You've opened your restaurant but aren't doing as well as you would want. The truth is that just creating a social media page with a few images of your restaurant and menu won't cut it; you'll need to develop a restaurant marketing strategy and implement particular advertising tactics.
60% of restaurants close or transfer ownership during their initial year of operation, and an astounding 80 percent do so within the first five years, according to research from Ohio State University. The restaurant industry is competitive, so you must devote time and energy to developing your brand and promoting your establishment.
The operators of small restaurants frequently encounter this circumstance when customers don’t know your restaurant name. You need to consider your marketing strategy seriously if you want to expand and stand out. This may seem daunting with the growth of social media marketing and new technology. Know how to utilize social media and restaurant SEO to raise awareness of your eating place.
How To Promote A Restaurant
Making a restaurant marketing plan is necessary before adopting marketing strategies at random. A plan's likelihood of success increases with its solid and well-thought-out.
The steps to creating your marketing plan are as follows:
- Choose your intents: It is your marketing strategy’s "why." Do you wish to bring in more clients? Entice repeat business from clients? Increase the typical check size for customers?
- Set your marketing objectives: Establish clear, measurable objectives. For instance, you could wish to see a 20% rise in revenue over the next six months. You may monitor the income of your bar or restaurant and modify your marketing strategies by setting precise goals.
- Develop personalities: They could fall into a specific salary range or enjoy dining and sporting events. You may develop more specialized strategies by defining these clients.
- Make a budget: Make a reasonable budget to prevent overspending or underspending. It aids you in avoiding spending money on projects that devour a sizable percentage of your resources. Instead, make smaller, more efficient investments.
- Identify what makes you unique: The features you provide that make you stand out should be the focus of your marketing. It can be the menu, the staff, the setting, or something else. Utilize this feature in your marketing to differentiate your restaurant from the competition and increase the effect.
Things You Need To Consider Before Making Your Restaurant Marketing Strategy
1. Understand Your Customers
The secret to effective marketing is to know your target market. No matter your business, sector, or product, this is true.
Now, when you say "know your consumer," we don't simply mean understanding the fundamental demographics of your clients (age, gender, and country of origin). Beyond that, you need to know what your consumers appreciate about your restaurant, their eating tastes and habits, and spending power.
Your ability to modify your services and marketing plan to fit your customers will increase as you gain a deeper understanding of them.
For example, you might consider putting up a distinct play area for the kids if most customers are middle-aged, married, and frequently come in with their children.
Having kid-friendly amenities is particularly advantageous for restaurants that receive a lot of business from families. Because they may linger over beverages and desserts rather than finishing their meal quickly, your clients have a better experience, which boosts your Average Order Value (AOV).
You may consider doing a kid’s eat free on a certain day of the week to draw in more families and have a specialized kid’s menu to appeal to your target audience.
2. Win At Branding
What makes branding so crucial? Building a strong brand is essential for any restaurant that wants to survive and prosper over the long term since it may help you draw in more clients and increase your income.
To put it simply, having a great brand helps to create buzz and increase traffic to your restaurant. In addition, a strong brand enables you to charge a higher price for your goods (in this example, your menu items) without significantly declining sales.
So how can you successfully brand yourself? Consider how you want your clients to view your brand while keeping your target demographic in mind. The Five Dimensions of Brand Personality, a framework used by marketers to define and assess the "public persona" of a brand, can be used to examine this if you'd want to:
- Integrity
- Enthusiasm
- Proficiency
- Brilliance
- Ruggedness
Whatever brand identity you decide on, ensure that all the components of your restaurant—decor, cuisine, entertainment—work together harmoniously. You don't want your branding and marketing to convey conflicting messages to your customers.
Imagine that you decide to market your restaurant as "Refined." For example, instead of streaming the newest mainstream songs at your restaurant, you might choose to begin playing jazz or classical music. Additionally, you might revamp your menus to create memorable fine-dining dinners that use handcrafted, gourmet items.
3. Take Control Of And Improve Your Google My Business Profile
How does your Google My Business profile look? The listing displays when someone uses Google or Google Maps to search for your restaurant or eateries nearby. Increasingly diners are searching cuisines near them on Google, e.g. 'Italian Restaurant near me', or 'Seafood Boil Restaurant near me'.
If your Google My Business profile is optimized with complete information, you'll rank better and can be discovered by diners searching for your cuisine. If you have photos of your menu, restaurant interior, it will give customers a feel of what you are offering and can entice them to visit you. Also, compared to restaurants with non-optimized listings, Google will promote your restaurant on higher search results, since it has more context.
4. Register For Review Sites Like Yelp
When consumers are unsure of where to eat, what do they do? They access Yelp!
Yelp receives over 178 million unique visits each month, and an astounding 82 percent of customers use the site to research potential purchases. Not only that, but some companies with a Yelp presence typically saw a boost in yearly sales of $8,000, with the website solely responsible for this growth.
Start completing your Yelp profile after claiming and verifying your business.
Ensure that your NAP (name, address, phone number) and other details are accurate and current.
- Enter your industry of business (American Restaurant, Asian Restaurant, etc.)
- If your restaurant provides Wifi, outdoor dining, and other facilities, add features to let your consumers know.
- Include a menu.
- Include images showcasing your restaurant
- Add any videos you may have
- Reply to any reviews and inquiries.
How, then, can you increase foot traffic to your business using Yelp? First, you'll need to claim your listing, complete your restaurant profile, and reply to reviews, just like with Google My Business.
Once Yelp is up and running, look into other consumer review websites you may use to engage new clients.
5. Make Your Website SEO-Friendly
Are you unfamiliar with SEO and find it a little intimidating?
Don't worry; we will simplify things for you. SEO consists of the following components:
- Obtaining backlinks or connections pointing to your website from other websites is another aspect of off-page SEO that boosts your search engine rating.
- To rank for specific keywords, you must create content specifically geared toward those keywords.
- Technical on-page SEO involves arranging your website to make it easier for Google's crawlers to locate and index your material.
- The first step in off-page SEO is to list your website on as many directories and review sites as possible.
- Your chances of ranking well for your keywords rise when other websites link to your website, which signals to Google that you are reliable and trustworthy.
- Next, conducting keyword research to identify the best keywords to rank for and then creating content that is optimized for such keywords are essential components of on-page SEO.
Finally, you'll need to organize your website so that Google can crawl it quickly and index your material.
6. Create Accounts On Social Media (And Post Regularly)
In today's world, social media is an essential part of marketing. You should create your social media profiles and publish them because many customers use Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms to explore restaurants and eating alternatives.
What social media channel you should prioritize relies mainly on the target population you are promoting your business to. For example, if you're targeting a younger audience, Instagram can be a great option.
7. Establish A Loyalty Program
Along with promoting your restaurant to potential consumers, you should also interact with your current clientele to cultivate a devoted following. Focusing all your time and energy on acquiring new clients (while disregarding your present ones in the process) would undoubtedly be ineffective since reaching new consumers costs five times as much as keeping existing ones.
One of the most excellent methods to keep your current consumers interested and returning is establishing a loyalty program. You may accomplish this in several ways, including:
- Granting your clients points they may then use
- Enabling discounts for your clients
- Enabling customers to access freebies
If you have questions about restaurant marketing strategies and need expert guidance and assistance, reach Best POS experts immediately!
Comments