Good hot dogs and a good location are not the only requirements for the growth of your business. You can increase your hot dog sales many times if you remain active in adopting relevant marketing methods. The hot dog marketing ideas presented here can do wonders for your sales if you start applying them. Without wasting any more time, let us get straight into the core marketing strategies.
1) Get a Website Designed with These Features
A website is the most crucial element for all of your online marketing methods and for this reason, it must have certain elements that would render the website more converting for your business. For maximum efficacy of your website, ensure that its resolution is auto-adjusting for mobile devices, has a quick loading time, and has easy navigation menus. It must also list your menu and it would be best if online ordering options are also made available.
2) Send Out a PR to Make Your Business Stand Out
When it comes to online visibility, press releases have the potential to work wonders for your business. When you distribute a press release about your hot dog business, the press release content will get syndicated and published on hundreds of websites. This will not only result in a quick increase in the number of visitors to your PR content and website but will also cause the acquisition of many new backlinks that will help with your site’s positioning in search engines. Because many times, press releases also appear in the top results of search engines for search queries that have little to no competition, your business can get this extra advantage too. By choosing a distribution network with a big syndication base, your hot dog business can get way better exposure through a press release.
3) Get Your Hot Dog Business Shown on Top Places on Google
The Google Search Algorithm scans through millions of web pages in a few seconds and places the top 10 best websites for a particular query on the first page of Google. Those websites that appear on the top 10 results are rewarded with quality traffic and accordingly leads and/or sales. Therefore, it is quite essential for you to actually look for techniques to get your hot dog website into Google’s top ten rankings. There are several things that must be taken care of in order to obtain such rankings, which is commonly referred to as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are numerous free resources readily available online to help you understand and implement SEO strategies. Another secure option for improving SEO performance and generating leads quickly is to outsource the entire process to a skilled and proficient SEO agency.
4) Make and Optimize GMB Profile for More Customers
When a user types anything in Google that Google believes to be a local-level (city or town-centered) search query (like “hot dog in [city]”), Google will choose three businesses to display in its local pack on the first page of its search engine’s results. Because there are so many businesses out there, the competition to get displayed in the local pack is also high. The creation of a “Google My Business” page, which includes a variety of information about your business, is the first thing that has to be done in order to be considered for inclusion in Google’s local pack. Because there are so many aspects that go into displaying results in this section (including reviews, authority, citations), it is best to have an online marketing firm manage this process for you.
5) Use Quality Advertising Networks
It takes time for Google to rank your website, but once it does, you’ll start seeing a steady flow of new customers. However, if you want to get started faster, paid ads can provide you with a fast channel for delivering leads. If you want paid advertising for your hot dog business, the two best sources are Google and Facebook. There are many differences in the way that ads are operated on both these platforms. Get some knowledge on ad creation and management before starting paid advertising as poor ad management may render your results negative. By delegating this task to a reputable digital marketing agency, you can have hassle-free ad creation and maintenance.
6) Introduce Your Hot Dogs on Social Media too
It will be detrimental to the success of your hot dog business if it does not have a presence on social media at a time when there are billions of accounts on social media. However, just maintaining a presence on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is not very effective on its own. To get these social media profiles to the point where they have a following of at least a few thousand people, you have to put in some initial groundwork. This can be accomplished by regularly sharing high-quality content and by engaging with members of other local groups and with people who connect with your social media profiles. You can also get assistance in growing your social media profiles from any social media marketing agency.
7) Sell More Hot Dogs Using Influencers
Do you know that businesses are increasingly adopting influencer marketing as a part of their overall marketing strategy? Social media influencers are those who have a sizable fan base of people (usually a few thousand). Numerous of these influencers are mostly open for business collaboration. To benefit the most from this strategy, you can make connections with influencers in your industry/segment (food, in this case) so that your hot dog business will be promoted on their accounts. The only thing to keep in mind is that if your business is targeting local exposure then the influencer must be from your location and must also have a sizable enough local following.
8) Start Generating Referrals
Do you know that customers acquired through referrals have a higher retention rate? So marketing strategies for your hot dog business should constantly aim to encourage word-of-mouth publicity. It is in fact a very straightforward strategy to grow your clientele by utilizing the efforts done by your present customer base. An easy way to initiate this strategy is by rewarding your current customers who recommend or refer your business to their friends and relatives. These rewards can be in the form of referral vouchers, gifts, etc. By working on this marketing strategy, your business revenues will surely take an upturn.
9) Small Merchandise, Big Profits
Do you know that distributing inexpensive items with your business names printed on them, such as calendars, pocket diaries, balloons, pencils, and pen stands, is a quick and easy way to make your brand’s impression long-lasting in the minds of customers? Additionally, your marketing efforts don’t end here with this strategy; rather, each and every person who comes across your custom-printed products will also get familiar with your hot dog business. This is a less expensive, straightforward yet powerful marketing tactic for any business.
10) Do Email Marketing
There is a good reason why many big businesses tend to collect the email addresses of visitors landing on their websites. Maintaining an email list gives the power to make more revenue per customer because by having the email addresses of targeted people, you can sell your items multiple times over and over again along with the option to announce new offers anytime. Also, the cost involved in managing an email list is very less compared to the returns generated by it.
11) Start Using a Few High-end Directories
Out of the different types of search results displayed on Google, a few powerful directories also find a place. Yelp, Home advisor are two good examples in this category. Just by the mere process of listing your business on such powerful directories, it becomes easy for you to get additional customers for your hot dog business. To make even better use of such directories, you can consider their premium placements.
12) Use Videos for More Visibility
Due to the authority of YouTube, videos rank considerably more quickly on Google than traditional websites actually do, opening up new opportunities for business promotion on Google without much SEO effort. To benefit the most from it, you must create videos on longer keywords (5, 6 words or higher) related to your hot dog business if you want to have better possibilities of ranking in search results. The likelihood of obtaining new leads consistently will improve proportionately with the number of videos that your business has uploaded on YouTube. All these activities will also indirectly aid in raising the visibility of your business brand on both platforms easily i.e. YouTube and Google alike.
13) Do Offline Marketing as Well
Though it can be hard to measure results with offline marketing strategies, they are still used all around the world because of their consistency and effectiveness in delivering leads and sales. Unlike digital marketing, the real-world interaction with ads happens offline and offline ads are therefore comparatively seen as more genuine than online ads. Ads on newspapers, brochures, billboards, are some of the most successful offline marketing methods that you can also consider for your business promotion.
14) Tie Up with Other Food Vendors
In order to sell more hot dogs, you can tie up with other food vendors like food trucks to magnify your menu and to get more revenue. You can also sell your hot dogs at bulk pricing to other food vendors.
15) Increase Your Menu with New Items and Benefit from It
Anything that is very common stops receiving significant attention. Due to this, you must constantly come up with new hot dog recipes in order to separate yourself from other hot dog sellers. You can learn various new recipes related to your business on YouTube.
16) Give Out Points or Coupons for Every Purchase
You must start giving out points or coupons for every sale of your hot dog as this will incentivize people to redeem their points or coupons for which they will have to buy from you again. This is a good way to get repeat sales.
17) Make Much More by Integrating Delivery Services
Nowadays, there are many delivery services that can take products from you to your customers for nominal charges. By allowing online ordering of hot dogs and other items with a free delivery system, many people will do large orders and will buy more often because now they will have the convenience to get these food items directly to their homes.
18) Collect Phone Numbers and Sell Even More
There are many applications nowadays using which you can utilize “text to win” contests. These applications help you to store the phone number of people along with sending them SMS, thereby promoting your offers at any time you wish. You should start making use of such applications in order to grow your hot dog business even faster.
19) Maintain Good Reviews
Reviews are considered by many people before making a purchase and you must therefore maintain positive reviews of your business by asking your customers to leave reviews for your hot dog business online.
Start implementing these marketing strategies for the hot dog business and come back to thank me :).