One click can make or break a restaurant’s online marketing program. If the right people click on your online advertisements, then you’re in business, and the opposite is true as well. Here’s some advice on how your restaurant can market itself online effectively. 

Pick Your Marketing Channels

Easier said than done, deciding which online channels your restaurant should invest its resources into is actually quite difficult for many restaurants. The reason is that most restaurants do not collect data on their customer’s online interactions with their brand. However, there are easy ways to dig up information that will help you decide which online marketing channels are worth your restaurant’s investment. 

Find Information From Your Restaurant’s Online Presence

The decision on which marketing channels to pursue can be made easier by looking at your restaurant’s current online presence. Fortunately insights scraped from online consumer platforms can provide quality information and they’re free. Let’s look at a restaurant’s top three informational sources for their online marketing programs. 

Social Media

If your restaurant owns any social media accounts then you’ve lucked out. Social media platforms collect the user information of all the users who have interacted with your social media accounts. The information on your users is collected to improve your business’s advertising efforts. 

Your Website

Websites offer a breadth of knowledge on how users interact with them. The best thing any restaurant can do is check out its Google Analytics account. If you don’t have one connected that is alright, just create and connect a new account because this tool is powerful and free. 

In the context of choosing your ideal marketing channels, we recommend focusing on the sources your users are coming from. Are they coming from social media, search engines, email campaigns, etc? If your restaurant hasn’t run any online marketing campaigns it won’t have much data but you may still find some information to help guide your decision. 

Online Listings

Audit your restaurant’s online listings. Start your audit with Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook. Google in particular provides a large amount of insights in the form of data, but things like the number of reviews, average rating can tell you how customers feel about your restaurant. If you see that people leaving google reviews are happier with your restaurant than those on yelp then maybe search engines are a better marketing channel for the restaurant than Yelp. Remember to always pick the low hanging fruits first.

Pick Your Marketing Tactics

The fun starts once your restaurant identifies which marketing channels it will be targeting. The next step is to decide what tactics will be used to support your paid marketing strategy, let's jump right in. 

Paid Media Tactics

Paid media involves the use of sponsored online promotions. Paid media is great because it will get your restaurant in front of potential customers who would have never seen you otherwise or will improve the value of existing customers. The following tactics may just work wonders for your restaurant’s online marketing strategy. 

Location Based Advertising 

There are two key points in the location based advertising tactic that your restaurant should be aware of. The first, you guessed it, is location. Your restaurant needs to have a clear understanding of which areas are worth targeting with its online advertising campaign. 

The second key point is the audience’s intent. If you run a blanket ad campaign over a nearby area then your restaurant has wasted financial resources by advertising to individuals who have ignored the advertisement because they’re not interested in eating at the moment. Instead focus financial resources on marketing to individuals displaying intent, the more granular the better. 

The results of taking these two key points into consideration are a higher return on investment, a more receptive audience, and a larger customer base. 

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is like discounted advertising. Instead of having to locate members of your audience and advertise your restaurant to them on an individual level, your restaurant can be endorsed by one individual who has influence over a very specific audience. 

When it comes to the use of influencers as a paid media tactic there are two key points, quality and relevance. The quality and relevance of the influencer will determine how effective their endorsement will be. 

Our recommendation, do your research. High quality influencers always have detailed insights about their audience, and should be asked to provide that information prior to a partnership. The insights they provide should make it clear what your restaurant stands to gain from their endorsement. 

Retargeting 

Some restaurant owners ask why they should advertise to existing customers since they already know about and visit their restaurant. This is a really good question. The reason has to do with increasing the customer lifetime value and a few other factors. However, it is best to focus on the key points of frequency and conversion rate. 

If your restaurant directs an advertisement at existing customers it can accomplish the following results. The first is an increase to the frequency of visits. A person who originally only visited once a month now visits four times a month or more. Existing customers are more responsive to your ads, and are more likely to act on them. Existing customers already know that they like your food and the advertisement reminded them of that.