#Marketing - How to Attract Customers to Your Store

While marketing several brands in the franchise and food service industry, I thought these tips might be helpful, so I'm writing them down.

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"How to get customers to come to my store?!"

1. Signature Menu

* 'Eat with your eyes' first.

While visiting famous restaurants, I've noticed that the taste is actually quite similar. It's 'a familiar taste' when you try it. However, the visuals definitely stimulate your appetite. It looks delicious and makes you want to record it.

The phrase 'makes you want to record it' is important here.

As SNS platforms are becoming increasingly personalized, optimized for user interests and other information, and showing content through similar routes and categories, visuals have become crucial to getting into a user's personal library.

As a result, most restaurants have a signature menu (representative dish), and they also delve into that to create new keywords.

2. Photo Zone

* Allow customers to record their memories.

It's hard to find a restaurant that doesn't serve delicious food these days. When I lived near Hongdae Station, the restaurants in Yeonnam, Hongdae, Hapjeong, Mangwon, and Sangsu were almost all delicious. However, I don't remember many of them. The restaurants that I remember mostly provided elements that compelled me to take photos and gave me a reason to post them in group chats or on Instagram. Especially at places with photo zones, it provided a bit of entertainment while waiting for food, whether it was with a potential girlfriend or during an awkward meeting, allowing for memories to be recorded. (However, those memories with a potential girlfriend could end up being just memories, and you might have the painful task of deleting them... ㅠㅠ).

Anyway, if you set up a space where customers can have something fun to do or a place to record memories while waiting for food, it will naturally be exposed on SNS. If it's tagged along with the food, it can become a hot topic among many people. So, if your restaurant doesn't have anything like that yet, quickly do something about it! Whether it's redesigning the interior or setting up props, just get it done.

3. It All Comes Down to SNS

* You must utilize channels with a large user base.

Although I wasn't particularly interested in the food service industry, as the number of franchise clients in the food service sector increased, I heard something like this:

"There's nowhere to distribute flyers."

Distributing flyers to the general public was actually effective until I was a child.

When I was younger, I worked part-time distributing flyers for 'Ryu** Pizza Shop' (elementary school 6th grade to middle school 1st grade). I remember getting 2,500 won for each building I completed. I distributed a lot of flyers in apartment complexes. After distributing flyers in one complex, with close to 10 buildings, I received many more orders from that area compared to others. However, since it's a food business, there are limitations in terms of preparation time and turnover rate, so I could only work part-time about twice a week.

Anyway, now many apartment complexes require security codes at the entrance, making it difficult to distribute flyers. As a result, there are fewer opportunities to reach customers through flyers.

Naturally, many businesses have transitioned to online advertising, with many using apps like Baemin (Baedal Minjok). While delivery food is one thing, many restaurants don't offer delivery. These restaurants often create their own channels. They send coupons through SNS and the online battle for attracting customers to their stores is fierce.

4. Experience Groups

* It seems we inevitably have to resort to experience groups.

Most food service businesses inevitably use experience groups. When users have a question, they naturally engage in the behavior of searching, and during this process, they often acquire information through the indirect experiences of others.

Of course, many people are aware that most of the content they see when searching is advertising. Despite the advertisements, they still make decisions based on the content.

However, the important thing here is that if it's not exposed, customers (users) can't even consider making a decision, so it's unavoidable.

Especially nowadays, people often get information about restaurants from reviews on Naver Places and Instagram. Of course, YouTube also plays a significant role. Among them, YouTube stimulates users' appetite by showing them eating scenes. Oh, once you start watching mukbang (eating broadcast), it's hard to stop. (You can lose track of time while browsing mukbang videos.)

5. CS

* Customer service can never be mentioned too often.

There's a sundae (Korean sausage) shop called Sundae Sillok that makes delicious sundae (I initially thought, 'How delicious can sundae be?', but it completely changed my mind). A friend told me about their experience there. Since his friends didn't drink alcohol, he ordered a single beer, and they gave him two more small glasses. So, my friend said,

"I only need one glass." But the manager replied,

"If you're eating alone, it can be lonely, so you should clear the glasses, right? ^^"

Just that kind of comment.

After that, both my friend and I started going there often to eat sundae.

No matter how delicious, beautiful, or whatever a place is, if the CS isn't up to par, the desire to visit just disappears. It's unavoidable.

I think these five points represent the current trends in the food service industry. Of course, they've always been important, but the increasing number of food service business owners who are creating channels to manage their brands indicates that they're recognizing the need for marketing to create touchpoints with customers.

The days of focusing solely on taste are gone. Now, there are many other things to take care of. It's a little sad to think that the effort that used to be poured into taste might now be going elsewhere, but in this age of information overload, where users' SNS platforms are becoming personalized, it's a challenge to reach them through their personal libraries.