Get Customers: 5 Ways to Know your Customers

We recently polled business owners about which areas they found the most challenging when marketing their restaurant business. The choices were:

 - Getting Customers
 - Making Customers Happy
 - Getting Customers to Come Back

The results were interesting – As of today, of those that responded, 77% believed that Getting Customers was the area that they found the most challenging when marketing their business, whereas, 9% believed that Making Customers happy was the most challenging and 14% believed that Getting Customers to Come Back was the most challenging. Click to participate in the “Marketing your Restaurant” poll.

Another study from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Reasons Customers Leave” shows that 68% leave because they are upset with the treatment they’ve received. There seems to be a disconnect between what our respondents find the most challenging and what customers generally experience.

As a result, we have created a series of tips directed toward the restaurant business owner although many of the ideas can be broadly applied to other business types. 

An interesting statistic from the National Restaurant Association is that 88% of adults say they enjoy going to restaurants, which bring us to the first topic, Get Customers: Know your Customer.

“Knowing why they eat out is also important, are they tired of cooking by Thursday, do they just want takeout on Friday so they can put their feet up, do they always eat out on Saturday or only on birthdays or other special occasions. Knowing what they want and when is a great step forward to knowing your customer.”

We plan to create an eBook of all the tips in the series with feedback and ideas from our readers included, so sign up for eBook notifications.

Let us know if you plan to apply any of the ideas in your restaurant or business or if you have a tip for fellow business owners.