Do you run a pizza shop and you want to boost your profit? If YES, here are 15 strategies to help you increase sales in your pizza business.
The pizza industry has managed to forge ahead in the past years and it does not seem to be slowing down anytime soon. With the staggering statistics that were quoted above, it is easy to assume that pizza is so popular that it will definitely sell itself.
Well, not so much. An inherent challenge exists in running a pizzeria especially if it is independently owned. This challenge presents itself in the form of competition that you will have to face from other independently owned pizzerias and other large chains.
Also, a lot of pizzerias are located in small communities or neighborhoods with less population and traffic, making it even more difficult to consistently turn in profit. So, it is necessary for your business to be at the forefront of your customer’s minds when they think about pizza.
Increasing sales in a pizza business is not too difficult. You will have to embrace the traditional methods of increasing sales and you will also have to think outside the box. To achieve increased sales in any business, the role of a well-crafted marketing strategy cannot be overemphasized.
Your pizza marketing strategy should include the tested and trusted conventional methods of restaurant promotion, newer innovative marketing technologies as well as strategies that are tailor-made for your situation. Here are a few strategies that can be employed to increase the sales and revenue of a pizza business.
How to Increase Sales in your Pizza Business
1. Get on social media
Good and quality advertising no doubt does not come cheap but there is always a way of increasing the popularity of our business without even spending a dime and that is by the use of social media. Through this method, you can grow your business right from your smartphone.
Once you start up your pizzeria, you should endeavor to open an account on the major social media platform and secure your name on them. If your business name is already taken, you can add the town or city where your pizzeria is located or any other reference that clearly points to your business.
Being on social media is of no use if no one knows you are there. To alert your customers or potential customers of your presence, you can place a sign on the cash register, on the table, menu or by just letting people know verbally that they can follow you on social media.
Also you should encourage your customers to check-in at your restaurant and join the conversation. If you harness the opportunity well, you will find out that your customers will do a lot of the social media work for you especially if they are loyal customers.
There is nothing too technical about using social media as a marketing tool. Do not feel too pressured to constantly make overly creative posts.
Just be yourself and let things flow naturally. Make sure that you always share pictures of the various pizzas you make, your restaurant, happy customers, specials and discounts, coupons, new additions to the menu, new signs, and any other thing you think will interest pizza lovers and your customers.
Make sure that you do not overload your customers with constant posts. If you are using Facebook, it is advisable to limit the number of posts you make per day to just one. This is because making a lot of posts can force the hand of the customer to hide your posts, which will imply that you have lost that customer.
Twitter does not have a hide button and the customer will have to unfollow you in order to stop seeing your post, so on that platform you can get away with posting as much as five posts per day.
Always remember to interact with your followers. If someone asks you any question through your social media, make sure that you reply as soon as possible. Interacting with your customers builds a relationship with them which will ultimately make them visit your pizzeria more often. It is also advisable to try using giveaways to get more customers.
For example, you can make a post saying that the next person that calls will get a free pizza or a certain percentage of discount or a free drink. These giveaways help to increase your popularity and make your presence felt on the platform.
You should note that building up your social media audience can take some time and as such, a lot of patience is required. Even if your account is not growing at the rate you would prefer, you should also be consistent with your posts.
2. Get professional visuals
Your customers will always appreciate and prefer to see your pizza in quality images. Mouthwatering pictures of your pizza with melted cheese and perfectly baked crusted will definitely make them want to spend their money on it. In order to succeed with the aid of social media like was mentioned before, a visual aid is a necessity.
No one wants to read about a delicious pizza on social media as opposed to seeing the said pizza for themselves. Analytics have shown severally that posts with images get a significantly higher proportion of engagements when compared with text-only posts.
So, irrespective of if your preferred platform is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, the power of a quality picture cannot be over-emphasized.
As much as the use of pictures has been advocated, you should never ever use stock pizza pictures because people will definitely get disappointed when they notice the disparity between the food they have ordered and the food in the picture.
To get high-quality images, you should employ the services of a professional food photographer. These pictures can be used on your menu, fliers, websites, and social media platforms.
3. Offer pizza by the slice
Different customers have different needs. This is reflected in the type of pizzas they go for. It is also portrayed in the fact that some customers will want to order a full pizza while some will want to go for something less. By offering pizza by the slice, you can take advantage of these customers who cannot consume a full pizza or do not have enough cash to afford one.
Having a combo of a slice of pizza and a pop for about 4 to 8 dollars will attract a lot of people especially during lunchtime.
This idea will also attract a younger crowd who are just looking for a bite and not something to take home. To let people know about your pizza by the slice offer, you should have a neon sign in your front window that can be seen from the access road.
4. Digital ordering
According to research that was carried out by LevelUp ( an American mobile payments platform) customers who have placed an online order visit the restaurant 67 percent more frequently when compared to customers who have not. Also, studies have shown that customers who order online tend to spend more money on each order than those that actually come to the pizzeria.
Larger chains already seem to know this and have keyed into it to further grow their business, but most independently owned pizzerias are yet to fully take advantage of digital payment. In other words, to remain relevant in the pizza business, you will have to create an avenue by which your customers can place their orders online.
5. Target the millennials
Millennials are a generation of “foodies”. A study that was conducted in 2013 found that at least 50 percent of millennials consider themselves to be lovers of good dishes.
Another study that was carried out by PMQ in 2016 found out that millennials spend over 95 billion dollars on restaurants. Smart Flour Food in their poll also discovered that about 54 percent of this same class of people has taken a photo of their pizza and posted it online.
That study also found out that they are highly loyal to brands and restaurants if they feel a connection to them. All these data just goes to show the necessity of targeting millennials in order to increases sales. There are two ways to get Millenials to key into your business:
6. Make sure that the mobile platform is your main medium of customer communication as opposed to emails or any other platform. This is because at least 90 percent of millennial smartphone users have their phones within arm’s reach at every second of the day. So, you cannot go wrong with using this medium.
7. Also you should discontinue the use of plastic/punch cards if you still make use of them in your pizzeria. Instead, you should embrace the use of digital check-in.
The advantage of this is seen in the fact that it will relieve the inconvenience that your customers face in carrying around the card with them, it will also help to reduce the cost that will normally have been spent on expensive plastic printing costs and of course maintenance.
8. Don’t be scared to raise prices
When catering to the need of millennials, you will realize that they appreciate exotic, natural, and artisanal ingredients. Chances are that these ingredients will constitute a pizza that costs more than a common recipe like say pepperoni.
A study that was carried out by Smart Flour found out that 77 percent of pizza lovers are of the opinion that natural ingredients are important to them. 29 percent say that they try to avoid meat that has added hormones and 28 percent avoid high fructose corn syrup.
As a pizzeria owner, you can input the need of your customers into your menu and raise your price accordingly. Millennial customers will be willing to pay more for a pizza as long as they are satisfied that the increase in cost is justifiable.
9. Do Giveaways
You can imprint the name of your pizzeria in small and inexpensive gift items and give them to your customers as a form of appreciation for their patronage. Such gift items may be pencils, pens, and magnets. These gifts are perfect for the various holidays, special sporting events, or for back-to-school promotions.
10. Leverage a school: You can contact various schools and ask them if they will be interested to sell your pizza in their cafeteria during their lunchtime.
11. Create an effective coupon offer
Coupons and deal promotions have always been quite popular among pizzerias. Well utilized coupons can be a very effective strategy for increasing the number of people that walk into your pizzeria. Coupons that have specific incentives attached to them have the ability to drive more customers to your business more than the regular forms of advertisement that have no incentive attached to them.
Even though giving out coupons from time to time is encouraged for pizzeria owners, the coupon deals should be for only a limited amount of time. It will be wise to clearly delineate the terms of conditions of any promotion that you are running so that your customers will not abuse the privilege that you have provided them.
12. Email list
Building an email list is one of the various ways in which a pizza business can connect to its customers and re-market to them at very little cost. To be able to engage your customers and ensure that your emails actually convert to sales, you will have to nurture your email list using relevant content so that your open rates and click-thru rates will be high.
13. Keep your repeat customers happy
Repeat customers are the life force of any business. If your customers find your pizza delicious and like your customer service, there is a very high tendency that they will become regular customers who will patronize you whenever they need to eat pizza.
You should endeavor to be consistent in delivering those things that your customers love that ultimately has the ability to make them repeat customers.
In conclusion, in other to increase sales in your pizza business, you should try your best to make your pizzeria and pizza to be the first thing that pops into the mind of your customers when they are in need of pizza. Your business should also be able to attract new customers through the use of the aforementioned techniques. Be the number one in your customer’s mind and you will always succeed.