Social media is an important element of running a modern business, and it’s quickly becoming a popular restaurant marketing platform for attracting new customers and converting them into regulars.
A social media strategy is an important aspect of your restaurant marketing strategy, whether it’s as easy as sharing photographs of your specials and promotions across all channels or as complex as leveling up and pushing your postings on your best-performing platforms.
Interact with other people.
It is not enough to simply create a Facebook page; you must also participate, engage, and communicate with others using various strategies such as asking questions, organizing online events, and competitions.
Many restaurants held mother’s day parties and activities to engage with customers, as recently as Mother’s Day. You’ve probably seen restaurant advertisements for Mother’s Day on the internet.
I’m going to share one of them with you today –
So, what exactly is restaurant marketing, and how can it benefit my company? Take, for example, Instagram. According to Social Media Today, 30% of millenial diners intentionally shun restaurants that don’t have a strong Instagram presence. And, as restaurant patrons become more technologically savvy, it’s more important than ever to establish a distinct online presence and brand.
- Provides information to customers and allows them to communicate with them.
- Allows your restaurant to be found on the internet.
- Allows you to visually share your meals and recipes on the internet.
- Enhances your restaurant’s professionalism and validity.
- In addition to being a marketing tool, your restaurant should use social media to maintain the lines of communication open between you and your customers.
- Consumers admit that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions in 93% of cases.
- Consumers trust internet reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to 84 percent of respondents.
- If they are certain of a superior experience, 68 percent of consumers are willing to spend up to 15% extra for the same product or service.
- 75 percent of individuals bought something after seeing it on social media.
- Restaurants require social proof in the form of social media and online reviews in order to grow and prosper.
A well-executed restaurant social media marketing strategy is essential.
Restaurant social media is a large topic, and simply having a presence on social media isn’t enough! Many restaurants set up a Facebook profile, but they rarely update on it on a regular basis — this is the most typical social media gaffe made by restaurateurs. To attract clients to your restaurant, you must properly strategize, develop restaurant marketing ideas, and implement social media procedures.
Second, social media marketing isn’t restricted to Facebook postings and Twitter tweets. You should research and develop your brand across other significant and new social media sites such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Pinterest, and others that are rapidly becoming important aspects of the social media ecosystem.
On all social media channels, not all sorts of information, whether links, photographs, or texts, receive the same commercial rewards. The kind of content consumed on various social media platforms differs. As a result, before posting any promotional content, restaurant owners or social marketers must consider the diverse tastes of various herds of social media users.
Ads that are geo-targeted
One of the most significant parts of social media marketing is geo-targeting. The organic reach of your social media posts is relatively low, thanks to Facebook’s algorithm changes and the massive amount of ad material, including that from your competitors on Twitter. Restaurants can also promote special discounts and deals by tagging their restaurants’ geo-location stamp on social media profiles in this situation. This article discusses how to use Facebook as a powerful tool for restaurant social media marketing.
Increase the reach of your consumers by running paid ads and sponsoring your tweets. To enhance the campaign’s outcomes, make sure you’ve thoroughly specified your consumer base based on demography and region. If you own a restaurant in Delhi, for example, instead of marketing your sponsored adverts across India, limit the audience to Delhi residents. In that instance, the cost of your promotional ads will be far larger than the money generated by them. Apart from geolocation, these sponsored social media advertising can be tailored to your restaurant marketing audience’s age, gender, and geography, among other factors.
Blogging
It’s usually a good idea to collaborate with bloggers. Many food influencers and bloggers have a sizable following. You can invite them to your restaurant and request a food review. They might, in turn, leave reviews, give ratings, and tell others about their own experiences with your restaurant. Because they already have a fan base, it’s easier to piggyback on current Restaurant Industry Influencers.
Alternatively, you can use your blog to grow your fan base and communicate with potential customers. You can also ask guest bloggers to contribute to your blog.
Maintaining a Google Plus profile
Although Google Plus is frequently overlooked in restaurant social media marketing plans, it is an essential tool for restaurants and companies. Google Plus is Google’s social media product and restaurant updates made on this channel display on Google search engine result pages faster than updates shared on any other social media platform. It also offers the added benefit of having followers and referrals.
Other ways to share and promote information on Google Plus include sharing blog entries, photographs, and videos, as well as inviting consumers to ask questions and speak with your chef or other staff to help you create a positive relationship with them.
Make a Facebook Fan Page for your business.
For your restaurant, you must have a Facebook page. According to a new report, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. Carefully plan out your Facebook company page. In your timeline image, you have 851351 pixels to sell your restaurant for free. Carry your brand identification throughout all of your social media platforms so that users can readily recognize you.
Include a video or an image with your text when sharing on Facebook. Images and video pique their interest. Familiarize yourself with the various posting choices. Use the schedule feature to plan out your posts for the week.
Consistency is the most critical aspect of your restaurant’s Facebook presence. Pay attention to what your customers desire. Excessive self-promotion should be avoided. Provide relevant information to your fans, share tips, and offer discounts and special offers.
Finally, look into Facebook paid to advertise. This can be quite profitable for your restaurant.
The first step in restaurant social media marketing is to create proper profiles on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
I’m very confident Facebook and Instagram will be your primary social media platforms, but you should also establish a Twitter account. In case anything goes wrong.
This is what it means to be proper:
Tip : Make sure your restaurant’s social media pages are up to date.
On Facebook, proper means that all important information is available:
Tip : Make sure your restaurant’s social media pages are up to date.
Here’s how it’s done on Twitter:
Tip : Make sure your restaurant’s social media pages are up to date.
To summarise, all of the profiles listed above provide a brief description, a link to their websites, and an address.
One more thing a restaurant’s social media profile should have is its own branding.
Because people evaluate a book by its cover, you’ll need great branding to get the attention of social media users: branded logo
photos, as well as a hashtag for the restaurant.
Restaurants utilize social media to connect with customers in new and exciting ways. Here are a few examples of how restaurants are utilising social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others:
Food of excellent quality should be posted.
- Menus can be posted seasonally, daily, or weekly.
- Showcase customer-generated content.
- Customers should be contacted.
- Recipes should be shared.
- Show photos and videos from behind the scenes.
- Chefs, waitresses, bartenders, and other personnel should be highlighted.
Post at the Most Appropriate Times
When it comes to publishing on social media, as the phrase goes, “time is everything.” This is especially true for restaurants. If you own a brunch restaurant, it’s not a good idea to publish a photo of your Eggs Benedict with Mimosas at 10 p.m., when most people are getting ready to go to bed or to a bar. You’ll also want to make sure you know when users are most active on social media so you can boost interaction and get your message out there.
The data below, supplied by Sprout Social, shows the highest interaction periods for consumer products on Instagram:
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is similar to sharing customer content in that it involves collaborating with someone who has a large social media following, audience, and authority. An influencer uploading a snapshot of your restaurant’s food on their page is an example of influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing boosts engagement since influencers’ content tends to spark discourse. You’ll also see an increase in brand exposure and conversions as a result of the influencer’s audience, and you’ll be able to use their social proof to convert that audience. All of this could result in more people visiting your restaurant.
Here’s an example of a social media post from a Grind House Killer Burgers influencer:
Showcase Your Post-COVID Dining Experience
While some guests are not yet ready to dine with you, others are eager to visit your restaurant and want to learn about the current experience. Social media is an excellent platform for disseminating this knowledge. Post pictures of your new patio setup, promote your new menu options, and inform customers about the safety measures you’ve taken to keep them safe.
Encourage the use of takeout and delivery services.
Whether or not your guests dine with you in-house, they all deserve a little social media love. For the foreseeable future, takeout and delivery will remain important revenue streams, so if you have menu suggestions that travel well, share them with your guests on social media. You can provide exclusive takeout discounts and solicit feedback from your consumers. Sharing photographs of thoughtful packing might also make people enthusiastic about delivery.
Participate in polls about new recipes.
This restaurant’s social media marketing strategy accomplishes two goals: first, it increases engagement with your followers, and second, it provides free market research. Instead of wasting time and money putting a new dish on the menu as a special to obtain feedback, create an Instagram poll. You’ll have responses to share with the chef once you’ve gained followers. This concept can be used for a variety of things, including additional hours, drink deals, and more.
Think Like Your Customer
This should be self-evident if you’ve been promoting your restaurant for a time. Knowing who you’re talking with is one of the first steps in successful marketing. This is especially true in the case of social media. Consider your customer’s perspective and why they would want to come to you. Based on this, set the tone for your social media.
Create a tone (or perhaps a character) that you’ll use across all of your social media channels if you want to be known as the neighborhood hangout. In a warm, neighborly tone, post. A long-term waiter or bartender, for example, could be the face of your social media.
Create your social media postings around your chef (or someone pretending as your chef!) if you want to be known for your amazing meals. As you create your restaurant’s social media strategy, keep your customers in mind.
Contests and giveaways should be held.
Contests and freebies are other wonderful approaches to increase engagement. People love to win prizes, whether it’s a restaurant gift card, a special dinner with the chef, or a unique coffee cup with your restaurant’s emblem.
The key to this restaurant marketing strategy is to invite followers to comment on the post as well as share it on their social media accounts. This amplifies your message on social media and, more than likely brings a prospective new consumer to your business.
Spotlight the Team
This restaurant marketing approach focuses on humanizing your personnel and allowing them to introduce themselves to your fans. In a fast video or a blog post, ask them to share some fascinating facts about themselves, such as where they’re from, what they do for a living, their favorite meal, and food they can’t bear.
Take and post beautiful photos.
The use of great photographs in restaurant social media marketing is unavoidable. Great photographs help to promote products. Make sure your restaurant’s photographs aren’t any different.
Any other type of content pales in comparison to visual content. It’s easier to remember, and it whets the appetite in the case of food. Food is a visual experience.
Canva (a terrific and simple tool for graphic design, by the way) gives some fascinating facts about the relevance of social media marketing for restaurants:
Retweets for tweets with graphics increase by 150 percent. Posts with photographs earn 2.3 times higher engagement on Facebook. Canva can be used to design social media visuals for your restaurant’s brand.
The food served at your establishment is a commodity. It’s time for you to flaunt it!
Hashtags are a great method to promote your restaurant to the rest of the globe. Instagram hashtags, in contrast to other social media platforms, operate quite effectively. They may be a big assistance in getting your restaurant’s name out there on social media if used correctly.
Use hashtags that are currently trending. Then, at a set time, your Instagram post will be listed among the most popular posts. The likelihood of being detected increases. Remember to use your city’s name as a hashtag! Begin hashtag campaigns on Instagram. At your restaurant, hold contests, coupons, lotteries, prizes, and events. They’re all good candidates for hashtag campaigns because they’re simple to share, raise awareness, and track.
This video offers some helpful advice on how to select the best Instagram hashtags for growing your account:
Bring Attention to Your Brand’s Reputation
Posting reviews on your social media accounts is one of the simplest ways to promote your brand’s reputation. When someone writes a positive review or tags you in a positive post, share it with the rest of the world so that everyone knows what people are saying about your restaurant. Sharing a positive review will increase confidence and, as a result, conversions.
A simple brand narrative will attract clients even if you don’t have any recent reviews. What inspired you to open your restaurant? Who are the members of your kitchen team who make your meals so delicious? How do you interact with your neighbors? Customers want to know what a company is really like, how it treats its customers and staff, and why it’s worth going to.
Influencers on social media can help you get your restaurant in front of a large number of people. Influencers can be used in a variety of ways.
The simplest method is to pay for a post. If you decide to pay an influencer to promote your restaurant, be sure they have a similar audience to the one you’re after. This comprises both the demographic and the location you want to target.
You should also look at how an influencer’s followers connect with them. An influencer with a lesser number of engaged followers may be more effective than one with a high number of followers who do not connect with their postings.
Another method is to use micro-influencers among your customers. Because people trust recommendations from friends and family, this can be an efficient approach to sell your business.
Here are some suggestions for getting consumers to post about your restaurant on social media. People that post about your restaurant should be rewarded with freebies or discounts. This method can help you get more social media posts with very little effort.
Organize an event and invite guests. Look for people who have already written about your business or have written about other eateries in the neighbourhood. Micro-influencers and persons with larger followings could be mixed in.
Focus on the Food
The food you offer, and more precisely how you present it, is likely the most important influence on whether or not people will post it on social media.
Consider whether there are many methods to make the presentation more social media-friendly when preparing dishes. This doesn’t necessitate any gimmicks or a whole menu overhaul; rather, it’s about adding small details to the dishes that make them appear more appealing.
Don’t only focus on the cuisine. Make use of your interior to gain social media attention. Unofficial photo spots can be created by interesting lighting or interior design characteristics that people seek out to shoot and share photos.
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A screenshot of #paesanopizza, a Glasgow restaurant’s hashtag, is shown below. People clearly enjoy sharing images of the restaurant’s interior.
A basic rule of thumb is to publish at least three times each week on your business social media pages, or you risk losing engagement with your followers. Try to publish at least once a week, and use the strategies below to come up with innovative restaurant social media content ideas that will resonate with your followers.
Whether you manage your restaurant’s online presence yourself, give the duty to a dedicated team member, or hire a full-time marketing manager, getting inspiration from other restaurants who are playing the social media game and boosting digital traffic to their business is always useful.
Here are 11 social media strategy suggestions for your business. We’ll show you an example of someone who did it well, what they did, why it’s wonderful, and how to do it yourself if it’s a more complicated type of article.
Restaurant Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few of the most often asked questions about restaurant marketing.
Yes, many social media marketing strategies can be used for free. Using the correct hashtags, posting user-generated content, and other strategies listed above may all be done for very little money.
Yes. You can contact your target audience and persuade them to visit your restaurant if you have a strong set of marketing methods. Although conversion rates differ depending on the plan, social media marketing can assist raise brand exposure.
How do you track down local influencers?
Finding and collaborating with local influencers will propel your restaurant to the next level rapidly. Get local social and post more about local news and events to attract local influencers. You may also look into hiring an influencer agency, determining who is talking about your company, and conducting local hashtag research. You can also uncover local micro-and no-influencers by attentively examining your own existing social media following.
How can you track down micro-influencers?
Micro-influencers have a social following of 1,000 to 100,000 people. Using hashtags for content relating to your niche can help you locate micro-influencers. You may also explore teaming up with a blogger that has a large following in your niche and scouring your existing audience for micro-influencers.
Because social media is such an important communication channel, enhancing your presence can dramatically improve your company’s performance. Make sure to prioritize customer service, post on social media with the appropriate tools, and promote your accounts. Also, keep an eye on what’s popular, implement a social media plan, create useful content, and interact with everyone in your posts.
What is the best way to sell a restaurant on Instagram?
Instagram allows you to market your business in a variety of ways. Use Instagram stories, hashtags, and retargeting advertisements to your advantage. Ensure that you post at the appropriate times and participate in national food holidays. You should also include your location and use popular hashtags like #pancakeday, #nationaldonutday, and others.
What is the best way for me to promote my little restaurant?
The efficiency of the social media methods you utilize is unaffected by the size of the business. Indeed, as a new company on the market, you have more options to establish your brand voice and entice users to try something new.
Which hashtags should I use to promote my restaurant on social media? Use popular hashtags like #foodporn, #foodphotography, #foodgasm, #mealoftheday, and others to promote your business on social media. On social media, you can use smaller but relevant hashtags like #yummy, #delicious, #brunch, and so on.
Restaurant marketing is a process that is constantly changing. As you become more comfortable communicating with customers online, you’ll come across new techniques that are more suited to your company’s needs.
You can try out each of the tactics listed above one at a time to discover what works and what doesn’t. You can also try out your own strategy to determine what works best for your target demographic.
Whether you’re opening a brand new restaurant in a single city or running a national chain, remember to focus on what your target audience appreciates. This will assist you in developing an effective restaurant marketing strategy.
