Restaurant marketers: Getting people inside your restaurant is as important as building up a five-star menu. Believe it or not, implementing the right text message marketing ideas can get your restaurant foot traffic even on your slowest days.

Although SMS might seem as an unusual marketing strategy for restaurants, many business startups actually use it as an effective marketing strategy. Read on to discover why SMS marketing can be an essential marketing tool for restaurants:

Immediacy

When it comes to immediacy, statistics hold up SMS’ superiority over other marketing mediums. Consider: 98% of received text messages are read. SMS texts receive an average response time of 90 seconds. For email, the average response time is 2.5 days. Moreover, mobile phone users have their phones within reach for 14 hours a day. Even mobile internet and mobile apps have a hard time catching up with the humble SMS in terms of immediacy.

This means you can reach your target audience with promos and offers and expect a response in a short period of time. Capitalize on SMS’ immediacy by offering instantly actionable promos such as buy-one–take-one deals valid only for 24 hours to move target audiences to action.

Wide Consumer Base

While not everyone owns top of the line smartphones and tablets, nearly everyone has a respectable mobile phone that can receive SMS and calls. This translates to a wide consumer base even for restaurants in local settings. A wide consumer reach does not automatically mean high marketing expenses, however. Restaurants in particular can benefit from SMS’ cost effectiveness as text messages can be sent from online platforms, often for low costs.

Your restaurant can begin building a relationship with target local audience by promoting local culture. Consider it as a sort of moral responsibility to local foodies. Later, you will be able to capitalize on your relationship with the community with text message marketing.

Geo-location Services

Elevate your restaurant’s SMS marketing with geo-location services. Help both first time customers and tourists alike find their way to your door by providing geo-location text services specific to your branch location(s). Make sure to get the proper short codes for each region. For example, if you are sending SMS to customers in New Zealand, use the appropriate short code to avoid confusion.

The perks of SMS marketing – immediacy, wide consumer base, geo-location services – make it an essential marketing tool for restaurants minus the high expenses of other costly marketing campaigns.

Combine all of this with a knockout menu and good standing with local foodies, and you can be confident that your customers will BRB (be right back) with SMS marketing.