Jun 06, 2020
More and more businesses are transitioning to the online world. This is no exception for restaurant businesses that have to adapt to Covid-19, which has accelerated changes in consumer behavior faster than it naturally would. This means entrepreneurs have to promptly adapt themselves to these changes. It’s interesting to find out what the restaurant field will have to do from now on in terms of online marketing in the new normal era. What are the possible trends? We had the chance to invite Manthita “Thip” Chinda, online marketing guru from the Digital Tips Academy, to come and share with us some perspectives and information as well as online marketing tips for restaurateurs.
- Consumers Have Changed Their Behavior in the New Normal Era
- Interesting New Normal Restaurant Business Trends
- Digital Marketing Ideas You Should Learn During the Covid-19 Crisis
- Go Online: How to Do Marketing in the New Normal Era
- Tips for Online Marketing for Restaurants; Using Facebook and Line OA
- When Is the Best Time to Post Contents or Promotions?
- Something for Restaurants to Think About
Consumers Have Changed Their Behavior in the New Normal Era
The dramatic changes in consumer behavior are involved with health and hygiene. This has created the following new trends:
1. On-going: This means that, even after the crisis is over, of course consumers are going to be more concerned about these things. It’s the restaurateurs’ responsibility to communicate to consumers about what measures they have taken to handle their concerns.
2. Smart Consumer: Consumers will play a larger role. That means people want to know the background of products. For example, when you buy something, you want to know where it came from and how it was processed. Therefore, transparency will be highly effective in this era.
3. Local Consumption: This means there’s a greater chance people will buy local products and products from small businesses called neighborhood products within a short radius of where they live because consumers will spend their days closer to their homes and workplaces. This is also a good opportunity for small entrepreneurs.
1. On-going: This means that, even after the crisis is over, of course consumers are going to be more concerned about these things. It’s the restaurateurs’ responsibility to communicate to consumers about what measures they have taken to handle their concerns.
2. Smart Consumer: Consumers will play a larger role. That means people want to know the background of products. For example, when you buy something, you want to know where it came from and how it was processed. Therefore, transparency will be highly effective in this era.
3. Local Consumption: This means there’s a greater chance people will buy local products and products from small businesses called neighborhood products within a short radius of where they live because consumers will spend their days closer to their homes and workplaces. This is also a good opportunity for small entrepreneurs.
Nevertheless, don’t forget that, even after Covid-19 is over, the economic crisis will persist, so people might be more careful about their spending. If they used to eat out 3 – 4 times a week, they might go out less and cook more. As a result, a following trend would probably be simple, convenient products for people living in condominiums and living alone.
Interesting New Normal Restaurant Business Trends
Restaurateurs have to leave a profit margin for delivery riders or food delivery applications. In the old days, restaurants might not have set the price for a 30% profit margin, but now consumers are used to ordering deliveries, so restaurateurs have to turn their focus on this expense.
Another future trend is the cloud kitchen. In the past, if you wanted to expand your restaurant, you’d have to look for the location, decorate your restaurant and hire new employees. However, these days you could have just a suitable kitchen, which will definitely be a trend. There are clear models for you to see like Grab Kitchen in the Samyan area. Another trend is the ready-to-eat, ready-to-go products, which is obviously a growing trend in other countries during quarantine periods.
Digital Marketing Ideas You Should Learn About During the Covid-19 Crisis
These days, you can clearly see large and small businesses alike trying to promote their products, such as giving away a free pot when customers buy a shabu set, or selling vouchers or coupons for people to buy in advance. Models for “tying the pinto” (having a standing order) are becoming more and more visible. This is where a customer pays for one month’s worth of food to be delivered at home every day. Other than promotions, some brands create new brands. For example, iberry is a brand based mostly in shopping malls, but when delivery was trending, they created another brand called Charoen Gang, which is solely based on the delivery model. Another example is the Copper Buffet which changed from fine dining to home delivery.
Once measures were eased to allow dine-in services, we started to see welcome back promotions and the promotion of sanitary dining methods. However, we think promoting during the easing period is normal. It’s not creating crowds or as strange as when restaurants were closed during the lockdown.
Go Online: How to Do Marketing in the New Normal Era
Each platform has different attributes. For example, Facebook has an advantage in that there are a lot of users. You can talk to everyone there… to your followers, so it would be good for finding new customers who you might not otherwise find or know about. It’s also good for creating awareness. You could buy advertising space. You could do almost anything in just one place.
As for LINE Official Account, what stands out is the ability to turn a casual customer into a regular, a more obsessive follower or a true fan because they want to find out about new promotions and dishes. LINE OA is good for offering promotions that create repeat customers. For example, you could create rewards cards, points cards or coupons and broadcast them. This makes you closer to your customers because, don’t forget, Thais spend a lot of time on their phones and chat applications.
Looking at Thai people’s internet usage statistics, you can see that Thais use their phones for about 216 minutes, and 63 of those minutes are spent on LINE. This means 45 million LINE users are using their phones all the time, so communicating with them via a channel they’re familiar with gives you an advantage. If possible, try to use both of these channels simultaneously because they have different characters and each customer has different expectations.
Interesting New Normal Restaurant Business Trends: Restaurateurs have to leave a profit margin for delivery riders or food delivery applications. In the old days, restaurants might not have set the price for a 30% profit margin, but now consumers are used to ordering deliveries, so restaurateurs have to turn their focus on this expense.
Another future trend is the cloud kitchen. In the past, if you wanted to expand your restaurant, you’d have to look for the location, decorate your restaurant and hire new employees. However, these days you could have just a suitable kitchen, which will definitely be a trend. There are clear models for you to see like Grab Kitchen in the Samyan area. Another trend is the ready-to-eat, ready-to-go products, which is obviously a growing trend in other countries during quarantine periods.
Digital Marketing Ideas You Should Learn About During the Covid-19 Crisis: These days, you can clearly see large and small businesses alike trying to promote their products, such as giving away a free pot when customers buy a shabu set, or selling vouchers or coupons for people to buy in advance. Models for “tying the pinto” (having a standing order) are becoming more and more visible. This is where a customer pays for one month’s worth of food to be delivered at home every day. Other than promotions, some brands create new brands. For example, iberry is a brand based mostly in shopping malls, but when delivery was trending, they created another brand called Charoen Gang, which is solely based on the delivery model. Another example is the Copper Buffet which changed from fine dining to home delivery.
Once measures were eased to allow dine-in services, we started to see welcome back promotions and the promotion of sanitary dining methods. However, we think promoting during the easing period is normal. It’s not creating crowds or as strange as when restaurants were closed during the lockdown.
Go Online: How to Do Marketing in the New Normal Era Each platform has different attributes. For example, Facebook has an advantage in that there are a lot of users. You can talk to everyone there… to your followers, so it would be good for finding new customers who you might not otherwise find or know about. It’s also good for creating awareness. You could buy advertising space. You could do almost anything in just one place.
As for LINE Official Account, what stands out is the ability to turn a casual customer into a regular, a more obsessive follower or a true fan because they want to find out about new promotions and dishes. LINE OA is good for offering promotions that create repeat customers. For example, you could create rewards cards, points cards or coupons and broadcast them. This makes you closer to your customers because, don’t forget, Thais spend a lot of time on their phones and chat applications.
Looking at Thai people’s internet usage statistics, you can see that Thais use their phones for about 216 minutes, and 63 of those minutes are spent on LINE. This means 45 million LINE users are using their phones all the time, so communicating with them via a channel they’re familiar with gives you an advantage. If possible, try to use both of these channels simultaneously because they have different characters and each customer has different expectations.
Tips for Online Marketing for Restaurants
Currently, online businesses have more competition, because you not only get the opportunity, but there are more new players in the game, too (both old players, who already have storefronts and are now expanding their businesses online, and amateur players).
For Facebook, start here.
1. Regarding the precision of customer segmentation, you have to figure out who your customers are and try to properly access that market. This means your online marketing must not be scattered. Don’t think everyone’s your customer. Don’t do mass marketing, but think about how to target each group as precisely as possible.
1. Regarding the precision of customer segmentation, you have to figure out who your customers are and try to properly access that market. This means your online marketing must not be scattered. Don’t think everyone’s your customer. Don’t do mass marketing, but think about how to target each group as precisely as possible.
2. Contents customers like. The secret to creating Facebook content is to create meaningful content. This means content that gives people a chance to talk, reply and converse in the form of open-ended questions, which give people the chance to participate. In addition, create value content that people can read for their own benefit. Don’t just try to sell.
For example, Jones’ Salad, a salad restaurant, doesn’t only create content to sell. They use the method of giving information about health through a character named Uncle Jones who turns hard things into simple things, gives good, credible information and also makes it. Another example is the Bar B Q Plaza that uses P. Gon as the communicator who speaks in a cute and casual way that easily engages people. Other than creating meaningful content, games and fun activities can also be used. For example, during the quarantine, KFC created a cookbook to teach how people could make simple KFC dishes at home, which is good engagement.
In addition, there are other tools like labeling to separate customers, creating notes to input details, creating automated responses, creating a poll and creating live videos that are free and should be used.
Indispensable and essential parts of Line OA are as follows:
1. Rich Menu: Because Rich Menu is like an administrator who helps you 24 hours a day, it’s a convenient toll for giving information that allows restaurants to answer frequently asked questions and tell their customers about promotions without having to answer all of those themselves. It can also create rewards cards or coupons.
1. Rich Menu: Because Rich Menu is like an administrator who helps you 24 hours a day, it’s a convenient toll for giving information that allows restaurants to answer frequently asked questions and tell their customers about promotions without having to answer all of those themselves. It can also create rewards cards or coupons.
- Timeline is something SMEs can use and for free. It’s also a public space where you can post as many times as you want. The people who view the content aren’t just limited to your friends or followers, but all Timeline users. If you create good content, there’s a chance they’ll follow or friend you later. We want people to use this feature more because this year LINE is starting to focus on creating more features on the Timeline, which at the beginning of the year was announced as a “Social Private Platform”.
- Rewards Cards: Research findings reveal that Thais or Asians respond very well to loyalty programs. An advantage of a rewards card is it creates more repeat customers. Most recently, Facebook is trying out a points collection feature or loyalty program.
When Is the Best Time to Post Contents or Promotions?
Restaurants choose to post at around lunchtime when people are hungry, or in the evening before people start to order food and they mostly post at peak hours. For this reason, you also have to check which customer base you’re targeting. This is something you can try. For example, Sizzler focuses on family groups, so they post a lot of promotions on weekends and holidays. However, if your customers are mostly office workers, lunchtime is, of course, the best time.
Something for Restaurants to Think About
The most important thing about marketing is adapting in time to the changes in consumers. Covid-19 is an accelerator in regards to the rapid changes in consumer behavior. This is a reason for you, as a restaurateur, to adapt quickly so you can catch up. However, we still assure you that our country offers a lot of opportunities, particularly when it comes to businesses involving food since opportunity is one of the four requisites, which is very important.
Consequently, other than developing good products and services, we want you to also learn about tools. Don’t be afraid. Try reading a book or looking for informational media, which are abundant sources these days. If you study them, you’ll learn that you actually have a lot of helpers that can make your business easy. Also, a lot of tools are free, so the more you understand them, the more use you can make of them. Therefore, it’s something we want all entrepreneurs to start trying and we wish you all the best of luck.
