restaurant marketing tips
If you found this you may be on the hunt for tips to successfully market your restaurant. We have over a decade of experience developing marketing strategies for the physical and digital side of the space. Your goal is to trigger desire in your consumer. Your marketing visuals need to have subtle, and overt cues built in that will allow for your guest to think of you when they're hungry and can relate to that sitiuation.
5 Tips for Restaurant Marketing in 2021
- Don't assume people know you are there. If you're opening or re-opening you restaurant you need to get boots on the ground and not just rely on social media to get the word out. Invest in a mailer to your community to let them know you're open and offer an incentive to get them in for an order.
- Make sure your Google My Business listing is update regulary and that it is accurate. Google is where the large majority of your customers will find you from. Because of the vast differences in technical consumer ability many people will actually type your URL into Google search rather than the address bar. This will lead them to your GMB listing first. Make sure you have a menu link on there, some killer food photos and that your hours and services are accurate.
- Instagram is not Facebook, don't treat it as such. The content and user intent on Instagram is much different especially when it comes to Restaurants and Instagram marketing. One of the most important stats for you will be the number of profile visits. Why is that? When someone visits your Instagram profile after maybe seeing a post or a story you have that chance to IMPRESS. This is when your Instagram grid (see photo below) needs to look great (we will cover this later) Your grid acts as a billboard for your business in that context. Old school marketing meets new school dynamics!
- People eat with their eyes. What does that mean? It means that while you probably take awesome photos of your kids, and your cat , you should invest in working with a professional photographer to capture a variety of images for your website and social. A great tip to suggest to the photographer is to create a mood in the image. You want that image to give a sense of what the dining experience is like. If you operate an Irish Pub that serves gastropub style food you don't want your Bangers & Mash set on bright white subway tile. You want dark wood, darker, moody lighting and some textures. Need help with that? We can help
- Make your your website a priority. Before the global pandemic this was important and we pushed all of our clients to have a mobile responsive site that had a full menu with photos on it. Now, its required. Consumers are spending 20-25% more time on their devices as a result of behavior changes, due to the pandemic. Your website needs to be a sales tool and make it easier for guests to dine with you. We have case studies from pre-covid that demonstrated a 12% increase in sales for items that had a professional image next to them on the mobile menu vs items that did not. Average ticket went up ~just over 10% as well.
