Operating a food truck takes more than a great recipe.
Yes, the menu of your food truck is an essential marketing component. You should play with words and find terms to draw in people and keep fans coming back. A brick-and-mortar cafe or restaurant can heavily rely on returning customers. You aim to bring your small business to your customers, not the other way around. And this means that you need to communicate even more clearly and more frequently with your customers.
Start with determining who you want as a customer. White collars, blue collars, hipsters, families? Even though you want to serve everyone, it is important to narrow it down to start. And of course with creating your mobile-friendly website answering basic questions like location, hours of operation, and product availability. Mobile phones are peoples’ primary tool to access the online world. Four out of five people search for information on business hours, directions, addresses, and product availability on their mobile phones. Therefore small businesses must adopt a mobile-first approach.
The most widespread way that you can advertise your food truck for free is by participating in social media. Select a few social media to get started with, and spend time focusing on quality posts, conversations, and ways in which to foster engagement with people. Always include a strong cover image and change it frequently to correspond with holidays, seasons, events, and other promotions. Create exclusive offers to customers that can only be used if they “do” something for you, such as liking and following your profile page. In return, people could be rewarded with a digital coupon to your food truck. Have a unique hashtag to use on posts that will help customers find you in the future. Share links and images that are related to your food truck theme.
Engage Customers
By this time everybody knows what mobile payments are. Mobile payments by Apple Pay and Google Pay are popular with all that don’t want to carry cash and prefer an all-digital method of payment. Especially with younger generations. And beyond mobile payments, mobile wallets allow people to use digital content from you. Such as coupons, stamp cards, and other loyalty cards. People have them at their fingertips and can just tap and show to redeem, enter, or access their benefits. Look at mobile phones as an own channel, and build around them a smart and simple loyalty program. Integrate your digital coupons, stamp cards, and other loyalty cards with mobile wallets and let them work hand-in-hand with your website and social media.
Your customers don’t have to download another app to enter your loyalty program. Your digital coupons, stamp cards, and other loyalty cards will become a new communication channel for you being interactive and allowing for sending push notifications with your deals, promotions, and discounts, or exclusive content directly to the lock screen of your customers. You can update them at any time, keeping information always relevant and up to date. Remind customers about upcoming events. Send push notifications about reservations your customers have made or alert them when their table is ready. Notify your customers about limited-time specials or new menu items.
Your digital coupons, stamp cards, and other loyalty cards have a geolocation feature. It enables you to deliver targeted content to individuals in up to ten specific locations. One use of this feature is conquesting new customers — people who liked and followed your social media — and downloaded in their mobile wallet the digital coupon, you gave them in return.
Identify up to ten competitors and include their locations in the digital coupon. Put together creative messages for every location. The digital coupon is offered on the lock screen of the mobile phone by the mobile wallet upon arriving at these predefined places together with your location-specific messages. Now you are talking to your potential customers at your competitors’ locations in real-time. It is powerful.
Establish A Strong Brand
You know the brand isn’t just the logo, right? Team up with other food trucks and build partnerships. It is a great way to network and advertise your small business. Even though other food trucks in the area are technically your competition, you all have unique things to offer. Or partner up with a local yoga studio or gym that you will likely share customers with. Offer discounts to promote each other’s business as a way of reaching more people.
Get involved with charitable events. Customers will see that your small business is helping less fortunate people. This will create a positive reputation. You could also donate products to a worthy cause. You will likely recoup profits by gaining that much back in free advertising.
Sell merchandise to your fan base. It encourages your customers to spread the word about your small business. Items you want to offer are entirely up to you. It should make sense to choose products that relate to your food truck.
Write a blog to inform potential customers about your food truck’s hours of operation, menu offerings, and specials, and to entertain them.
About Ladislav Poledna
Ladislav is a part-time blogger who inspires readers to “Become Digital” by publishing materials about digital marketing in his Prague Monitor column and aptly named blog. He has 27+ years of experience in different sales roles within multiple industries. In the last 2 years, he has been leading the introduction of new commercial lithium-ion batteries to the EMEA region with the world’s leading producer of engines for outdoor power equipment. And recently, he also co-founded a B-to-B software service company that makes mobile marketing affordable and easy to use. Ladislav’s philanthropic contribution consists of a long-term relationship with a charity focused on funding dreams for people with muscular dystrophy.
About Becomedigital.life
Mobile phones are long becoming the main “screen” in peoples’ lives. Mobile marketing is no longer an innovation but a part of important decisions. Read articles on mobile marketing to get inspired on how to connect with people where they spend a lot of their time. Ladislav started Become Digital in May 2019 and since then he has added over 60 articles.
About Digikupon
Born in Europe in 2019 and available worldwide, Digikupon provides businesses with self-service tools that make mobile marketing affordable and easy to use. Digikupon helps businesses attract, serve, and retain customers by creating digital experiences for customers through mobile phones with our mobile wallet, proximity, and incentive solutions. Digikupon also easily links to and integrates with a wide range of software solutions allowing to programmatically automate and simplify the creating, updating, and deleting of custom branded digital content for mobile wallets.
