Top Fast Food Marketing Strategies That Drives Traffic Like Insane

By Fatma Humayun -- Monday, 16 Jan, 2023
fast food marketing strategies

Fast food restaurant demand is at its peak nowadays. So fast food owners must do fast food marketing to attract more customers. But fast food advertising techniques can be very tricky. But there are a lot of fast food marketing strategies that can drive a massive crowd in your fast food restaurant and help you earn more and more revenue from your fast food restaurants. You can create many different fast food marketing plans like online presence by implementing an online ordering system, social media, website, partnering with third-party meal delivery service, etc. 

You can create a good reputation through charitable work, by switching to using eco-friendly packages. You can create buzz and engagement by sharing videos and photos of your restaurant’s interior, mouth-watering food, happy customers, employees working in a great environment, etc. Also, you can reach a wide range of people by using some unique fast food promotions like working with a blogger, sending emails, etc. These fast food marketing strategies will surely boost your business growth and brand reputation.

Fast Food Marketing Strategies [Top 11 Techniques]

Fast food marketing is getting more challenging than ever because of the large number of fast food restaurants and international franchises in the market. To stand out from the crowd and make a bold stand you need to think out of the box and establish some outstanding fast food marketing strategies. Let’s look at some amazing fast food marketing strategies below which are our top picks to drive traffic into your fast food restaurant like insane in a very short amount of time.

 1. Offer Combo Meals

Offer Combo Meals

Offering combo meals is best among all fast food marketing strategies. People admire it a lot when fast-food restaurants offer combo meals. Adding combo meals to your menu attracts people to a great extent. Nothing is more attractive to customers than a meal bundle where they can get fries with a burger. You can offer different kinds of meal bundles to increase your fast-food restaurant's popularity. You can create attractive combos which are inexpensive, but at the same time very different from others. Such as, almost every fast food restaurant offers meals where you can get a burger and fries combo. You can add a soft drink or shakes with your burger and fries combo to make your combo different from others. 

On top of that, you can also include salad or dessert to make your combo even more attractive. You can also offer family combo, kids combo, student combo, couple combo, etc which are pleasant and affordable. When your fast food restaurant will offer meal combos at a reasonable price, people will feel like they are getting more value for their money. So customers will more likely choose combos over regular menu items.

For all that it will increase the crowd of your fast food restaurant. Which will bring more revenue to your restaurant. It will work like a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

 2. Loyalty Program

According to research, 80 percent of revenue comes from 20 percent of customers who are loyal to your brand. It is a huge number. So spending on your loyal customers brings far more benefits for your business. If you want to expand your customer base then you must consider having a loyalty program in your fast-food restaurant. Rewarding your loyal customers will encourage them to place more orders.

You can offer different types of rewards. For example, you can give free items like free drinks or desserts and also shakes or sides. Moreover, you also offer free meals or combos according to customers' behavior. For example, if a customer spends more than 10 dollars you can reward them with a free refreshing drink. If a customer spends 20 dollars you can reward them with a dessert.

You don’t have to just offer them rewards based on their spending. You can also reward them based on their visit. For example, you can reward a customer when he or she visits your fast-food restaurant for the fifth time. Then again you can reward a customer when he or she visits your restaurant for the tenth time. Afterward, you can reward a customer when he or she visits your restaurant for the fifteenth time, and so on. The rewards don’t have to be free food all the time. It can be a service like free home delivery or maybe cash.

 3. Give Discounts

Best fast food marketing campaigns

Offering discounts is the best way of getting more sales among all fast food marketing strategies. People expect discounts and tend to place more orders when they get discounts. Because people love it when they can get more for less money. You can offer different kinds of discounts like buy one get one free or two for one. Moreover, you can give free drinks like refreshing drinks or shakes and free sides like fries or wages also free desserts like cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, etc.

 4. Updating Your Fast Food Website

Having a website for your restaurant is very important. It makes your online presence even more strong. You can customize your website according to your fast food restaurant’s theme. And customizing your restaurant doesn’t require you to have coding knowledge. You only need to choose a theme for your website and that’s it. When you pick the right theme for your website, you can easily customize your fast-food restaurant’s website without having any technical or coding knowledge.

You should make your website the best way of getting to know better about your fast food restaurant by sharing pictures, menu, location, contact number, opening and closing hours, featured items, best-selling menu items, etc. You can share real images of your menu items to give your customers a clear vision of your food. Always make sure you are using better-quality images. Food should look very appealing in images so that the customers who are looking at your menu items cannot resist their temptation and end up visiting your place or purchasing your food.

 5. Consider Keeping a Kids Menu

Consider Keeping a Kids Menu

You can increase the crowd of your fast-food restaurant by creating a special menu for kids. You can create a combo or individual menu which will be specially designed for kids. On the kid's menu, you can create a small portion of a meal at less price such as mini burgers. It will reduce food waste. As sometimes regular meals are too massive for kids to finish. Hence food is wasted. So offering a small portion of meals, especially for kids, can be a very good approach to reducing food waste. Simultaneously, parents will be happy to purchase small portions of meals at an affordable price. 

You can also sell foods that are shaped like different famous cartoon characters. For example, cartoon or movie character-shaped fries or wages or maybe nuggets or burger patties and buns. It will make kids more thrilled to purchase meals from your fast food restaurant. You can also offer gifts such as toys like little mementos or dolls of famous cartoon or animated movie characters. This will make kids more excited to visit your fast food restaurant as they are getting gifts or toys with their meals.

 6. Email Marketing

There are a lot of online fast food marketing strategies and email marketing is one of them. Email marketing is another good fast food branding strategy among all other fast food marketing tactics. It is the simplest way of marketing your fast food restaurant online but also it is very effective. Create a cool and eye-catching template. Then gather a list of people’s email who live in the surroundings of your restaurant. And send them emails to invite them to have a meal in their restaurant. You can also send discount cards, coupons, vouchers, etc through email to bring crowds into your fast-food restaurant.

 7. Social Media

Fast food digital marketing strategy

Everyone is on social media nowadays. There are more than 7 billion people on this planet and almost 5 billion on the internet. Among 5 billion internet users more than 4 billion people use social media daily. So you should market your fast food restaurant where you have the possibility of reaching a lot of people which is through social media.     

Social media is also the easiest way to create an online presence. Besides being the easiest way of creating an online presence, social media is the easiest channel for advertising your fast-food restaurant without spending a penny. Social media also have different paid ad campaigns. And these ad campaigns can help you target your potential customers and reach them even more precisely which is a great fast food digital marketing strategy. But if you don’t want to spend any money you can still create buzz and engagement through social media by using different fast food marketing techniques such as arranging contests from time to time and giveaways.

You can also create great engagement on social media by posting photos of food, your restaurant’s interior, menu updates, on-premise happy customer pictures many much more. The most fantastic thing about social media is that it is a two-way communication way. So you can better interact with your customers. And always remember to reply to your customers' comments to make them feel valued and heard.    

 8. Online Ordering System

An online ordering system is one of the best ways of creating an online presence and also making revenue. People nowadays prefer to have food from their favorite restaurants from the very comfort of their houses. An online ordering system is one of the best ways to drive visitors into customers. It also works like a free marketing channel and reaches a wide range of people and brings new customers. And according to many surveys, those restaurants that have an online ordering system integrated with their POS system make more revenue than the restaurants that don’t have an online ordering system. Moreover, you can use the data of customers in future marketing campaigns who already placed food orders online from your fast food restaurant.  

 9. Work With Bloggers

Fast food marketing techniques

Blogging is one of the trendy things to do in this era. People love to watch blogs and usually, bloggers have a large audience. You can invite bloggers to make a blog about your restaurant to reach a large audience. Together you can make amazing videos of your restaurant on different topics like what foods you sell and how delicious your fast food items are, how amazing your restaurant interior is and how cool it is to work in your amazing kitchen where your kitchen employees work in a very fun environment etc. Show as many as amazing things you can about your restaurants. And gain a positive image of your fast-food restaurant.

 10. Third-Party Food Delivery Platforms

Having your online ordering system is amazing when it comes to revenue. Still, if you want to advertise your fast food restaurant then third-party food delivery platforms are another great way of reaching people who haven’t heard about your restaurant. Partnering with a third-party food delivery app helps you provide online food ordering and delivery facilities to your customers. At the same time, it helps your fast food reach new people. Third-party food delivery platforms don’t have to be very expensive. Even the cheapest food delivery app provides good service.

Food delivery apps are great but make sure to partner with a dependable platform. In the fast food industry delivering food as soon as possible while it is hot is very necessary. But unexpected occurrences happen that can lead to slow delivery such as traffic. If any customer complains about bad delivery service then make sure to offer them a discount for their next purchase to make up for your customer. It will work like magic and turn your disappointed customer into a loyal customer.

 11. Do Charitable Work

Fast food marketing tactics

You can work with a charitable organization to both create a good reputation and also to drive traffic to your fast-food restaurants. Offer different kinds of discounts, coupons, free purchases, etc in exchange for used clothes or other similar things. Then donate those things to people in need. This way you can work for a cause and make a difference. Moreover, you can also create a good reputation and also drive massive traffic to your fast-food restaurant. Anything that drives traffic into your restaurant can be used as a marketing tool and should be taken into consideration while designing fast food marketing strategies.

Conclusion

Fast food restaurants or quick service restaurants are the most famous type of restaurants. Because of the quick service, affordable meals, and special discounts like getting two for one, there is always a big crowd in fast food restaurants. At the same time, fast-food restaurants and international franchises are growing day by day in almost every corner of the world. This is the reason the fast food business is becoming very competitive nowadays. As the competition is big so you must remain updated and choose the best fast food marketing campaigns to cope with the trend if you own or run a fast-food restaurant. You must create some precise fast food marketing strategies to get new customers and keep your existing customers loyal to your brand.