Marketing a restaurant is the act of offering and showcasing your food services to the general public to win their business. That’s what builds up a restaurant brand.
Studies show that 86% of Millennials will try a new restaurant after seeing food-related content online.
So, marketing online is the strategy of how you engage with your customer base. There is a sequence of actions taken across multiple channels to reach your target audience.
Everyone knows that the customers are the bedrock of your restaurant business. From regular customers to every staff member’s name to out-of-towners who stop to get wifi and end up thrilled with your hospitality and food, push your business forward.
That’s how restaurant marketing is so important: it helps you expand your community and find new customers.
Now the COVID-19 pandemic has made this even more crucial. In addition, customers’ expectations have changed, making it a challenge to compete with restaurants that have successfully adapted and pivoted operations to increase contactless experiences, safety, and digital food ordering.
Making strong customer relationships and providing an extraordinary dining experience will set you apart from your competitors. So, the best place to start is to develop your restaurant marketing strategies.
Through advertisement, email campaigns, digital channels, and more, effective marketing makes all the difference in bringing foodies back again and again.
What are Inbound and Outbound Marketing?
Outbound marketing involves a proactive approach, reaching out to customers to get them interested in your product. By contrast, inbound marketing focuses on crafting and distributing content that draws people into your business or website. Research shows that up to 63% of consumers begin their shopping journey online.
Following are some more differences between both marketing techniques.
Inbound Marketing:
- Informative digital content targeted at specific audiences. It helps solve consumers’ problems.
- Content comes in interactive forms, such as blogs, social media posts, webinars, reports, etc.
- It is measurable through digital marketing software
Outbound Marketing:
- Non-digital content is designed to capture all customers’ attention and is written to sell specific products.
- Passive content is displayed in billboards, direct mail, magazine ads, on TV, etc.
- It has a linear strategy with limited channels
2 Amazing Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Here are 4 amazing benefits to inbound marketing that can help you determine if it’s the right strategy for your business:
- Inbound marketing is non-invasive; people can attend your webinar or read your blog posts on their own time.
- The content in inbound marketing is educational and specifically designed for the sales funnel.
The Drawbacks of Inbound Marketing
Of course, inbound marketing isn’t for every business. Here are some challenges:
- Inbound marketing content is centered on consumers’ evolving needs.
- This type of marketing demands a holistic strategy, as you’ll need to buy tools to help you implement cross-channel campaigns.
The Benefits of Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing has the following benefits that should not be overlooked:
- It promotes brand awareness, helping you reach customers who haven’t heard of your business or services before.
- It can yield immediate results because people interested in your business or services are likely to make a purchase on your ads.
The Drawbacks of Outbound Marketing
Here are a few disadvantages to following the outbound marketing route:
- Outbound marketing is more generalized as it’s difficult to make it relevant or appealing to everyone.
- Consumers tune out outbound marketing. For instance, many people mute the TV during ads.
- To measure the effectiveness of outbound marketing strategies like billboards is really difficult.
Overall, outbound marketing is all about sending a message to everyone, while inbound marketing has a much-targeted focus.
Local SEO for Restaurants
Local SEO helps building a successful online presence for restaurants.
If you’re struggling to improve your restaurant’s local rankings, follow these eleven steps to increase your local area presence.
- Include your target location in key areas on your website
- Utilize your blog
- Schema markup for restaurants
- Insert Geotags on your images
- Focus on user experience
- Optimize your contact page
- Gain a presence on restaurant directories
- Utilize local websites for link building
- Make use of Google My Business features
- Use social media to your advantage
- Do not forget reviews!
How to discover the best keywords for restaurants?
Let me clarify one thing: this will not be another article about how to do keywords research. Instead, we’ll accelerate this whole process so you’ll get your own list of keywords for your restaurant by the end of it.
AdWords for Restaurant Marketing
Simply, you set up some ads on Google and associate them with specific keywords that are closely related to your restaurant business or the services you offer.
So, if someone searches for a particular keyword that matches your keywords, the chances are that someone clicks on it, and your desired action happens on your website.
Let’s take a more practical example:
If you own an Italian restaurant, one of your main keywords is “pizza.”
You might think, when someone types “pizza” in the search bar, your restaurant ad will appear. Well, in many cases, they might want to seek “Pizza Image” or to find out more about a recipe or the history of pizza.
The outcome is, if you want to be effective with AdWords, you need to be specific with your keywords. In addition, you have to make sure that your ad is in accordance with what your customer wants.
So in the example mentioned above, it’s not a good idea to focus on the main keyword “pizza” to get orders, but long-tail keywords like:
“pizza delivery near me” or “best pizza in town” works better.
Having this in mind, I’ll help you uncover the specific keywords for your restaurant.
When you’re more specific and relevant, you’ll have to pay a lot less.
Let’s get started.
How to get your list of restaurant keywords
- Go to Free AdWords Campaign Generator
- Put your restaurant name. If it’s already listed on Google Business, it will save you a form filling
- Once done with form filling, now hit Generate Campaign
- Now scroll down to the bottom and insert your email to get all the “keywords” sent directly to your inbox.
Isn’t it quick and easy peasy?
Once it’s done, let’s now talk about the best keywords for restaurants.
The keywords of your business depend on the following
- Name of your restaurant
- Cuisines
- Location
- The takeaway and delivery Services
For example, you have a restaurant called Yummy Inn in Oxford, UK, serving Indian food. So, you want to run Google ads to increase delivery and takeaway.
Your Brand keywords
With our mockup example, your keywords would look like this:
Yummy Inn
Yummy Inn Oxford
Yummy Inn Oxford menu
Yummy Inn best food
Yummy Inn menu list
Yummy Inn restaurant Oxford
Yummy Inn restaurant takeaway
Yummy Inn delivery options
Yummy Inn Indian takeaway
Yummy Inn Indian food
Yummy Inn Indian Oxford
Yummy Inn Indian menu
Yummy Inn Indian restaurant
Yummy Inn Indian restaurant Oxford
Yummy Inn Indian restaurant menu
You should always go for brand keywords if your website does not rank number one.
Top Citation Sources For Restaurants
Getting quality and accurate listings on the restaurant niche, industry-relevant sites will help to improve your local SEO authority along with rankings.
Importance of Social Media Marketing for restaurants
According to the reports of Social Media Today, 30% of millennial diners avoid restaurants having a weak Instagram presence. It shows that restaurant customers are more digitally oriented than ever.
So, it’s critical to make an online presence and to stand out.
- It provides information and opens communication with digital customers.
- It also allows your restaurant to build an online community.
- Social media allows you to share your recipes and foods online.
- It adds legitimacy and professionalism to your restaurant.
How Restaurants Use Social Media
Restaurants use social media to connect with their target audience in creative and fun ways.
Following are some of the ways restaurants are using Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more:
- Post recipes and pictures of food items.
- Post daily, or weekly or seasonal menus
- Showcase customer needs and communicate with them
- Show behind the scenes pictures and videos
- Highlight their chefs, bartenders, and servers
If you want to promote your restaurant on social media, create an online social media presence for it, follow these baby steps:
- Create a business profile on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Pinterest.
- Use your restaurant brand colors and logo on your profiles.
- Create your restaurant’s website, add location, menu list, hours, how to contact you, and bio to each page.
- Post daily content to keep your customers engaged and attract new ones.
Best Influencer Marketing Strategies
Influencer marketing helps identifies people who have a strong influence on your target audience or a brand’s industry.
In an influencer marketing plan, a brand forms a partnership with the influencer. They agree to expose their audience to the brand’s content, messaging, or services.
For instance, Laura Escanes was recruited by Amazon España as a brand ambassador. Her profile encompasses beauty, fashion, motherhood, and travel, building an audience with varied interests for Amazon.
Here are eight influencer marketing strategies to help you.
- Choose the influencers you want to work with
- Find the right social media platform to focus on
- Check out the size of your brand into account
- Maintain authenticity by working with micro-influencers
- Convert loyal customers into brand ambassadors
- Give influencers creative control
- Maintain a mutually beneficial relationship based on shared values
- Make the most of each influencer relationship
