5 Digital Marketing Ideas for Restaurants
Your online presence is often the first interaction that prospective customers have with your restaurant, which is why it’s so important to give a good first impression. People scour the internet each day to find a place to eat, and their decisions usually come down to what looks the best online. Photos, reviews, social media presence, and more all influence this decision, and your digital marketing can play a big part in that.
Digital marketing for restaurants can be very beneficial, especially when done the right way. InnoVision works with restaurants to create digital marketing campaigns that produce results by getting more people talking about and frequenting your restaurant. If you’ve been looking to gain a competitive edge over your competitors, digital marketing may be the way to do it.
Here are a few digital marketing ideas for restaurants that could improve your marketing game.
1. Utilize Social Media
Social media is a great way to utilize digital marketing for your website. With around 70 percent of American adults on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, they’re both great places to advertise your restaurant. You can use these tools for both free and paid advertising opportunities
If you’re looking for free digital marketing opportunities on social media, you’re in luck. There are many ways to use these sites for digital marketing without spending a dime. Offering giveaways, gift cards, and free meals can be an effective way to gather a following online. When doing this, you can ask people to like, follow, and share your post, which will allow their followers to see it as well. By using local tags, you can gather a pretty big crowd using this method without having to pay any advertising fees.
There are also paid digital marketing opportunities on social media that can benefit restaurants. For instance, you can target your advertising to a specific audience on these apps. They’ll allow you to choose how much you spend each day toward your campaign while also giving you important information on your audience. You can choose to advertise to people in a certain location, within a certain age group, who associate with a certain gender, and more. Using paid advertising is a great way to ensure your message is getting to the exact people you’re aiming for.
2. Develop an Appealing Website
Every restaurant should have a website. It’s one of the best ways to answer any questions potential guests may have, such as where you’re located, your hours of operation, and what’s on your menu. While most restaurants can cover these basics on a website, it pays to add more convenience and personal flair.
Make sure your website includes things like online reservations, an about page, and professional food photography to give people more confidence in your restaurant. Customizing your website to match the theme of your restaurant is also a plus. Just having a website is the bare minimum. To make the most of the digital marketing avenue, you should perfect your website.
3. Hire an Employee for Marketing
Professional digital marketing doesn’t just happen on its own, and it takes more than just randomly posting on social media. Effective digital marketing takes expertise, thought-out strategies, and consistency. If you know anything about the restaurant business, you know that most employees have full workloads from the time they clock in until the time they clock out. To maintain the momentum necessary to keep up with digital marketing, many restaurant owners find it helpful to dedicate an employee to the job or enlist the help of professionals.
Having a specific person who is in control of the digital marketing aspect of a restaurant can be a good way to ensure the work will get done. So much of a restaurant’s success relies on good digital marketing strategies, and when given the attention they need, restaurants can thrive.
Likewise, hiring professionals to take care of your digital marketing can also contribute to its success. Digital marketing professionals can not only perform your digital marketing tasks, but they can also conduct research on your target audience. This research will narrow down who you’re marketing to, when the best times are to post, and help decide which are the most effective methods to move forward with.
4. Encourage People to Leave Reviews
Reviews play an important role in getting people to your restaurant. Most people like to check the reviews online before they visit for the first time and will likely be swayed by the majority of what people are saying. If there aren’t very many reviews, people might assume that your restaurant is not a place worth going to. On the other hand, if there are tons of reviews they’ll likely want to stop in to see what all the fuss is about. When it comes to digital marketing for restaurants, putting some focus on getting reviews could be well worth it.
There are many ways to encourage customers to leave a review, but one is by simply asking them. Putting the idea into their heads can be an effective way of getting them to leave a positive review, especially if they’ve had a good experience. Another way is by offering an incentive. People are more likely to do what you ask when there’s something in it for them, so try putting out an advertisement or deal online saying that you’ll get “x” amount off your next bill when you leave an online review.
5. Go Paperless
Aside from being beneficial to the environment and being more cost-effective, going paperless could be a beneficial digital marketing tactic. Paperless loyalty programs are a great way to start connecting to customers via email or a mobile app and begin marketing to them that way. These loyalty programs typically carry incentives when customers reach certain goals. The more times they frequent the restaurant, the more incentives they’ll receive, and they can keep track of it all through a mobile app.
Beyond notifications when they visit the restaurant, you can send out announcements for promotions and new menu items. These little reminders will bring your restaurant to the forefront of their mind at times when they may not be thinking of it on their own. A little reminder at the right time could gain you a customer you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Need help designing a social media plan for your restaurant? Reach out to InnoVision today. We’ll be happy to put something delicious together for you. Restaurants are one of our specialties.
