You know your food is the best out there, but how best to go about marketing your catering business and get the word out about your services on a limited advertising budget?

Traditional advertising such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station, are just too far out of the advertising budget that many catering businesses have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new client as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are you will forget to ask, and they should be more interested in discussing menus than mentioning how they happened to hear of your services. However, in order to survive and prosper, marketing your catering business successfully is crucial.

There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your catering business that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy caterer should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “catering service” “caterers” and “food catering”. Even better, online advertising lets you target the specific demographic you are seeking. By entering such specific keywords the user already has the kind of services you are offering specifically in mind at that moment.

But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great catering business advertising? Most effectively you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you. This is great opportunity for a catering business. You can post your menus in their entirety to your page, and mouth watering pictures of your great cuisine too. A coupn for a free dish or a great discount is a great way to induce your visitor to input their information into a short contact form. This data is emailed to you immediately, allowing you to follow up right away, while the “lead” is still tasting your food in their head!

The true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of catering business advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your food and your services. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your catering business marketing dollar.