Secret to Brand Awareness and Customer Engagement
Social media marketing for restaurants presents many opportunities to market themselves. It’s an effective and proven solution for restaurant promotions. Although, it should be part of your overall online marketing strategy for restaurants. Everyone, these days has a social media presence. And your restaurant is missing huge publicity by not having a social media business identity.
Adding social media to your marketing mix can increase customer visits. In fact, social media can be beneficial to engage as well as motivate customers. After all, your competitors and customers both are on social media.
Before we get started, read a few numbers to consider that impact social media presence online in India.
Why Restaurants need social media? Read Social Media For Restaurants Statistics:
- 63% of restaurants use social media to advertise business as a most common 2018 strategy (Modern Restaurant Management)
- 37% of social networking users operate social media channels to research before making a purchase
- 49% of consumers learn about food through social networks
- 93% of consumers admit to online reviews impact their decision (Brand24)
- 47% of millennials acknowledge to text or tweet while they eat (Brandongaille)
Therefore, social media and online reviews social proof to restaurants need to thrive in business.
Now, that you know why do you need social media presence, Let’s talk about 6 Tips for successful social media marketing.
#1 Choose Right Social Media Platform
As a restaurant, your social media platform of choice should be – Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business. Here are tips to using Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to drive more customers to your restaurants.
Facebook is the biggest one. It offers a vast and most diverse audience. Whereas, 49% of people search on Facebook to find restaurants. Besides, Facebook offers huge potential for interaction. For instance, customers can leave reviews on the page, check-in at your location, upload photos, tag photos, view the menu, as well as reach out to your messenger for interaction.
If you’re new to social media networking, then it is the best to place to get started.
Instagram is a photo-based social media platform. Do you know food photo sharing is consistently ranked as the highest trending platform? Facebook may be the biggest player, but in the huge competition, Instagram plays an important role. You can use Instagram in conjunction with the Facebook strategy. Here are a few tips for Instagram Marketing for Restaurants
- Use trending and niche hashtags
- Use campaign specific hashtags
- Add restaurant menu photos
- Organize an event
Twitter is proven to be a successful online marketing tool for restaurants. It has become a way for people to communicate online. Getting your restaurant started on Twitter is easy and essential. Streamlining a restaurant worth into only 140 characters can be daunting. But with all those people out there watching, condensing what you’re trying to say is definitely key.
Keeping it short and sweet is not as easy as it seems. A content marketing strategy for restaurants can help you decide between the statements. Be careful by not adding too much of a sales pitch. People only want to know about you, but do not respond favorably hard to sell. Hence, use Twitter seamlessly to get your restaurant message across.
# 2 Social Media Content
Social Media is all about sharing. Your goal is to connect with customers by sharing targeted information. This could be photos of the menu, dishes, recipes, interior, or funny memes. Likewise, you can share photos of staff having fun at work. Although, sharing personal information offers a sense of inclusion to customers. This creates a sense of restaurant-quality of service.
Social media is not hard. Once your content is ready, creating an online daily post will only take a few minutes. Know how often to post:
- FaceBook: One to two times a day between 13:00 to 17:00
- Twitter: Five times a day between 13:00 to 16:00 on weekdays
- Instagram: One to two post per day is sufficient. Any more than this will annoy customers
- Pinterest: Four to ten times a day with weekends being the best time to post
# 3 Facebook Advertising
With 93% of social media advertisers use Facebook Ads. Facebook has become the most popular social media platform for advertising. While customers are constantly looking for to best Facebook posts for restaurants. The reason why restaurants choose Facebook to advertise is because of its rich targeting options. Moreover, Facebook Ads allow geo-targeting to connect with local customers. This is very important as most restaurants waste their marketing budget on a customer base that is not in their local area.
Learn how to make money through local SEO.
Let’s take a look at the easy way to get this done:
- Engage with followers on FaceBook
- Build best creative Facebook posts for restaurants
- Create a business profile
- Set-up Facebook restaurant menu
- Build an initial following
- Get FaceBook reviews
- Create shareable content
- Establish Ad budget
- Select Ad goals
- Narrow target audience
- Remarket FaceBook Ads
If you’re using Facebook ads for restaurants ensure that you educate yourself with resources, like, Facebook Business. In order to acquire the full capabilities of advertising. Here is an example of Facebook Targeting options.
# 4 Social Media Customer Targeting
Customer targeting is the most important aspect of restaurants using social media successfully. There are a number of tactics that can use to develop your social media in a way that is more likely to convert customers. A primary reason to use social media as it allows to reach a target audience.
Contrary, when marketing restaurants, it can be challenging to define the audience. Restaurant owners are consistently focusing on who they want instead of who is going to be their customers. Marketing through the right social media channel with the right content can bring more customers. Therefore, social media marketing is said to be a crucial strategy of digital marketing for restaurants.
Videos
With Social Media generating over 1,200% more shares than text and images, it has become imperative for your restaurant to implement a video. By using video as a social media strategy restaurants, you can employ special features. For instance, behind the scenes, cooking tutorials, post-event, etc. One way to use video marketing for restaurants is to go to Facebook Live. Consequently, an average person spends more than three times watching a live video than one isn’t live.
Contest
Social media contest offers restaurants to build rapport and loyalty among customers. Some social media contest you can run for your restaurants is- free gift cards, free dinner for a year, and even winning free event passes. In fact, only 79% of people like the Facebook Restaurant Business Page for discounts and offers. With that in mind, take advantage of the contest to offer discounts to gain social likes and engagement.
# 5 Respond To Your Reviews
Online reputation management is everything for a restaurant. One negative review unchecked may result in losing countless potential customers. Fortunately, 71% of customers admit that they are more likely to recommend a company that responds quickly on social media. To conclude, ensure to reply quickly to a customer both negative or positive reviews on your social media.
However, by responding to a negative review, you can resolve the situation promptly. Consequently, the negative review can be taken down by the user shortly.
Besides, customer reviews allow restaurants to monitor strengths and weaknesses. These evaluation helps to improve the quality of service and result in higher sales.
# 6 Influencer Marketing or Blogging
Collaborating with influencers is a great way to increase brand awareness. Many food bloggers and influencers have a large online following. You can send invitations to food bloggers to review your restaurant. In turn, they will post reviews, ratings, and share their personal experience at the restaurant. It is easier to get into the existing online restaurant industry as they already have a fan following.
For example, an influencer posts a photo of your restaurant’s food on their social profile. By utilizing influencer marketing, you can boost engagement as influencers trigger conversation with content. Alternatively, you can also increase awareness and conversions as you are getting more reach.
Alternatively, you can set up your own blog to increase fan following and engage target customers. Also, you can invite guest bloggers to write for you.
Conclusion
Social media is here to stay. What your restaurant chooses to do sets you apart from the competition. Most restauranteurs think social media marketing simply means posting photos. However, it’s a complete platform to build, engage, and convert customers. Social media marketing requires proper planning, strategy, and execution. Follow these social media marketing business tactics to increase customer base and engagement to your restaurant.
Finally, if you’re still wondering if social media isn’t worth it, consider a study that found more than 75% of people bought a product because they saw it on social media. Therefore, imagine how many customers your restaurant can gain.
Get Customized Social Media Marketing Strategy
If you’ve got to the end of this post, you should be gagging to create amazing social media content. However, running social media campaign isn’t for everyone. Many restaurant owners are just so busy to take care of social media presence, no matter how important social media marketing for small businesses is important. If it sounds like you, Search Markup is here to help.
We create and execute awesome social media strategies for restaurants. To find out how we can help request a demo with Search Markup. We’re here to Help!