is essentially the groups of people who are most inclined to buy your products. These are the people you want to appeal to. Expanding your reach simply means putting your products in front of more people.
If you are still starting and do not know whom to appeal to, expanding your reach can help you learn who your target market is.
Why Should You Expand Your Reach?
Essentially, the expansion of your reach as a food business means letting people know that you exist and that you are ready to serve people with your good food. Although this may sound obvious, plenty of food businesses ignore it.
Many of them are used to serving a single local area, that they forget about the greater community outside their location. This is more relevant for restaurants that only have a single store.
Again, by expanding your reach, you can know your target market. This helps streamline your marketing campaign better. Reaching more people will grow your customer base, which can ultimately lead to bigger revenue.
How Can You Do It?
With technology at the forefront of almost every human activity, signaling your existence to the world has never been easier. While this is true for most people, not everyone has access to the internet.
So before we look at how you can expand your reach online, let’s look at some old-fashioned ways to do this.
Posters
One of the oldest ways to promote a business and reach out to customers is through posters. You can post these on almost any wall where it’s allowed and can catch the eyes of locals and pedestrians.
Your poster should always have your restaurant’s name, your products, your location, and contact numbers. It should also be eye-catching.
Note that a poster can make or break your reputation as a business. People may equate the quality of your services to the quality of your poster. So be sure that your poster is nice and well-made.
Sales Promotions
This is a type of promotion that aims to attract customers and create demand for your products. These include special offers and discounts on your products.
These promotions can make people want to buy your products and can even prompt them to share your store information with other people. You can include your sales promotion in your posters, should you go this route of expansion.
Navigating the Online Space
There are many ways for a food business to grow its online reach. And since it is done online, it may be done more conveniently than your traditional marketing tactics.
Web Directories
One of the easiest ways to start is by registering your business in web directories. This makes sure that when people are looking for something that is in line with your business, they can find you in their search results.
So if ever you are selling cakes in your area and someone in the locality types in “cake shops near me” on their phone, you would show up in the results. This is essentially a modern-day version of the yellow pages.
Influencer Marketing
Another growing method to let people know of your business is influencer marketing. But to understand this, let us first define what an “ influencer” is.
Influencers are social media personalities with a significant number of followers on a social media platform. The term influencer came into usage as a basic description of their potential to “influence” the buying habits of their followers.
They often use their platforms to post a piece of media that shows them using, consuming, or recommending products. It is a marketing tool that is still young and growing and can reach out to potentially millions of people online. If you are adamant about expanding your reach as a food business, this type of marketing tactic is worth a try.
An Online Store
Lastly, one of the best ways to make a mark online is by creating an online store. This means having an online portal where you allow customers to make orders and payments online.
You can start by creating accounts on multiple social media platforms and use these platforms to reach out to your customers. You can even invest in a website for a more streamlined process of ordering.
Be sure to read online selling tips before doing this to make sure that you are maximizing your efforts for your online shop.
Wider Reach, More Customers
Ultimately, a wider reach means more customers can experience what you have in store for them. With more customers, you can better achieve the goals you have for your food business better and faster.
