By Dale McManus, Contributor
YouTube has been around for 15 years now, and in that time, it’s transformed from a platform dedicated solely just for uploading videos to the second most popular social media platform in the world.
By and large, the most popular YouTube channels are run by YouTubers who simply record themselves playing and reacting to different videogames and media, but once you get past the crust, you find that YouTube offers much more than that for both businesses and individuals.
Sure, dog and cat videos still reign supreme in terms of sheer popularity. But other categories still get a hefty share of the pie, including business gurus, star-struck chefs, and of course, restaurants.
The goal of this article is to show you the ropes regarding how to use YouTube for effectively marketing your restaurant business.
It’ll cover everything from simply sharing videos of your food to implementing promotional strategies that strengthen the relationship between your establishment and your customers.
Let’s get started.
Why Take YouTube Restaurant Marketing Seriously?
Before dig into how to use YouTube for marketing your restaurant, it’s worth going through some statistics that show just how valuable the platform is for your business. You already know that YouTube is the second-largest social media platform, but did you know that:
Over one billion hours of YouTube are watched every single day, which is more than what Netflix or Facebook can say.
Over 126 million people actively use YouTube every month.
YouTube is the second most visited website, surpassed only by its big brother, Google.
Only 9% of US small businesses use YouTube for marketing.
Perhaps the most surprising piece of data from this list is how few small businesses are on Youtube. If you aren’t on YouTube, you’re missing the opportunity to gain a percentage of the attention that flocks to the platform.
Since so few small businesses are on the platform currently, however, now is also one of the best times to join the fray before it becomes too saturated.
What Kind of Videos to Release on Your Restaurant’s YouTube Channel?
As mentioned at the start of this article, the simplest kind of videos you can make for your restaurant are short videos that present your culinary works in their Sunday Best—usually just short 30–60 second clips that make the food look as good as it tastes.
But these kinds of videos are easy pickings and don’t do much beyond bringing awareness (and attraction) to your menu.
Additional video ideas include:
Customer Testimonials — You know your regulars. Why not treat them to a drink or meal in exchange for a video testimonial? It’s one thing to read a nice review online, but another thing entirely to see real customers sharing glowing reviews of your restaurant experience on video. Video testimonials are also much harder to fake compared to written testimonies, which could be written up by anyone, so people tend to trust them more.
Behind-the-scenes — Guests like to know that the people preparing their meals are doing so with love and care, but at most restaurants, such trust is built mostly on faith. But a YouTube video of your chefs taking the viewer through their process for crafting fan-favorite dishes? That’s trust built on solid ground.
Professional Development — Some of the most popular restaurant YouTube channels get most of their views from videos of chefs walking the viewer through their step-by-step process for creating food, setting tables, garnishing dishes—you name it! People are hungry for knowledge and self-improvement, and your guests are no exception.
Promotional Reel — This list would not be complete without mentioning the promotional reel! This is a compilation of quick clips and beautiful scenes from your restaurant. If you have events at your restaurant—whether they be jazz nights or poetry readings—make sure you get those in the video. People don’t just go to restaurants to eat, they go there for an experience. Use this video to encapsulate that experience.
Event Highlights — We mentioned events in the last idea, but this point is so important that it deserves its own bullet. If your restaurant has Jazz Nights and you’re trying to get more people to attend them, get the event in video and use it as promotional material. This goes for any event you might have regularly.
What to Do with the Videos Your Restaurant Made?
The obvious and least helpful answer to this question is, “Get them on YouTube!”
Of course, you’ll want to put these videos on YouTube, but you want to take things a bit further as well.
You want to make sure you’re sharing the videos on social media, to your email lists, and getting them on your website as well. If you don’t have a website, create one as soon as possible so that potential customers can begin finding you on Google!
Creating websites nowadays is no longer a complicated process that requires you to know how to code. Instead, you can just get an easy to use website builder software like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace.
Getting Your YouTube Videos on Your Restaurant’s Website
Now to get into some of the more technical aspects of using YouTube to market your restaurant.
If you’re interested in digital marketing, you’re probably aware of SEO and know that, when properly utilized, it can be a great way to bring hundreds to thousands of visitors to your website every month (millions of visitors if you’re business goes viral).
In order to make SEO work, you have to optimize your website for a number of ranking factors. There are many, but for the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on one: user experience.
If a potential customer visits your website and has a bad experience, your website will not score high for this ranking factor. It goes both ways.
How does Google measure user experience? It does so in a number of ways, but chief among them are a few metrics:
Bounce Rate — This metric measures how often a visitor visits your website only to leave it immediately and without checking out any other pages. It’s the equivalent of someone walking into your restaurant, taking a quick look, shrugging their shoulders, and then walking away.
Dwell Time — How long does the website visitor stay on your website pages?
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) — How many people are clicking through to your website?
How does video help your restaurant score high for these metrics?
Well, if you put videos on your webpages and people watch them, it gives you a chance to increase your dwell time. If you include links to other pages in your videos and your visitors click them, it will increase your CTR and lower your bounce rate.
People also just generally like watching videos, especially if they’re entertaining and informative.
Give Your Customer’s a Story & Experience They’ll Remember
At the end of the day, getting people to go to your restaurant isn’t about the food. It’s about the anticipation of a great experience—the story they’ll be able to tell their friends (and themselves) about what it was like to be at your restaurant.
The food is what gets them to come back.
But if you want to garner more interest from future customers, you’ve got to start telling a better story, and when it comes to storytelling, presentation is almost everything.
Advertising is great, but it’s expensive. Writing blog posts is cheap, but it’s not so engaging. YouTube is somewhere in the middle, and if it works, you can double-down on your video assets and use them for future ads.
It may seem like a lot of work to get your restaurant a solid presence on YouTube. But then again, the hard work is part of the fun that comes with creatively showcasing your wonderful establishment.
About the Author
Hey, I'm Dale! I've helped hundreds of thousands of people just like you around the world learn how to create a website over at CreateAProWebsite.com. Whether you want to make a beautiful blog, portfolio, or business website, we’ve got you covered with our easy to follow guides and tutorials!
