How to promote your catering business
Table of Contents
While some businesses can get by with very little promotion, others require you to put a lot of attention and effort into it. For instance, it’s important that you learn how to promote your catering business, as you’ll rely on attracting a steady stream of clients to keep your business going.
This article will look at how to promote your catering business and why it’s essential. We’ll cover several topics, including:
- Why it’s important to promote your catering business
- How to promote your catering business
- How to manage income from new clients with Countingup
Why it’s important to promote your catering business
Attract clients
The primary reason any business puts time into promotion is to attract more clients, get more sales, and increase its income. When you first start a catering business, part of your business plan should be a list of your marketing ideas and strategies, as you’ll need these ideas to attract clients.
Promotion can encourage existing clients to return as well as attracting new ones. If you promote a new feature of your service (like a new menu), existing clients might choose to use your business again so that they can enjoy this new feature. In this way, promotion can enhance the loyalty of your customers, encouraging them to pay for your services repeatedly.
Improve your branding
Promotion is also important for improving your company’s branding. Your brand is how people identify your company and what sets you apart from competitors. By promoting your catering business, you’ll make your company’s brand more recognisable to the world at large.
This leads to an increase in clients and an increase in how much your clients will trust you. If you improve your branding, clients will come to see you as a trusted source of your particular service and will be more likely to use your business instead of competitors’.
How to promote your catering business
Social media
Social media is one of the best ways to promote a small business for several reasons. First, it’s entirely free (unless you pay for advertising) and it allows you to promote your catering business to a broad audience very quickly.
Building up a social media following and creating quality content takes time and practice, but social media is still vital for any business that wants to promote itself. So look into which social media platforms are most relevant to your catering business, and start thinking of content to post.
Use client reviews
A great method for persuading clients to use your services is to have your existing clients do it for you. There are many different techniques a business can use to get feedback from customers, like surveys and reviews. If you post the most positive examples of these reviews to an obvious place on your website, it might convince visitors to use your business for their catering needs.
This is an effective method of promotion because it comes from customers, not the company itself. When a customer talks about the positive aspects of a business, it comes across as more sincere and genuine than if the message came from the company itself. This is because there’s no substantial benefit to the customer to give a positive review, since the company does not employ them
Approach potential clients directly
If you know of an organisation in your area that regularly requires catering services for events they hold, a good way of promoting your business is simply to contact them directly. If all goes well, you may be able to establish a permanent relationship with them.
Organisations like sports clubs, schools, or wedding planners all frequently hold events that require food. If they don’t already have a catering business they use to provide this food, you may want to contact them so that they’re aware of your services. This tactic can be especially effective if you’re aware of a specific event they’re holding soon, as you may even be doing them a favour by offering your services.
Just make sure that you prepare before you contact them so that you can leave the best impression. For instance, make sure that you practice a short sales pitch to give over the phone or create a draft for a professional business email.
Focus on a particular market
In business, market segmentation is the practice of splitting your customers into groups based on similar needs and characteristics they have. This means instead of having to appeal to one broad market, you can focus on more specific, specialised markets. It’s a great tool for more effectively promoting your company, particularly for catering businesses.
You’ll provide services for many different events, but you can put most into categories like birthdays, weddings, or team events. Suppose you promote your business as being well-suited to a particular category. In that case, you may find that this attracts more clients as people will see you as a specialist caterer for that category of events.