When food truck owners see empty lines at their service window, they do everything possible to fill them. For most, it can seem like they are one good food truck promotion away from more customers.  So they come up all types of promotions and pound customers with them, hoping to eek out more business.

What vendors need to understand is that, most promotions won’t fix the problem. If you are trying to promote your food truck to alter consumers buying habits in most cases you’ll be wasting time and resources. You shouldn’t exert all your marketing effort on promotions that give you more for less. If you want to take promotional risks, bases them on what makes your food truck special.

Today we will share 4 guidelines to follow to help make your food truck promotion work for you.

How To Make Your Food Truck Promotion Work

  • Run promotions all week. Limiting your best promotional ideas to Monday to Thursday means that most customers will not be able to take advantage of the promotion. By running promotions all week, food trucks are afraid of incurring a loss that they would otherwise not experience. But think of a promotion as an invitation that is an investment over the length of a customer relationship. Putting date requirement on anything but “must have” items will result in less participation.
  • Marketing should have a customer service element. Consider using food truck promotions that involve minimal cost but produce repeat customers. Customers notice freebies even if they are very minor. The small marketing moves can shift conversation back to your food truck.  The idea is to get your customers to say; “I like coming here because (promotion that doesn’t involve your food or service).”
  • Promotions shouldn’t cheapen your brand. You do not want to replace your food or service with a discount, especially on weekends. Don’t cheapen your brand, entice it. Food truck promotions centered around a favorite item dish push your brand to customers.
  • Keep you promotions visible. Nothing works better than placing a promotional sign in your service window that customers can use right away. Make sure to share your food truck promotions online and put it somewhere near your service window, which can go from a specials A-frame to a menu flyer.

RELATED: Promoting Your Food Truck Business With Branded Merch

The Bottom Line

A key mistake vendors make when developing a food truck promotion is that their main goal is new customer acquisition. Instead, you should create them to transform new customers into repeat customers. Even when a promotion tries to attract new customers, it should be set up in such a way that customers can easily see why they should return to your truck without a promotion.

What has been your best food truck promotion? Share your ideas in the comment section or on social media. Facebook | Twitter