Top 4 Catering Marketing Investments Caterers Swear By

There are plenty of ways to grow a catering business through both free and paid marketing. The free marketing can take you far, but there comes a time where money can push you to the next level and bring more revenue to the business.

Recently, I surveyed a group of caterers to figure out what they consider is the best use of their marketing dollars to promote their catering business. Here are the top 4 paid marketing tactics that have catapulted their businesses.

Catering marketing is important to grow and sustain catering business.

4. Social Media

Social media has turned into a massive platform for any brand to gain exposure and following. Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), or any other medium, these platforms can provide a place for you to express your craft, showcase your food, gain followers, and monetize that following.

This can be done organically, or in a free way, by posting content on a regular basis and engaging with those who ask questions or provide feedback.

You can also pay on these platforms, the most common way being advertisement. Ads can run and be exposed to more than your general following. You can pick your own budget, which can work out well for those on a tight budget. Starting small and then scaling up has show to be a great strategy that way you can test out what works out best, and only spend more when you see a return. You can also target your audience. For example, you can target people who are between certain ages, in a specific area, that work in a specific occupation, which can be very powerful in a lot of cases.

I think it is important to think of why this wouldn't work as well. Social media is not necessarily the place people think to go to buy catering. They may engage and like the content but not be ready to buy, where as Google is a place people search with intent to buy.

If you choose to spend money on social media, be sure to evaluate your efforts, and if the return is not there, either change or strategy or redirect your marketing spend to another channel.

3. Custom Website

Before I did this survey, I never thought about a website as a marketing investment. I always considered a website as a "must have" when it comes to business. As I've come to realize, there are a lot of restaurants and caterers in the industry that don't have a website at all, so considering this a "marketing investment" actually now makes sense to me.

What are the benefits of having a website? Well, there are many. Your website is your real estate on the internet. If you don't have one, you are basically setting yourself up to not be found as easily, and not be as verifiable as businesses that do have one. You lose legitimacy with potential customers and you lose out on potential business.

The cost can be expensive or inexpensive. If you get one done completely custom and pay for developers, you will pay much more than working with a teamplate/design company to make it yourself. I would say this all depends on what your budget is and both can be beneficial to your business.

2. Local marketing

Local marketing can mean many different things, but what a lot of caterers were referring to in my survey was engagement within their local community.

Getting involved in the chamber of commerce, joining local events and supplying food, or engaging with other local businesses and cross promoting are all different ways local marketing can benefit your catering business.

This is really networking, where you are going out to the community, showing face, sharing food, and creating lasting partnerships. This can really help your business and the power of local should not be forgotten.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The number 1 voted use of marketing dollars for catering businesses was SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. For those who may not be familiar, SEO is making changes to your site, and off site, in order to rank higher on search engines like Google to gain more traffic.

I will be making a more in-depth breakdown of how a catering business can beneift using SEO and some tactics, but the idea is appear higher in Google search results, ideally on the first page, for keywords and phrases such as "office catering in Brooklyn" or "mexican caterers near me". There are many different phrases and keyworks that could work well for your business, so it is important to do lots of research before diving in.

It makes sense why catering businesses decide to invest their moeny into this practice, as the traffic you can get from getting on the first page can be incredibly substanital to your revenue.

If you're interested to learn more about how any of these marketing strategies could work for your catering business, send us a note at thecatercode@gmail.com, I'd love to chat more!

Cater on!