Every company needs to invest in digital marketing – including restaurants. While a good location and some signage can sometimes be enough to attract customers, a growing number of diners are doing their research online. Digital marketing can also build brand awareness and get people talking about your restaurant, encouraging more people to visit your establishment.
But just how do you successfully market a restaurant? Here are a few steps to successfully promoting your restaurant online.
Start with a website
Some restaurants think that they only need a Facebook page, however a website can make your restaurant seem more official and help with SEO.
You can hire a developer to build a website for you or you can use a drag-and-drop website builder to create a website yourself (no programming knowledge necessary!). Some key ingredients to add to your website include:
- Your menu
- Opening times
- Contact details
Some other useful features to consider include:
- A map to show where you restaurant is located
- Online table booking tools
- An online food ordering system (if you provide takeout meals/drinks)
Create a Google Business profile
Want to get more customers through Google? Setting up a Google Business profile is recommended. This has various benefits:
- When people search your restaurant on Google, a profile will appear in the sidebar that contains information such as your contact details and opening hours for quick reference.
- You will also be able to accept customer reviews (more about this in a moment). These will appear in your Google business profile alongside an average star rating.
- A Google Business profile also enables you to appear on Google Maps.
- Having a Google Business profile will also help you to rank higher on Google.
Setting up a Google Business profile is simple and fast. Other search engines like Bing have their own version of this that you can also set up.
Encourage online customer reviews
Many customers who research restaurants online will choose a restaurant based on the reviews. Having lots of positive reviews will give you a good overall star rating. Too many negative reviews will give you a lower star rating.
Try to encourage each of your happy customers to leave a review online. Almost all restaurants get the occasional negative online review, but so long as you have more positive reviews than negative ones, customers will still trust you (aim to at least have a 4 star rating on Google).
You can encourage positive reviews the following ways:
- Place signs in your restaurant containing a QR code that customers can scan to leave a review online.
- Directly ask happy customers in person if they would mind leaving a review.
- Follow up online orders with automated emails or app notifications asking customers to leave a review.
Speaking of emails…
Set up a customer email mailing list
An email mailing list can be a great way to attract return business. You will first need to encourage customers to subscribe to your mailing list, which you can do by asking them in person or by including an ‘opt in’ when ordering food online/booking a reservation online.
Customers typically join email mailing lists to receive news updates and exclusive discounts – so make sure this is the type of content you are sending via your mailing list. Types of marketing emails to consider could include:
- New menu item announcements
- New and upcoming promotional deals
- Reminders of existing promotional deals
- Happy Birthday messages with gifts in the form of coupons
- Exclusive discounts to loyal subscribers
Make sure you are regularly sending emails to your subscribers, but don’t go overboard (one or two emails per week is usually enough). It’s possible to use AI for email marketing to write emails for you and to automate certain emails. Make sure that each of your emails contains an ‘opt out’ feature so that customers can unsubscribe if they desire.
Post content on social media
Social media marketing can be very valuable for restaurants. It can be a way to reach out to new customers as well as a way of interacting with existing customers.
To post content on social media, you’ll need to set up social media pages for your business. Decide which social media platforms you will advertise on. The most popular social media platforms for restaurants to advertise on include:
- Facebook: Ideal for posting a variety of content including images, videos, polls and written announcements.
- Instagram: The best platform for sharing photographs of your food. You can also encourage customers to take photos and help promote your business by tagging your restaurant.
- TikTok: The most popular social media platform among young people. Use this for posting short videos of you preparing dishes/cocktails or introducing staff members.
- X: Formerly known as Twitter, this platform is excellent for connecting with customers around the world. Like Facebook, you can share all kinds of content on it.
- YouTube: Consider setting up a business YouTube account to share long and short videos – which could include cooking/drinkmaking tutorials or demonstrations or even a tour of your restaurant.
To be successful on social media, you need to be regularly posting content. Try actively engaging with other social media users by replying to comments, asking questions to followers, sharing other users’ content and following other users.
Many restaurants choose to focus on one social media platform, but it is possible to be active on multiple social media platforms.
Invest in SEO
SEO is a marketing strategy that can be used to boost the rankings of certain webpages (which could include your website homepage or social media pages). It relies on a few different tactics including:
- Targeting specific keywords related to certain search terms
- Making sure your webpages load quickly
- Regularly updating websites with new content such as blog posts
- Building third-party links (backlinks) leading to your webpages
- Applying for an SSL certificate
Many companies invest in the help of an SEO agency to handle all of this. There are SEO agencies dedicated to working with restaurants that you can use, or you could use a local SEO company.
That’s the basics covered…
Doing all the above is certain to help you generate a lot of business. But of course, there is more you can do to promote your restaurant online if you want to stand out. This includes everything from building an app to getting your restaurant features in online news publications. Get creative and you’re certain leave an impression.