Operating a restaurant in the modern day involves stiff competition and tackling a wide range of customer demands. In this convoluted mix of priorities, marketing is one that a restaurant should never ignore. While your food might be delicious and even pocket-friendly, without marketing, your restaurant is unlikely to take off. Moreover, in an age where artificial intelligence and fast computing are taking over the digital space, restaurants have begun adopting intuitive digital marketing methods to support their outreach efforts.
Digital marketing allows your eatery to reach its customers wherever they are. Social media platforms provide the ability to interact directly with potential and existing customers, allowing your restaurant to tweak its business and menu to better suit customer expectations. All of these efforts ultimately translate to brand loyalty and sustained business growth. In this article, we share five marketing methods to help you implement effective digital marketing to enhance your restaurant’s growth.
Craft an Appetizing Online Presence
All restaurants must build their online presence to communicate with their customers and showcase their offerings. The primary requirement to build a good online presence is to design and establish an attractive website that includes professionally shot pictures of the establishment and the dishes served. Aesthetic designs and user-friendly features make the website easily navigable to customers and increase the chances of them staying on the site for longer. This in turn results in higher conversion rates. You might also want to place a digital menu on the website that allows potential customers to get an overview of the cuisine your commercial kitchen offers.
Ensure the menu is interactive and displays images of the dishes instead of just a text-based list of items. Images can attract customers, and a combination of both establishment and food images will incentivize customers to visit your restaurant.
The website will also be the primary point to redirect customers from your social media accounts. Clearly outline the location, services offered, contact information, and hours of operation to inform your customers of the essential details. Given that websites are the first touch point when a customer explores their options, maintaining a high-quality domain optimized across devices is imperative to generate a positive first impression.
Savor the Power of Social Media
Social media is the most important component of your restaurant’s digital marketing strategy. Leveraging its power to the fullest is key to your success and visibility on digital platforms. Millennials and Gen Z spend a lot of their time on social media and often use these platforms to decide on their dining options. Identify relevant social media platforms to set up your restaurant’s account and come up with a detailed strategy to post content and engage with potential customers.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok are great places to begin. The arrival of AI in digital marketing has also pushed forward the upgrade and adaptation of existing ad mechanics on these platforms and allows you to take on a more targeted approach so you reach your ideal customers. Using these intuitive tools is essentially a form of AI implementation in the restaurant business, helping you adopt a data-driven marketing approach.
In addition to intelligent ads, you’ll also need to build an impeccable profile chock-full of the most attractive food images, photos of your restaurant during operational hours, behind-the-scenes-videos and images, and engaging short-form content for your guests to view.
Also keep in mind that you’ll need to dedicate an employee to handling the accounts if you intend to communicate with your customers regularly via social media channels. Offer customer support, accept requests and reservations, and answer questions through direct messaging features on popular social media platforms.
Serve Engaging Content Marketing
Creating an attractive website is only half of the process. Optimizing and sustaining it with rich content will allow it to be more visible to potential customers using search engines to find places to eat. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an integral part of website creation and digital marketing. To drive traffic to your restaurant’s web page, consider hosting a blog and posting relevant content to begin ranking for specific keywords. Hire dedicated content writers and marketers to put together a definitive plan for growing the website.
Engaging content and collaboration with in-house SEO professionals or hiring a company that provides SEO services will bring organic traffic to your site and promote a higher number of visitors to your brick-and-mortar establishment. Indulge in careful topic selection and create content that your guests will enjoy reading. Share recipes for delectable dishes and cooking tips so people also find the content helpful.
Apart from digital marketing benefits, these blogs will help you position your restaurant’s website as a key culinary inspiration for their cooking efforts.
Master the Art of Online Reviews and Reputation Management
Reviews matter a lot to restaurants as they build credibility. Most customers ensure that they check reviews before heading out to dine. Apart from receiving good reviews, it’s just as important to manage and display these reviews so that they garner good visibility. Try to engage with customers on popular platforms and heed their feedback.
Responsive establishments are seen favorably. Respond to positive and negative reviews to display professionalism and maturity when dealing with customers. Make a note of customers’ suggestions and implement them in the restaurant so that they know you’re an establishment that takes customers’ needs seriously. Always express gratitude for these suggestions and mention that the channels for communication are always open. Register for local listings on websites like Yelp, Google Business, Bing, and TripAdvisor so that your business gets visibility across multiple platforms.
Managing your online presence furthers your restaurant’s impression and allows customers to become positively influenced by other customers’ opinions. Maintaining an online presence driven by reviews will also enhance brand loyalty and further business prospects in untapped customer pools. Consistent review audits will also allow your establishment to generate relevant statistics and zero in on common concerns and suggestions from customers.
Embrace Influencer Partnerships
By collaborating with influential social media personalities, you can increase your restaurant’s reach and popularity. You can offer an exclusive dining experience to these influencers in exchange for reviews. Their large following on their social media accounts can propel your restaurant’s visibility and lead to more conversions of guests from formerly unexplored customer pools. These influencers can generate sufficient buzz around your establishment and its offerings, furthering your reputation online.
Moreover, designing your interiors to be aesthetically pleasing and offering sufficient selfie and photo opportunities will also increase your social media traffic. Apart from influencers, regular customers posting pictures taken at your establishment will also influence individuals in their social circles, expanding your restaurant’s reach on various platforms.
Conclusion
The adoption of a digital marketing strategy is essential if you intend on operating a successful restaurant in the current age. Nothing can substitute a digital presence, and sufficient efforts in building an online brand will be integral in ensuring your restaurant witnesses the customer inflow it deserves. By creating a website, establishing yourself on social media, providing engaging content, managing reviews, and partnering with influencers, your restaurant will be able to generate enough digital traction to attract new groups of customers while retaining existing ones.
Michael Hakob is the founder and CEO of Andava Digital, with 17 years of experience in digital marketing with a focus on SEO and organic channels. He has a degree in Management of Information Systems, is a Game Theory enthusiast, and is a Management 3.0 follower.
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