Digital Marketing Strategies For Restaurants – A Recipe For Success

Everyone wants to be successful, but there are some businesses where the success rate is extremely low, and one such business is the restaurant industry, because in this business having a workable restaurant is not the same as having a successful restaurant.

A successful restaurant requires excellent digital marketing for restaurants. To get your attention, they must not only understand your food preferences but also why it is worthwhile to choose them.

It is estimated that nearly half of all restaurants fail within the first few years of operation due to the highly competitive nature of the industry, which is why you must excel in all aspects of it, whether it is menu optimization, customer service, or effective digital marketing strategies for restaurants.

In this article, we are going to discuss digital marketing strategies for restaurants.

1.  Number One Rule: Social Media Presence

Social media is now used by more than 4 billion people worldwide. Let alone, Facebook is used by 22 percent of the world’s population, making it one of the best platforms for digital marketing for food businesses to the rest of the world. Other social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, are also just as popular as Facebook.

All these websites gives you a huge opportunity to expand your targeted audience via social media. Using social media marketing, you can provide amazing deals, coupon codes, memes, images, and many other things. You could literally do anything with social media to increase customer engagement.

2.    Google Business Listing

When was the last time you searched for “hotels near me” or “restaurants near me” on your phone? Not long ago, right? We frequently use these queries on our phones to get the desired results in our immediate vicinity.

And this makes Google business profiling one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing strategies for restaurants. Through this Google listing, your customers can find you online, read the reviews, view the menu, get directions to your restaurant, and even call you to place an order. Isn’t it wonderful?

3.    Creating Brand-Defining Videos

We are surrounded by videos, and because of the widespread use of mobile phones and high-speed internet, video marketing can also become one of the most accessible and popular forms of digital marketing ideas for restaurants.

To get the maximum benefit, you should create interactive videos showcasing your restaurant’s best dishes and specialties, which will help you gain more and more engagement. Also, videos can be used for a variety of purposes, and they can also be shared on social media.

 

4.    Build A Captivating Website.

Yes, 75% of people are aware that having an enticing and appealing website is important for increasing their customer base. After all, it is the first thing your customer will see.

So, keeping that in mind, your website should be appealing to the user; it should be easy to use; have good navigation to get to pages; be filled with mouth-watering images, and be SEO optimization for good organic traffic.

Furthermore, because the majority of people access your website via mobile phone, it is important that your website be mobile-friendly, which in turn will help you to perform more online marketing for restaurants.

 

5.    Leveraging Influencers

Isn’t it amazing when you see an advertisement with a celebrity endorsing some brands? Doesn’t it entice you to invest in the brand? This digital marketing plan of action is known as “influencer marketing.”

It is a well-known fact that influencers have the ability to influence the decisions of the masses and entice them to invest in the brand. You should also use that power to benefit your business. It does not have to be the highest-paid celebrity; anyone with a large number of connections and followers in the same niche can be considered.

3 ways to avoid email automation breakdowns

Back in February, I used a vacation-rental site to book a beautiful house on the water for my wife and me and a group of friends. We read the reviews, scrutinized listings and picked the winner.

The booking process went well, but if you have ever booked a site without seeing it in person, you might feel a little anxious after clicking “Book now.”

Will this place that just ate a big chunk of my credit limit turn out as advertised? Will it live up to the photos in the listing, or is it really a shack on a main road with some stranger’s shoes on the deck?

One day after I booked, I got an email. “We saved your search so you don’t miss out on your dream vacation,” it said.

Yes, folks, I freaked out.

Attack of the browse-abandon emails

I booked the place, so why was I getting this browse-abandon email? My card didn’t go through? The owner refused my booking? My reservation got lost? Somebody else booked it a second before I did?

Over the next four months, I looked at the property 22 times, and I received 22 follow-up emails. I know exactly how many because I saved them all.

I won’t mention the site because we all have things in our email programs that we know we need to fix. But there’s an opportunity to learn from it and make sure we’re not making the same mistake.

If you follow me on MarTech, you know how much I love browse-abandon emails (not). But this gave me a whole bunch of teachable moments, which I have narrowed down to three because I just returned from that beautiful house and am in post-vacation-chill mode:

1. Set up or adjust your exclusions

Browse-abandon emails make sense in travel and hospitality, because repeatedly viewing locations, hotels and attractions can be strong intent signals. The dollar value is higher, and the travel shopper’s mindset is more considered.

But…

Your marketing automations must build in exclusions for people who don’t need to receive a follow-up message, even if they meet some of the triggering criteria, like a site visit. Yes, they are still showing intent, but has that intent grown or has it waned? Do you need to change the message?

Email marketing webinar: Find the right platform

Marketers are being asked to do more with available resources while still delivering against tough targets. Pivoting this from a no-win mission to a job-well-done scenario is a no-brainer.

During this webinar, you’ll learn how Hertz has tackled their ESP sprawl, grew its marketing team and scaled operations through consolidation efforts.

Register today for “Why Finding the Right Platform is the Key to Winning in Email Marketing,” presented by Salesforce.

How Cherry Bombe uses email to make customers smile

After a long career in publishing that included stints at Harper’s Bazaar and as Yahoo’s Food editor in chief, Kerry Diamond, founder and editor in chief of Cherry Bombe, opened a restaurant. “I had never worked in restaurants, but I’d done everything related to books and magazines and newspapers,” said Diamond.”

“Publishing was my world, but the restaurant really opened my eyes. I realized women’s stories weren’t being told or prioritized in the industry. I was learning about all these incredible women and I wanted to help tell their stories. I had this idea to do a magazine called Cherry Bombe. I spent about a year working on it and it came out in May 2013.”

In 2013, Cherry Bombe launched as a print magazine. They needed to start their email list — and build their online presence — from scratch. At the time, they were hindered by a clunky email marketing platform that made it difficult to customize messaging and nearly impossible to align the brand’s aesthetic which was inspired by a rich history of beautifully designed print magazines.

They also needed to take more ownership of their content and communication strategy which was largely built on Instagram. They migrated to Mailchimp in 2014 for the ease-of-use, template options, and the ability to easily market products and track revenue through campaigns. But the secret sauce to their highly engaged email list lies in Cherry Bombe’s compelling, consistent content — stuff that readers are eager to receive in their inboxes.

The platform has helped them crystallize their brand’s look and messaging even while audience outreach and engagement remained focused on Instagram. During and after the pandemic, Cherry Bombe knew they needed to take more ownership of their messaging and audience outreach by focusing — and recalibrating — their email marketing approach.

Does your email copy persuade or sell?

What’s the one thing you would do to make more money from your email program?

Your first thought might be to add an automation platform, invest in new email designs, maybe even switch ESPs. But all of those cost time and money, and they don’t necessarily address the real reason your emails don’t drive the results you need.

What could make the difference? Better email copy.

Specifically, email copy that recognizes your email subscribers require unique tactics to persuade them to click to your website and convert.

This topic doesn’t come up much in debates over whether AI-fueled copybots will replace human copywriters. The problem is not just about having your copy reflect the data you have on each customer or creating near-1:1 emails.

Email copywriting is about persuasion, not selling

It’s knowing that you must help your email subscribers understand why they should take that one extra step and click from the email to your landing page.

So far, this might seem like Email 101. You learned all this years ago when you got your first email job, right? But from everything I have seen over the years, from working with clients to observing what other brands are doing, I don’t think we talk enough about the unique needs of email copywriting.

Good email copy isn’t lyrical praises for your product or witty commentary. To make the difference stand out even more clearly, think about your email campaign’s purpose: to persuade the subscriber to click through your website.

Your email’s job is not to convert your customer (AMP for Email and other attempts at in-email conversion aside). The conversion happens on your website. Your email is the transition to the website and must give readers a reason to click. That’s where persuasion steps up.

Email copy is different from web copy

Email is a push channel, while your website is a pull channel.  Each channel has unique characteristics to address in your copy.

Intent. People who click to your website from a search result or by typing your site URL are likely hunting for something specific. Their intent is strong.

Your email readers, on the other hand, might have a passive interest in your brand but need to shift into active curiosity in order to click.

Even an email that’s strictly an announcement should try to persuade your subscriber to click through to engage on your website because that will generate a few more data crumbs you can track to understand your customers better.

Personalization. Web content by nature is more generic. You might be able to personalize a few areas if you have cookie data or if your customer logs in, but the deeper your customers move into your site, the less personalized the copy.

With email copy, you can call on your email data to personalize every email you send, not just to refer to past activity but also to use predictive modeling, which you can use to add content that matches what you think your customer will do next.

Nurturing. Website copy generally focuses on a single touchpoint – what the customer is looking at or doing at that one moment in time. Even if the website recognizes a returning customer with a personalized greeting, the content will reflect only that previous touchpoint.

Email copy, on the other hand, can be part of a continuing journey that reflects past activity and can lead your customer into taking the next step.

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