Restaurant Marketing 101: The Basics
How to use marketing to drive more customers into your restaurant.
Restaurant Websites
In the same way that smartphone cameras have raised the bar for food photography, platforms like Squarespace, Wordpress, Wix, and the like have done the same for your restaurant website. There’s really no excuse nowadays for failing to create a delightful online experience for your customers. The impression of your restaurant begins the moment a customer searches for you and lands on your website. This experience should be functional, pleasing, and intuitive.
4 must-haves for your restaurant website:
Professional, captivating images of the food and drinks you offer. Ideally you will also include images of your space so customers know what to expect, and why they should visit you instead of your competitor a block away.
An easy-to-find and read menu that doesn’t require pinching, zooming, or otherwise re-orienting of the screen (regardless of the device being used).
Basic contact information, locations, hours, and information about how to make reservations (if relevant)
Tell your story. This is your chance to shine! Don’t let it pass you by. Make sure the key elements that make you different, and better, than the rest come across loud and clear in a coherent, seamless, and beautiful way.
Email Marketing for Restaurants
Email marketing is the most under-utilized restaurant marketing tool. Not everyone is on social media. Even if they are, not everyone is on social media at the time you want them to be so you can deliver your message. Email marketing allows you to engage those that won’t (or don’t) see your messages on social media. It’s a low-cost method to reach customers, promote events, and extend your brand.
3 tried-and-true ways to leverage Email Marketing for your restaurant:
Build loyalty by offering rewards, discounts, freebies, giveaways, and exclusive content (ie: get access to a sneak peak of our summer menu) to those that subscribe to your mailing list.
Warm up your cold hours by promoting special events, deals, or specials through email. As good as your food is, you may require a few extra nudges to make sure that the one time you had a full house on the second Tuesday of the month wasn’t an anomaly.
Boost sales by promoting catering, carryout, or delivery options and linking your customers directly to the location where they can start their order.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for Restaurants
A Google search is how the majority of restaurant searches begin. Just how it’s unlikely anyone will stumble into your restaurant if you don’t have signage, no one will stumble across your website if you don’t appear in search.
If you aren’t appearing on first page of Google, you are essentially INVISIBLE. Make sure you keep SEO in mind as you build your site, engage on social media, and create any type of content.
4 Key SEO actions to make sure your restaurant is visible online:
Create an SEO keyword list for your restaurant, and use those keywords in your content.
Make sure to focus on Local SEO by claiming a Google Business page, as well as including local keywords on your site.
Be active on social media, drive traffic back to your restaurant website, and be sure to link your accounts to your domain.
Backlinks are the fuel that make the SEO engine go - a combination of unique, quality content + proactive outreach (think: PR, mentions from online publications, and articles from reputable blogs that include links back to your site) can go a long way towards SEO, and restaurant, stardom.
Photography and Video for Restaurants
The quality of phone cameras, and all the available filters and easy editing tools, has turned almost everyone into a competent photographer. In order to stand out, you need professional grade photos and videos to grab the attention of customers.
High-quality photos are table stakes these days, but videos can take you to the next level. In addition, today’s consumer is opting more frequently for content over anything else - in some cases, videos can increase campaign success by up to 2-3x. This is a great way to tell your story, engage with customers, and build customer connection to your brand.
3 things to focus on if you want to produce good food photos:
Angle - Make sure the angle chosen properly showcases the food. Height is key.
Lighting - This will make or break your photos, almost every time. When working with direct sunlight, a diffuser or white bed sheet can work wonders softening the light.
Props - “Surround your hero,” is one way to describe it. This is how you can really start to tell a story with your photos. Think: ingredients, utensils, spices…this all informs the viewer and ties the experience together.
Social Media for Restaurants
Nearly everyone can be reached through some social media platform at this point. If you want to get ahead of the pack, it’s no longer enough to simply post a few photos and answer customer inquiries. The race is on to see which brands and businesses can foster the most effective and engaged community of participants. Who are your customers? What are their interests? What do they do and discuss? Actively engage them, invite them into the conversation, and make them part of the experience.
3 core steps to creating a successful social media presence:
Be real - Social media is awash in phony content, shallow relationships, and fake praise. Users can see right through it and in most cases it is cringe-worthy. Developing a sincere, genuine voice that speaks directly to (and with) your customers is a crucial first step to finding social success.
High-quality photos and videos - In food and beverage, high-quality visual content can help catch the attention of scrolling eyes. Once pulled in with visuals, you can engage them with the genuine voice discussed above.
Know your customers - A thorough understanding of who you’re speaking to, and who is supporting your business, is key when developing a community. Engage in frequent conversations, feedback sessions, and conscious listening to gain this understanding. This won’t only feed the social media strategy for your restaurant, but will likely pay off in spades across the rest of your business functions.