Advertising pizza is an art. In the US alone, there were over 39,800 independent pizza restaurants and nearly as many chains – that's a lot of pizza advertisements.
Marketing your pizza business to stand out from the fierce competition is possible if you follow these tips below:
10 Pizza Business Ideas to Market Your Restaurant Effectively
1. Take Professional Photos of Your Pizza
How are people searching for your business?
There’s a good chance that they’re not looking through local classified ads in the newspaper and seeing black-and-white pictures of your pizza. Instead, today’s consumers are using their smartphones to:
- Research local pizza places
- Find the best pizza in town
If you’re opening a pizza shop, you need to have professional photos of your food. People will look at your photos, and if they look bad, they will go to your competitor. Take professional photos because pizza for business entrepreneurs is a great option if you sell the taste.
People don’t want to eat dry pizza with little sauce and barely any cheese.
Instead, they want a delicious pizza with the perfect crust and balance of cheese and sauce. Capture these elements in your professional pictures, and you’ll be well on your way to increasing your sales.
2. Offer Combo Deals for Groups or Parties
Pizza marketing for groups and parties makes a lot of sense, but far too many pizza places fail to leverage these larger sales. Groups:
- Order more
- Want more options
You can promote combo deals to families, corporations, or even smaller birthday party groups. Offer combo deals that include a variety of items, such as:
- Multiple pizza combos for a discount
- Pizza, wings and appetizer combos
- Pizza, drinks and a dessert
If you start creating pizza marketing ideas around group sales, you’ll increase revenue and enjoy higher single-ticket sales.
3. Take Advantage of Mobile Channels
Mobile channels are where people will find your pizza shop. Sure, someone may drive by and stop in to try your eatery, but most people will Google your pizzeria before walking in the door.
If you want a pizza advertisement idea to use today, it’s to leverage mobile channels.
This means:
- Creating a mobile-friendly website
- Offering your own pizza app
- Engaging with people on social media
4. Use PPC Marketing
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a way to “skip the line” and promote your pizzeria to the masses on social media. You can purchase ads on:
- Bing
- Waze
If you have the proper targeting in place, you can ensure that you market your business to a massive local audience who wants great pizza. For new pizzerias that are just trying to get their first sales and grow, PPC is one of the go-to opportunities that work amazingly well.
5. Single Slice Offers
There was a time when pizzerias would sell pizza by the slice as a standard option, but today, many are only offering pies. Instead, you can appeal to locals by offering single-slice offers and even including drinks in the price.
For example, you can:
- Sell a slice of pizza for $4 each or $5 with a drink
- Sell a whole pizza for $16
When you sell by the slice, you’re improving your profit margins while also ensuring that you cater to people who just want a slice or two of pizza instead of an entire pizza pie.
6. Digital Reward Cards
Remember our recommendation on leveraging mobile channels? While you’re at it, you can offer digital rewards via an app. If you have digital rewards cards, you can increase the number of return visitors to your pizza shop.
For example, you can:
- Offer unique discounts to repeat visitors on slow days
- Provide a 50% discount after a person makes five pizza purchases
- Etc.
Digital reward cards replace the old punch cards and will allow you to remain in contact with customers who already trust and like your food.
7. Local Sponsorships and Fundraisers
Pizzerias have a very limited delivery range and cannot expect people to go far for their pizza. With tens of thousands of pizzerias, most people will opt to go to a local pizzeria rather than travel 45 – 60 minutes away for pizza.
Sure, some people will travel this distance for pizza, but it’s not going to be 90% of your customers.
Instead, most of your patrons will be locals.
If you want to impress locals, you should:
- Sponsor local sports teams
- Hold fundraisers for the local community
And the cost of these sponsorships and fundraisers is often low but offers a major impact.
8. Market via Text Messages
Text message marketing is massive. People easily ignore emails and notifications on social media, but almost everyone checks their text messages. If you get approval from customers to send them texts, you can:
- Offer unique discounts
- Maintain close engagement with them
You will need to have approval to send text messages to your customers before sending them. An opt-in is required for this type of marketing, along with an easy way to opt-out.
9. Local Pizza Challenges
On top of these last points, you should also consider local pizza challenges. For example, you can use Instagram or Facebook to create a challenge, such as:
- Hold a referral contest where locals refer friends and the person who refers the most people receives a prize of your choosing
- Hold crazy costume parties on social media for rewards
- Ask locals what you should name your new specialty pizza and then offer the best suggestion for two free specialty pizzas
Sit down with your staff and discuss ways that you can hold local pizza challenges.
10. Winning Team Discounts
And the final item of our pizza restaurant ideas: offer winning team discounts. For example, you may offer 50% off the day after a:
- Local team wins a game
- Professional, local team wins a game
Many major pizza chains are offering the same type of discounts with amazing success.
Marketing ideas for pizza evolve and change over time. If you follow all of these recommendations, you’ll surely improve your sales and exposure. However, one of the business pizza must-have requirements is good-tasting pizza.
If you offer mouthwatering pizza that people love, your business will grow through word-of-mouth, which is 100% free.