The driving force behind every successful restaurant marketing campaign is it’s ability to retain customer loyalty while bringing in new faces. The digital word of mouth is important for your restaurant’s success and fortunately, you can help make the difference.
Improve Your Online Presence
Because if no one can find you on the internet, you won’t find them dining in your restaurant. While the world of internet marketing is complex, there are a few steps you can take to improve your online presence and help your restaurant marketing efforts.
Claim Your Google Listing
This will have Google verify who you are as a business and positively affect your rank in search results.
Put Your Restaurant in Local Directories
These Top 20 Directories can improve your Local SEO and help reach to new markets.
Proper Website Set Up
Have your webmaster include your NAP (Name, Place, Address) on every site page, that your site is mobile and you have unique meta descriptions with keywords you rank for. Note: you may want to consider having a professional do this for you.
Engage With Customers Through Social Media
Build a community around your social networks for your fans to engage with. By regularly posting informational, educational and promotional posts, your profile can be seen by more people. Facebook alone has roughly 1.79 billion active users, Instagram 600 million and Twitter 700 million. Think about the impressions you can make on potential customers!
Make sure your account profiles are completely filled out. A potential customer should know exactly what you do and who you are within seconds. With our ever decreasing attention spans, getting correct information to consumers fast is crucial for them to stay.
Tip: If you’re feeling adventurous, use Pinterest for food posts. My mum, along with millions of finger tapping women, use Pinterest daily for recipes and more. Secondary tip, verify your Facebook page next time you’re on and rank higher than your competitors who aren’t.
Third Party Reservation Services
Include a line item in your budget for a third party reservations service like OpenTable. Why? Because having no customers in your restaurant is worse than having to pay a little extra for one. On average, services like this will cost you about $2 per seat while expanding your reach to new faces.
These platforms make reservations easy for hungry diners in your area based on dates, times, type of food and price. For paying the small diners fee, restaurants can reap the benefits of reservation/table management, guest recognition and email marketing services. An excellent way to further your restaurant marketing efforts and getting customers seated at your place.
Online Review Incentives
Online reviews are important for any restaurant marketing campaign. The more positive reviews a restaurant has, the more likely they’ll be chosen by the hungry. While you can’t directly as people for reviews, you can come up with fun, friendly ways to ask for one.
The first time I saw the merge of traditional and digital marketing I was at this local burger joint a few towns over. After my meal, under the bill, was a simple postcard. It read “If You Dig [Restaurant Name], Let The World Know!” and listed their main pages you could go to and review.
I found it inviting, not pushy and in fact, lead to me leaving a positive review on TripAdvisor because the food was good and the world should know it!
This One’s On Us
Get more for your money by investing time into these 4 simple restaurant marketing techniques. By improving your overall online presence and incentivizing reviews you can improve your strategy, seat happy customers and ultimately, make more money.
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