Five Ways to Market Your Takeout and Delivery Services Amid Coronavirus

As you shift the way you do business and try to stay operational amid coronavirus, it’s critical to find ways to promote your offers and let customers know you’re still open for business, even if you’re focused solely on serving customers through takeout, delivery and/or curbside. Following are 5 ways to market your takeout and delivery services amid coronavirus.

1. Show Your Human Side

Behind every restaurant are its people—you and your staff are facing the same pandemic as your customers. So be frank, emotional and human in your marketing messaging; you’ll also help build a greater sense of community. 

2. Borrow the Reach of a Third-Party Delivery Marketplace

If you don’t already have your own delivery service in your operations, it could be a good time to deliver orders through third-party marketplace providers like UberEats or GrubHub.

3. Get Creative with Social

Post the specials, incentives or discounts you’re offering—but also think of new ways to engage your audience on social. This could be offering glimpses into your kitchen, a video of your chef adapting a dish for home cooks or a spotlight of an employee. This is the time to differentiate your brand and drive more traffic by finding unique ways to cut through the noise.

4. Ask Your Guests to Engage at Home

While your customers may be stuck at home, it could be the perfect time for them to leave a review online or post pictures of their takeout order from your restaurant. Use your consumer engagement and loyalty platform to make instant reviews easy and also ask for reviews in your online ordering portal and app. Don’t forget to engage back and offer incentives and rewards for their feedback. 

5. Update Your Local Listings

Make sure customers have updated information on your restaurant on Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, Yelp and other online platforms, including business hours and temporary offers. Add keywords such as “takeout” or “curbside,” to make sure your restaurant appears in searches for those terms.  

You can find a version of this article and other helpful NCR coronavirus response resources on NCR’s website here.