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Using Social Media to Promote Your Restaurant

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Social media and has infiltrated every part of our lives and everyone in our society is active on at least one social media platform; usually 2 or 3. Social media gives people freedom, and it also gives restaurants the freedom to (freely!) promote their business, gain more fans, and keep in touch with their most loyal patrons. Whilst social media is an incredible tool to market your business not all social media marketing is well thought out or turns out as planned. So how should you use social media to successfully promote your business?

Content

Until recently, commenting on political matters using business accounts was a BIG no no, and those who did it received huge backlashes. Recently, over the past few years, such posting has increased. Whilst there has been an increase in business commenting on political matters this is still a BIG no no! It causes divisions between your customers, will often lose you more customers than it’ll bring you, equates to bad press, and is just unprofessional; why does a restaurant have to weigh in anyway?

Personal accounts are used for opinion, restaurant accounts are used for promotion. Use photos, videos, montages, posters and other visuals to capture attention and ensure that those who you reach will be enticed to come and visit your restaurant. Most importantly make sure all your posts align with your brand and your brands message.

Goal

There’re two main goals you can have when you post and you should pick one of them for each post:

  1. Press: This is you putting yourself out there just as a reminder to your followers that your restaurant is still there. These posts often show your followers what a great time they can have with you.
  2. Promotion: This is you promoting events or offers that are designed to draw guests to your location.

Whilst these two goals are intricately entwined -you can’t post for press without self-promoting and you can’t post a promotion without giving yourself press- they both represent different views of marketing and different people will react to these posts. So always know which is your overall goal with each and every post.

Frequency of Posts

Don’t bombard your followers with the content or you might find yourself unfollowed or, even worse, blocked! The frequency of posts is unique to each brand and working this out can be quite difficult. If in doubt, keep your posting rate lower and monitor your engagement.

The above are unspoken, but basic, guidelines for when it comes to successfully using social media to promote your restaurant. Follow these and you’ll find your followers to be receptive, deviate and you may find that your social media marketing is having a negative impact on your business. Another great tip is to watch your own social media feed and see how you react to posts from locations similar to yours; this is a great insight that’s easy for everyone to obtain!

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Photos: The Key to Your Restaurant’s Online Success

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A few years ago phone manufacturers introduced a “food mode” function to their cameras. The fact that this came before the recently released “portrait mode”, designed for taking fantastic photos of people, shows us how much photos of food influence people’s dining decisions. But the use of the photos to market restaurants extends much further than just photos of food.

The Influence of Instagram

Instagram, the photo-centric social media platform, has steadily climbed to the top of the social media chart and has managed to hold that spot for quite a while. Its secret is no secret. Its secret is photos. This in itself is evidence that the image is a powerful influencer, so much so that many restaurants around the world cottoned onto this fact and started creating extremely photogenic dishes to attract customers, as well as utilizing certain design aspects of their locations to attract even more customers!

People Prefer Photos

Studies show that the optimum Facebook post is 80 characters long. That’s shorter than a tweet! This fortifies the fact that, in a world where we are constantly scrolling rather than reading, it is the visual, not the word which catches people’s attention. When potential guests are looking for somewhere to eat they’re first going to judge a restaurant on the images they find before they even read any menus, descriptions, or reviews.

Restaurant Online Success

Produce Professional Photos

Photos offer a way for a restaurant to present its location and its offerings in an appealing way to potential guests. Yes, they’re an influencer, and the average joe, out there posting photos of the food and design elements of a restaurant but it is often the restaurant’s own photos that people see and judge first. The fact that everyone else can pull out a camera and snap a picture should give restauranteurs and managers, even more, drive to provide high-quality images of both their food and their restaurant to the public in order to try and entice them through the door, rather than leaving it to the average photographer who takes a photo with their own opinion in mind.

Today, everyone has a camera in their pocket to capture whatever they wish, with many people snapping a photo and then immediately posting it. Images make up a huge percentage of marketing in today’s world, and the rapid rise of photo-centric apps like Instagram and Snapchat shows us that high-quality images are integral to the success of any business. Utilizing professional photography to market your business is one of the best things you can do to make your promotional material, website, and social media even more attractive to your customers.

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Why Your Restaurant Needs a Website

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In today’s world the internet is as much a marketplace for restaurants as the high street on which they are located. Many people search online for a place to eat their lunch or dinner, even when they’re standing on a street full of restaurants! Review sites are not the only source of customers online, and creating yourself a virtual storefront i.e. website, where people can discover more about you from a maps search on their devices is essential to turning “restaurants near me” searches into an increase in business.

Give Yourself Some Identity

When you look at search results of a restaurant online you find their name, phone number, operating hours, customer photos, and, hopefully, a menu. This is helpful information but it doesn’t tell you who that restaurant actually is. Having a website for your restaurant allows potential customers a sneak peak into not just what you’re offering but who you are, your brand and much more about you!

Convenience 

With so many of our interactions happening online there’s no wonder that people prefer the quick and easy process of reserving tables and ordering takeout or delivery through websites. Having a website gives you a portal for guests to do this, and once they’re on your dedicated site then they’re even more likely to complete that transaction rather than through a crowded search engines results page.

Higher Visibility

Having a website for your brick and mortar location is a proven way to push yourself higher up in Google’s site rankings. So whether you be a fine dining establishment or a pizza joint it pays to have a virtual storefront out there for customers to search for.

Questions

Potential customers have a myriad of questions about your location: “can we make a reservation?”, “What gluten free options do you have?”, “What’s on your children’s menu?”, and “Do you deliver?” are just the tip of the iceberg. Having a website allows potential customers access to this information and can stop many of the phone calls asking such repetitive questions, and also help them make the decision to dine with you.

Promotions

Having a website allows you to post information about upcoming events, to which you can link social media posts, and it also allows you to have an email form to which patrons can sign up for a mailing list of deals, information and much more!

Mobile Friendly

It has been found that 77% of diners will check a restaurant’s website before making the decision to dine or order from that establishment. There’re many factors that can make or break a customer’s decision but because most restaurant website searches are done from mobile devices it is key that your website, it’s menu, and all other pages are optimized for mobile devices. Not to mention that a mobile optimized site also helps you claim a higher spot in Google’s site rankings!

Your restaurant’s website need not be fancy, expensive, or contain reams of information. It only need express who you are, what you offer, and provide your customers with easy access to all the information they could potentially want. Getting your restaurant website right is key to turning internet traffic into foot traffic!

 

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3 Factors of Successful Restaurant Promotion

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Restaurants can no longer rely on just their regulars to keep their business afloat. Margins are getting thinner, and goods and staffing are becoming more expensive. It is therefore crucial that each promotional campaign run for your location delivers a return that far exceeds the original outlay. There’re three factors which contribute heavily to the success of a marketing campaign and getting these right means that you’ll be on the road to success!

Know Your Goal

Successful Restaurant

What is the goal of your promotion, is it press or profit? Of course, all promotions are targeted at increasing traffic and, thus, increasing profit; however, there’re two main methods of promoting. The first is by promoting a limited time offer (LTO) to draw in customers and get the profits right away. The second method is to promote your business and your offerings in a more general way and expect the profits to trickle in slowly over time as people return to your business for you being you. Use the method which fits your financial and business needs. Need cash fast or want to offload excess stock? Run an LTO. Want to remind your local community and visiting tourists that you’re still there? A more general advertisement is needed.

Know Your Target Market

Each promotion you produce is targeted at a specific market, these can be classified by age, gender, sports fans, whether or not you’re targeting new or existing customers, and many other things. Knowing your target market before restaurant website design Chicago for your promotional strategy is key to its success you advertise on buses, you may not hit too many young customers, however with a targeted boosted promotion on Instagram then you’re sure to hit the screens of many potential customers in your target market.

Accurate COGs

The cost of advertising needs to be carefully weighed against the returns you expect from your outlay on promotional materials. Sometimes this can be difficult to calculate but needs to be done in order to ensure that your marketing investment was worthwhile. If you’re running an LTO then it is essential that you work out the cost of goods for that offer. Some offers are ridiculously priced because they’re a tactic to get as many people in through the door as possible in the hope that they’ll return soon and pay full price. However, if you’re just looking to offload some products and create space in your storage area then carefully analyze your COGs for all items involved before committing to running the advertisement.

High quality, well presented, and well-directed marketing is necessary to help restaurants survive in today’s world of heavy competition. When restaurant web design Chicago is your next promotional campaign, begin by setting parameters for each of the three points above and you’ll find that everything else slots easily into place and that you’ll feel much more confident about having a successful campaign.