Starting a new restaurant is extremely challenging — there’s logistics, quality, maintenance, cash flow management, etc. Probably chief among them, though, is marketing — just how the heck do I get people to my restaurant?
Among an ever-burgeoning pool of restaurants cropping up everywhere in a city, the pressure to create a unique brand is immense. What strategies would you employ that aren’t capital intensive, but increase your restaurant’s discoverability significantly?
Visual content, Instagram and Food influencers
Visual, colorful content about your restaurant and food is the most effective tool to get discovered. Food tasting events are a great way to attract food bloggers and influencers, who will, in turn, take photos and share your spot with their audience.
Use the power of Instagram to create a space for your restaurant. The hashtag #foodporn had about 168,218,012 posts on Instagram when this article was written. Given that the number of posts last year in February was just over 76.2 million, Instagram should be your first avenue for growth as a new restaurant.
Here are some strategies for you to tap into the Instafood space.
- Invite popular bloggers and Instagrammers to come to your restaurant, give them free samples of food and drinks and let them take over.
- Focus on the aesthetics: good visuals in a restaurant or on the food (ideally both) make for much more shareable photos.
- Hire select influencers to promote your food and drinks and have them reach out to their networks and promote your restaurant.
- Mine popular hashtags related to food and your specific location to target prospective patrons.
Build a loyalty program
Loyalty programs are a fantastic way to hold on to early customers and grow repeat and referral business. As an example, the Bubble Tea brand Chatime entered and proceeded to dominate the Canadian market almost entirely on the backs of their loyalty program.
Loopy Loyalty lets you set up your own loyalty program really quickly. A subscription with Loopy Loyalty entitles you to:
- Design a digital loyalty card for Apple Wallet and Google Pay with your own logo, background image, colors, stamp images, and rewards.
- Add your location(s) and send alerts to your customer when they’re around the area of your restaurant(s).
- Collect data such as names, email addresses and birthdays that might help you get to know your customers better and build your email list.
- Once activated, you will get a unique card that you can share on your website, email or social media allowing your customers to enroll to your loyalty rewards program right from their smartphone.
- You can also promote your card offline by downloading a QR code which can be set up on posters or tent cards in your restaurant, print ads or events.
- Send notifications to your customers’ lock screen for repeated timely engagements — it lets you stay in touch with customers to increase retention and referrals.
- Analyze and reflect on detailed engagement statistics to fine-tune your loyalty marketing strategy to get the maximum amount of engagement possible.
Marketing on Yelp
If you’re in North America, Yelp and other restaurant rating websites such as TripAdvisor wield considerable influence over your prospective clients.
As an owner of a restaurant, it’s your job to be proactive in this space or invest in resources and people who can manage this for you. Make your sure your restaurant’s profile on Yelp is dressed up with content, which includes timings, addresses, pictures (lots of them), menu, and reviews.
Ensure that you engage with reviewers and thank them for their business. A personal touch goes a long way in humanizing your business and making it more relatable, thereby increasing your repeat customer base. People patronize businesses that make them feel acknowledged, comfortable, and valued. This is your space to do that.
If you do get a negative review, be polite, cordial, and apologize for the reviewer’s experience. Don’t take it personally. Negative feedback is part and parcel of the restaurant business. No one has ever profited from an over-zealous and over-the-top response to a negative Yelp review. If you must know, reach out to the reviewer politely on DM, and ask for a more comprehensive report. Be humble and non-threatening and try to get their feedback institutionally through emails.
Keep in mind that the reviewer felt comfortable reviewing your restaurant under cover of the anonymity of the internet. Any attempt to breach that security will most likely be met with hostility.
Post User-generated content
Yet another way to show your patrons you value them is by featuring them on your social media. An effective strategy for this could be organizing social media contests encouraging users to post pictures of themselves in your establishment with their food and their stories. Offer rewards like discounts or free food to users who post compelling stories.
Posting stories and experiences of people who come to your restaurant on social media creates a template for your restaurants that people come to desire and covet. If the food and drinks are the heart of your restaurant, the stories that emanate out of your place is the soul. It’s your chance to show your patrons that your restaurant is the perfect place for a first date, a high school reunion, a marriage proposal, etc.
Also, it lets you tap into the most powerful marketing channel of all: virality.
Email newsletters
In a world where we increasingly get updates on our surroundings from emails and social media, email marketing is a platform that you shouldn’t ignore. You can get access to email addresses by getting people to sign up in person, or when they sign up for your loyalty program online.
You don’t have to send emails every week; spamming your patrons’ inbox is a sure shot way to a high attrition rate and mass unsubscribes. Space out your emails and use them to share updates, stories, changes to the menu, or blogs. We recommend MailChimp as our tool of choice for managing subscriptions. Keep in mind that your emails should be bright, inviting, short and captivating. These emails will set the tone for your restaurant so their design should reflect what your restaurant stands for.
Creative and targeted digital marketing can help you quickly reach out to your niche and supplement more organic forms of outreach (like handing out samples at the local fair!). Taking the time to understand different platforms and how you can use them for outreach is critical to the long-term health of your restaurant.
The low cost and the effectiveness of some of these marketing techniques are what we like to call ‘wickedly effective.’ Try them out.
