Getting the right kind of attention isn’t easy in the catering business.
The industry is saturated, and the landscape is competitive.
You might put everything you have into the business but still miss out on potential clients, exciting opportunities, and chasing after leads.
I was wonderinghow to promote your catering business?
Solid and practical catering marketing ideas can bring in new clients, establish long-lasting, and strengthen your business.
We have put together highly effective marketing strategies to help you become the talk of the town in the catering industry.
Here’s the list of marketing ideas to make your business taste great.
- Online Presence and Branding Ideas
- Local Marketing Tactics
- Content Marketing for Catering
- Promotions and Special Offers
Online Presence and Branding Ideas
It seems like everyone has a brand these days.
It doesn’t matter whether your catering business is just starting or you have an established name; an online presence will elevate your brand and add credibility.
With the right catering marketing tactics, you can build your digital presence and brand to stay competitive and ahead of others.
1. Professional Website Development
As we explore unique catering marketing ideas, a conversion-focused catering website is what you need. Nowadays, most catering inquiries come from the Internet; website development has become imperative.
Besides enhancing online visibility, a website lets customers see your offer. Appeal to the senses by integrating photos and videos of tempting dishes.
Consider these features when crafting your catering website to boost sales:
- Easy-to-use navigation
- Menu showcase & pricing
- Call to action button
- Mobile responsive design
- Essential elements of brand identity
- Rich media visuals and videos
- Links to the social networks
- Basic contact information
- Reviews and testimonials
- Multilingual interface
- Online booking option
2. Social Media Marketing
Social media has evolved and become an important marketing channel.
Ensure you have a well-planned digital marketing for catering business active across different social media platforms.
According to Statista, 59.9% of the world’s population is social media users, as it has become an integral part of daily internet usage. Therefore, leveraging social media for catering will help you attract new customers and showcase your culinary skills.
With roughly three billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2023, Facebook is the most-used online social network worldwide. Facebook is the best platform to establish a strong presence and drive engagement.
With 2 billion monthly active Instagram users worldwide, Instagram is an excellent platform for visual marketing for catering businesses, as it helps you showcase your delicious menus, catering spreads, and recent events to engage your audience online.
As YouTube’s user base is estimated to reach 263 million by 2028, you can educate your audience and capture their attention through tempting videos with the right content strategy.
Moreover, for greater brand exposure among the target audience, leverage the power of paid advertising, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Google Ads.
For example, a top-class Singaporean catering company, TIMS FINE Catering Services, has a solid social media presence on Facebook. They share new items on the menu, top chefs, services, behind-the-scenes, and much more to captivate their audience.
Source: TIMS FINE Catering Services
3. Branding Strategies
There’s no shortage of competition in the catering industry. You must come out of the sidelines and focus on brand development to stand out from the competition.
Your brand must show them, not tell them about your business.
Crafting a unique identity allows customers to understand your value proposition and how you differentiate yourself from other caterers.
Catering and hotel branding must focus on developing a unique identity that is simple, memorable, and reminds prospective customers about your business.
When building your catering brand, consider these key elements:
- Purpose
- Values
- Voice and tone
- Visual identity
- Unique logo design
- Brand story
From designing visually appealing websites to executing targeted digital advertising campaigns, your brand identity must be represented in every move to stand out in the digital world.
Branding strategies involve many moving parts, but consistent messaging is the key to communicating your brand power. Focus on building a brand funnel to elevate your branding strategy.
Local Marketing Tactics
Think local: who’s around you? Try to focus on them first.
Local marketing is essential to a catering marketing plan for small businesses. It can get your business in front of a broader local audience likely to patronize it. It applies to both your digital and offline marketing strategies.
1. Collaborations with Local Businesses
Local collaborations always work well for catering businesses. First and foremost, expanding local reach can help businesses increase their revenue.
Leveraging local business connections helps you connect with customers more personally and generate buzz about your business.
Consider these tips for expanding your local clientele:
- Optimize your website with the right keywords
- Engage with the locals on social
- Search for venue tie-ups
- Get local testimonials
- Localize your ads
- Sponsor a local event
- Business partnership with local eateries
- Target local publications
Many customers and corporate clients prefer collaborating locally for catering needs. Therefore, a tailored local promotion strategy can establish a stronger connection with them.
2. Community Engagement Events
Community events are perfect for promoting your catering business.
Local event participation in farmer’s markets or fairs provides an excellent opportunity to increase your catering brand visibility and attract local leads.
Events are a significant investment. With greater involvement, interaction, and engagement, showcasing catering at local events helps you drive more significant ROI.
Engaging with the community at events helps you collaborate and cross-promote your business with the shared target audience.
Consider these tips for connecting with your community as a catering business:
- Participate in events where community members can sample your dishes.
- Partner with nearby event venues, wedding planners, or local businesses to cross-promote services.
- Support local festivals, charity events, or school functions by providing catering services in exchange for exposure.
- Maintain an active presence on social platforms to share your work and collaborate for more events.
- Contact local newspapers, radio stations, or bloggers to feature your catering business and its community involvement.
Remember the fundamentals – a positive impression on prospective customers and corporate clients can yield positive ROI from your marketing efforts.
3. Sponsorship of Local Causes
Forming an emotional connection is half the battle of building a loyal customer base.
Sponsoring local causes can provide an incredible opportunity for catering businesses as it enables fostering community connections, building a positive brand image, and reaching out to new customers.
Sponsorship of local causes is an excellent way to win hearts and minds. Here are the benefits that you must not miss while sponsoring local causes as a caterer:
- When you sponsor a local cause event, your catering business name and logo will be prominently displayed.
- It helps you build goodwill and create a positive image for your catering business.
- Showcase these partnerships on social media to leave a lasting impression on the target audience.
- Active engagement with the attendees could lead to future sales down the line.
With local sponsorship that supports community causes, you are not only getting your name out there but building community relationships that will last a lifetime.
Remember, every standout event needs a fantastic caterer.
For example, a vegan-friendly catering business could sponsor a local environmental cause and use this event to showcase its products and demonstrate its unwavering commitment to sustainability and ecological preservation.
Content Marketing for Catering
Grow, engage, and retain your customers and clients with a well-executed content marketing strategy. It is a valuable tool to help catering businesses build relationships and trust in the market.
Content marketing is valuable for catering business because it:
- Educates about your products and services
- Boost conversions
- Reflects your brand value
- Create a sense of community
But it isn’t just about churning out piece after piece; instead, it is about strategically sending the right message to current and potential customers.
Some content marketing examples include:
- Blog posts
- Emails
- Newsletters
- Social media posts
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Videos
1. Blogging About Culinary Expertise
As a catering business, you might want to pay your way toward becoming a culinary authority in your niche. For this, you need to showcase your culinary expertise. And sharing expertise through a catering blog is the most viable approach.
Catering blog is not limited to recipe sharing. Here are some other aspects that can be shared with the customers via blog posts:
- Seasonal menu ideas
- Recipes for popular dishes
- Cooking tips and techniques
- Commercial kitchen behind-the-scenes
- Client testimonials and success stories
- Dietary and allergen information
- Food and beverage pairing suggestions
- Chef profiles and interviews
- Food presentation and plating tips
- Sustainability and sourcing practices
- Event planning and catering tips
- Trending food and drink concepts
- Food photography
- Specialty ingredient spotlights
- Cooking equipment reviews and recommendations
But how do you plan to showcase your culinary expertise via a catering blog? Make sure that your blog ticks the following boxes:
- Unique niche or perspective
- Clear and comfortable brand identity
- Plate up your texts and images
- Don’t forget to add blog tags
- Track blogs by analyzing KPIs
From crafting engaging content to sharing behind the scenes, a catering blog lets you grow an engaged audience and build an active community.
For example, Stamford Catering is a leading Halal-certified caterer that provides customers in Singapore with top-quality food and services. They have an active catering blogs section on their website to engage readers.
Source: Stamford Blog
2. Visual Content Creation
Visual content can grab attention and convey messages without words. As the saying goes, you eat with your eyes first – which holds in today’s digital realm.
Food is inherently linked to emotions. Eating is a highly sensory experience that can be further elevated through food photography and videography. A beautifully photographed menu can evoke desire, leading to sales.
Menu psychology is a tactic food establishments use to influence customer choices and behavior through clever menu design
But how do we advertise catering using visual content? Here are different types of visual content you can use to promote your catering business:
- Photos
- Videos
- Carousel posts
- GIFs
- Illustrations
- Infographics
- Animations
Here are some of the key benefits of visual marketing for catering businesses:
- Increased engagement: Visual content can help increase engagement with your brand and keep customers interested.
- Improved brand recognition: Visual content can help build brand awareness and increase recognition of your business.
- Effective communication: Visual content can communicate complex information in a simple, easy-to-understand format.
- Higher conversion rates: Showcasing events through imagery of catering services at different venues makes it more desirable to customers.
- Expand social media reach: Capturing events through photography and sharing them on social media will boost visibility and increase reach.
Moreover, website aesthetics greet visitors initially.
Don’t let the poor visuals turn away visitors. Visuals are the captivating brushstrokes that color your customers’ experiences when they visit your website.
From color choice to typography and everything in between, enhancing catering promotion with visuals on your website can make all the difference.
3. Customer Testimonials and Case Studies
Customer testimonials and case studies are the most effective tools for leveraging social proof. Trust-building testimonials for the catering business are highly impactful.
A testimonial features a single customer’s experience. While the case study typically includes a problem, solution, and results in quantifiable numbers, they define the impact.
McKinsey research has shown that peer purchasing insights have more influence on consumers than any marketing strategy. In the world, before reviews, you needed marketing to give you confidence that you had made the right decision, but today, it’s all about social proof.
Remember, people love stories!
Highlighting catering success stories provides evidence of effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Here’s how you can leverage the power of words to generate ROI for your catering business:
- You can use your customer testimonials to creatively develop a story about your catering service by producing a marketing video about the customer journey.
- Also, remember to be generous with your publicity. If a third party writes a positive review about your catering business, share it on your social media platform, thank them, and tag them to boost publicity.
- Incorporate customer testimonials into your email marketing campaigns. Share success stories, reviews, and feedback from satisfied clients to encourage repeat business or bookings for future events.
- Encourage happy customers to leave reviews on popular sites like Yelp, Google My Business, and other platforms recognized in your niche.
- Develop case studies highlighting specific catering events and showcase your services’ impact on the clients.
- Include snippets of customer testimonials in your brochures, flyers, and marketing materials.
By showcasing successful catering services, prospective customers are more likely to trust the opinions of thers than they are to trust the brand’s messaging.
Promotions and Special Offers
Your fresh, hand-made ice cream and top chefs may win hearts, but you must get them through the door first.
So, what’s better than paying less for a catering menu you love and getting a complementary drink to sweeten the deal?
Sales promotions and special offers have been used for decades with great success. From classic percent-off discounts to complimentary treats, enticing rewards appeal to customers.
Let’s explore the catering promotion ideas you can implement to get more customers.
1. Seasonal and Event-Specific Promotions
A seasonal marketing campaign is a limited-time promotion to maximize the effectiveness of your advertising and push customers to take action before the opportunity passes. You can easily create promotional strategies and discount offers on many special days around the year.
A great example of promoting your catering services seasonally includes summer holiday outdoor parties with special BBQ packages, grilled meats, fresh salads, and beverages.
Another example of special offers for event catering is an early bird discount for New Year’s Gala catering to get maximum orders before the last date.
Also, you can offer thematic catering packages that revolve around event-specific offers. Here are fantastic Innovative ideas for catering business tailored to a wide range of themes:
- Cultural themes
- Movie theme
- Fantasy or sci-fiction-themed
- Sports theme
- Color scheme
- And so on…
2. Loyalty Programs for Clients
Have you ever thought about why loyalty programs are the game-changers?
Because customer loyalty programs help with client retention, which leads to repeat business, retaining clients with loyalty programs and building long-term relationships have become imperative for the catering business.
According to a study conducted by McKinsey on why loyalty matters, the following was the result:
- 3 out of 4 members of top-performing loyalty programs changed their behavior to generate more value for businesses.
- 64% are more likely to purchase more frequently
- 50% are more likely to recommend it to others
- 35% are more likely to choose a brand over competitors
- 31% are more willing to pay a higher price to stay with a brand
Catering out of restaurants requires more than just serving delicious meals and drinks. Loyalty programs for catering clients will attract them and help your business thrive.
For example, a top-class catering company, PEI WEI, offers 10 points for every dollar spent in-store, online, or through the app. Also, the customer receives a free entrée at 1,000 points. This will encourage visitors to turn into repeat customers.
Source: PEI WEI
3. Referral Programs
Food referral programs can make or break your catering business. Fostering client referrals can be a recipe for success and a way to stand out in the competitive landscape.
Building business through referrals is like a well-crafted menu that adds flavors to your brand with delectable opportunities.
Are you not convinced yet? Here are the five best reasons why referral programs always work.
- Customers enjoy being recognized and rewarded for their loyalty.
- Encourages customers to share their positive experiences.
- Cut through the noise and foster greater trust in your business.
- Referral programs are cost-effective as compared to the ROI generated.
- Rewards for referrals strengthen your bond with the existing customer.
- Ensures that existing customers stay loyal to your catering business.
- Repeat purchases increase customer lifetime value.
Happy clients help you build client advocacy as your marketer, helping you reach a broader audience and boost your reputation. Word-of-mouth helps you close the trust gap and adds credibility to your catering business.
For example, Cheese Club, which provides gourmet catering services in Singapore, offers a referral program for customers. According to their referral program, if your friends are new customers and they place an order, they receive an SGD 10 discount, and you will receive an SGD 10 discount for each new customer purchasing with us for the first time.
Source: Cheese Club
Conclusion
Wrapping up a catering marketing recap, the key lies in employing innovative and practical ideas that entice clients and leave a lasting impression.
By staying organized and consistent with your marketing efforts, you can make all the difference in scaling your business. With these easy-to-implement catering marketing ideas, you can establish a strong global presence and a standout brand name.
Follow catering advertising ideas that captivate audiences and nurture enduring customer relationships. In addition to digital efforts, focus on local marketing, capturing leads, and reinforcing the business presence.
Moreover, the power of appealing, professional food photography and expertly styled food presentations cannot be underestimated, as they entice people to take action and generate significant interest.
Also, strive to leverage the power of positive customer testimonials and online reviews for building trust and credibility. Social proof has become imperative to stay front of mind when customers or prospects think of catering.
The key to successful catering marketing is consistency. It is important to regularly reach out to potential customers and deliver messages that resonate with their needs.
The industry is dynamic and ever-changing; hence, while concluding thoughts on catering marketing, focus on staying competitive so you can scale your business and achieve goals.
Feel free to try unique catering marketing ideas, and be open to adjusting your approach as needed.
