Opening a new restaurant can be a thrilling endeavor, and each new restaurant entrepreneur starts with the best intentions of making the business a success. There are quite a few challenges with running a restaurant, including marketing, to ensure the business grows, but how can a small business owner effectively market their establishment while trying to run a restaurant? We’ve gathered a few tried and true restaurant marketing ideas to bring in more customers.
What do all of these statistics have in common? Marketing! Whether its social media marketing, local search marketing, word of mouth marketing, or email marketing, all these tactics can work together to bring in more customers. Let’s drill down a few marketing areas that are especially effective for restaurant marketers.
Use Instagram to promote your restaurant’s best visual content. Show off the restaurant interior or showcase a few of your top dishes. Be sure to get creative with hashtags – whether using existing popular Twitter hashtags like #FoodFriday or inventing your own, hashtags are a great way to have some fun with restaurant fans online.
Facebook still has a vast audience, so ignore the naysayers that claim it’s on its way out. Facebook allows you to create and grow a community online where people can watch and post pictures, videos, and other content. Be sure to show people the culture of your restaurant; let them learn about your employees, so they feel like they’re one of your regulars before they step foot in your restaurant.
Compared to other industries on Twitter, Twitter users have the highest engagement with restaurants. Twitter is a live feed to your followers. Here are a couple of ways to use Twitter to market your restaurant:
Twitter is great for last-minute enticements to get people into your restaurant. There are many other platforms that restaurants can take advantage of. One of the most important reasons a restaurant should have social media accounts is communicating with customers. Social media helps you to keep in touch and build a personal connection with your customers.
People must be able to find your restaurant, so embrace Google My Business. This is entirely about giving Google the best information possible about your business in their “yellow pages” directory, keeping the profile updated and active, and enabling Google to match queries with the best results.
Just like Google My Business, Bing Places, and Yahoo Maps helps potential customers find local restaurants like yours, view maps and get driving directions to your establishment. Make sure you’re on there with all your correct information, as well as some enticing photos and other information, so people have every reason to visit you.
Also known as referral marketing, word of mouth can make or break a restaurant, so be sure to encourage people to share their opinions about your restaurant with their friends.
Be sure to claim your business listing on Yelp. Why? You won’t be able to add additional information about your business, correct any inaccurate information, or reply to reviews if you haven’t claimed your profile. Chances are, you’re already on Yelp; you need to claim your business. Once you’ve claimed your profile, showcase your business. Showcase photos of your menu items or daily specials or even the interiors of your restaurant to attract potential customers. Respond to customer reviews. Then, get a little creative by offering a check-in special for people on Yelp. Yelp provides a cool check-in button to businesses on the platform. When a user checks-in to a restaurant on Yelp, other users who are their friends can see this on their feed. Entice people that check-in with a freebie, discount, or simply a shout out.
Encourage people to share their opinions and spread the word but NEVER pay them to do so; that can get you in a world of trouble, and people can spot a phony review from a mile away.
These are just a few restaurant marketing ideas to help grow your business. Don’t have time to implement these suggestions on your own? Strategic Marketing Services can help! Reach out to us to see how we can create a comprehensive restaurant marketing strategy to help your business grow.
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