By Angela D Johnson, Contributor
One of the most common misconceptions among restaurant owners is that delicious food is enough promotion for a restaurant. But it isn't. There are more competitors in this business area than in any other. And if you do not take all possible actions to establish a brand, then tomorrow you risk being left alone in an empty hall of your restaurant.
The first thing to start with is to assess the growth potential of your business. It will allow you to understand what awaits on the way to your goal and how to act. After your analysis is done, it is time to start promotion. But what steps of promo are the most important?
First, Do You Know Your Restaurant’s Branding?
Image is something that over time appears in any restaurant. Even if no one has especially worked on your restaurant’s overall image, public opinion will arise spontaneously. It will be impossible to manage it and there will be no guarantees that it will benefit you. It is much more correct to purposefully focus on your restaurant’s brand and reputation.
A brand includes your name, your overall style and mood, interior and exterior design, well-thought-out campaigns, promotion methods, your logo, and communication with customers. The way you position your restaurant becomes a strong identification in the mind of the visitor and helps set expectations and a mood. It’s also important that your restaurant delivers on those expectations and promises.
When creating and developing the brand image, you should have a marketing analysis of the internal and external environment of your restaurant. It is necessary to take into account the main and nearest competitive points in the market, the local and national economy, and cultural and technological factors. How can your restaurant stand out from the other restaurants in the area? What makes your business different and unique? That should be considered when building your restaurant’s brand.
Online Restaurant Promotion: Overview
After you have identified your target audience and formed a brand policy, you can start promoting your restaurant through online platforms. Suitable options for the restaurant industry are publications in online media, website development, crowd marketing, cooperation with a food services, launching contextual advertising, cooperation with bloggers, and positioning on social media.
Let’s take a look at some of these.
Articles in Online Media Platforms
There are a myriad of media platforms today. Small restaurants, big food chains, and even places with gourmet cuisine often reach out for their support and to help spread awareness of their restaurant. There are a variety of content marketing options to choose from: paid advertising articles, collaboration with restaurant critics, paid advertisement, photo reports, etc.
You can also promote your restaurant through publications not related to the food industry. For example, it is worth highlighting a restaurant opening through city news websites, business magazines, and platforms about culture and entertainment. In this case, the formats can be very different: the usual banners, quizzes, articles, special projects, etc.
Restaurant Website Creation, Design & Usability
Your restaurant’s website is an additional but extremely important channel for attracting customers via search engines. Your potential guests are looking for a place to eat and want to see what’s on your menu, your prices, hours, and what the atmosphere is like.
When considering the overall design of your website, it is also important to make sure it works on mobile devices. You’ll also want simple and understandable table booking information and links to any delivery or pick-up services your restaurant offers.
Do not forget to allow visitors to leave a review -- and quickly respond to it. Google Alerts will help you not to lose any feedback. You will be able to receive alerts every time your restaurant (by any keywords you add in the settings) is mentioned on the network. Thanks to this, you will be able to promptly respond to all notifications of visitors and track all information regarding your establishment on the Internet.
Crowd Marketing
Crowd marketing is the indirect promotion of a business in theme communities, forums, groups on social networks. This commonly happens on platforms like Facebook when a user asks “What’s a good XYZ restaurant in the ABC area, I should visit?” If the user receives several links to your place, it is crowd marketing.
You can provide expert opinion and promote your restaurant when you see these questions pop up in threads like local Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags, and other local online forums. In addition to the obvious advantages of attracting new customers, you also get profile information to increase your traffic.
Cooperation with Delivery Services
It is worth cooperating with the main delivery services in your city. If customers are able to order your food via Uber Eats, for example, your restaurant pulls off a more serious image. Those services also have much bigger traffic than you can collect yourself, which means that many more people will know about you through the delivery service.
With that said, you may find it more profitable to create your own mini-delivery fleet, especially during COVID-19 where your dining rooms are restricted and service team underemployed. If you’re pushing delivery hard right now, allowing your waitstaff transition to your delivery team, short-term, could be win-win-win for you, your staff, and your guests.
But even if you do offer your own delivery service, it’s hard to beat the marketing power and user volume that third-party delivery apps offer.
Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising is showing ads on a website that relate to those pages. In traditional business, this would be showing ads for winter hats on a landing page or blog post about hats or winter clothing.
The contextual advertising for a restaurant works the same. If you run a sports bar that attracts Boston Red Sox fans, for example, your ads would appear on websites, blog posts, and landing pages about the Red Sox as well as local Boston nightlife and restaurant scene.
In addition to the ad placements, advertising services that run contextual advertising provide campaign reports, allowing you easily assess the effectiveness of your advertising and if any tweaks are necessary. You can also track visitors directly in the restaurant using coupons or code words, by which your guests will receive a discount or a gift for the order.
Advertising Through Bloggers
It is worth paying attention to promotion through advertising posts from popular bloggers and influencers on Instagram. The advantage of this format is that a real person and not a faceless marketing expert address the audience. People subscribe to those who translate their values and priorities in life.
Start off by looking for local influencers in your area and see what they offer and what their rates are. They may be willing to exchange a review for a free meal and honest review, or they may have a set of rates for promoting your restaurant to their followers.
Also look for local food and entertainment bloggers to also write about your restaurant. And remember, it doesn’t always have to be about your food. Posts about your restaurant’s atmosphere, an event you host, or even personality profiles of your staff can go a long way to promoting your business to the locals.
And, of Course, Social Networks
Your social media account is a good way to increase restaurant’s recognition, too. You don’t have to be on every social platform out there, but you’ll definitely want to be on Instagram due to its image-heavy & food-porn nature, and Facebook because of the august nature of the platform. But you may also find other platforms more suitable to your marketing efforts and used by your targeted guests.
Special attention is paid to the content and general appearance of the Instagram account. Everything is important here: your style of interaction with an audience, color choice, and photo filters. Instagram was created by visuals, filled with bright pictures, and is great for posting mouth-watering photos. Moreover, Instagram is a place for everyone who loves to show off. It provides a great opportunity to upload photos taken by guests and photo reports from parties!
It is possible and necessary to promote your restaurant. Your client may never know about you if you don't make a loud statement of yourself. So take action!
About the Author
Angela D Johnson is a professional author in Essay Map that offers help with research paper to students. Having the heart of an explorer, she loves to travel, experience new horizons, and expand her knowledge on different topics. She is also a skilled content writer who writes articles on topics like HR, business, education, self-growth, and many others.
