Content & Food: Finding the Recipe for Success in the Competitive Food Delivery Market

The past few years have seen the rise of a new breed of restaurant to consumer delivery companies. Brands like Delivery Hero, Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat, Foodpanda, and DoorDash have used smartphone apps to link together hungry consumers and talented chefs, putting new cuisines within reach, while offering new revenue streams for hard-pressed small businesses.

Even so, there's still scope for new entrants into the online food delivery market. Consulting company McKinsey projects that the global sector will be worth EUR20 billion by 2025.

So there's no doubt that with the market expected to grow, competition is hotting up. And that gives rise to a really pressing question: what should your company do to capture the attention and spending of foodies in your target market?

Find the Perfect Content Strategy for Your Delivery Services

At greatcontent, we work with a range of food-related businesses, including some of Europe's most dynamic delivery services. And we've found that success is about more than offering accessible apps, wide choice, and easy-to-navigate menus.

To achieve the kind of visibility required to attract diners, online food ordering companies also need a comprehensive content strategy - one which markets their partner restaurants and their specialities, while foregrounding the delivery brand, and with dynamic SEO content to top it all off.

That all sounds great, but what actually comprises an effective strategy for web-based delivery services? The recipe varies between cultures and businesses, but here are some things we've learned that seem to apply across the board.

1. Focus Restaurant Listings Around Customer Needs

Firstly, success in the online food delivery market is all about tailoring content to offer valuable information for search engine users. This means structuring eatery listings around core questions, such as "why should I eat here?" or "where's the best place to find a salt beef bagel in Birmingham?".

Without becoming crude, content creators need to work in themes like the "best curry house in [x]", and actually justify those statements. We know your partner restaurants are ready to wow customers with their aromas and tastes, so provide information to content writers that allows them to give a flavour of the dining experience.

2. Localise Content to Make Big Cross-Border Gains

In the modern world, it's tempting to limit your content to generic themes and English language text. It's definitely cheaper to create a unified batch of content for all of your partners. But only in the short term, and from a limited perspective.

We've found that companies that source high-quality multilingual copywriting are able to entice gourmet food lovers much more effectively than delivery platforms which take a "one size fits all" approach.

Food is a cultural practice, as much as a business. So customers need to relate to the descriptions they read. This means localising pages as much as possible - even if it entails a slightly higher upfront cost.

3. Quality, Details, and Imagination are all Essential

Our third tip is fundamental. In a highly competitive environment, delivery services need to ensure that every piece of content they host is well-written, grammatically correct, and polished to a level that outshines alternative providers.

But it needs to be more than this. Aside from answering core customer queries, successful food delivery sites use a level of detail that sets them apart. They use writers who know what it takes to create the perfect tiramisu, or every difference between red and green Thai curries. And they use their language skills to summon up the flavour of those dishes well before the order button has been pressed.

That takes some serious writing chops, and not every copywriter has the required abilities. It's an excellent reason to outsource the work to specialist copywriting services with the experience and skills to create bespoke online food ordering content that's hard to resist.

We know that the food delivery business will continue to grow, and that new food delivery startups are just around the corner. If you're planning to make an entry in the near future, get in touch with greatcontent, and we'll create appetising content that powers your platform to success.

Text: Sam Urquhart
Image: unsplash.com