There are now over 3.48 billion social media users, and the number is continuously growing. If you’re looking for a way to reach a larger audience group along with your existing customers and followers, then understanding how to use social media for your restaurant is really essential in the current times to grow your customer base.
Posting regularly on social media posts is important for promoting restaurants. More than 60 percent of restaurants, use social media to advertise and promote their brand. Gaining the attention of potential customers is not a small job, and while social media management may seem overwhelming to your already packed schedule, outsourcing the job or learning quick and easy scheduling tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite can help you to get through. A Restaurant Consultant like HPG can help you to get away with this problem.
Now let us understand How does Social Media Marketing Help Restaurants:
Improves Trust and Loyalty: Your guests want to know that they can trust that your service and quality of the food will be consistently good. Social media is a great way to establish transparency. Always encourage guests to leave reviews and post pictures about their experience at your restaurant. That helps to improve your restaurant service quality as well.
Brand Advocacy: Food is the most photographed subject on Instagram. Foodstagramming is something to definitely be learned if you are a restaurant owner. There is no better way to build brand advocacy than to have customers post pictures of their entrees and generate buzz around your restaurant. Their positive reviews about the food and services help to promote the restaurant to new customers.
Affordable: Billboards, Hoardings, Posters, Commercials, Radio Spots, TV ads are pricey forms of advertising. Monthly fees can cost you a lot per month. Social media is totally free unless you choose to run paid ads, which are comparatively much cheaper than the above-mentioned advertising options. Social media planning and scheduling tools offer feature-free options, so you can schedule posts to your preferred platform or platforms in advance.
Staying Connected: One of the most important reasons a restaurant should have social media accounts is communicating with your regulars. It allows you to keep in touch and build a personal connection with your customers. You can reach them, share new offers, specials, holiday hours, events, any new cuisine that is added to the menu, any changes in the restaurant. An average person spends 2 hours on social media which is a lot to interact with them if you use it efficiently
Let us take a look at different social media platforms you can run your restaurant ads at:
Facebook: Facebook is known to be one of the most influential social media platforms. 72% percent of people have used Facebook at least once to decide what restaurant to eat at or order from. The impact Facebook marketing can have on your restaurant sales is simply amazing. It’s a great platform to increase your brand awareness by allowing you to share information about any upcoming events, offers, or discounts. If you have clarity of a few important things like, your business goal, who are your target audience, your budget, images, and videos to feature, Facebook ads can help you achieve heights in your business. Make use of the hashtags feature to find your audience.
Instagram: In recent times, Instagram has become the most popular social media tool for advertising. Instagram is a user-friendly and interactive platform and is most desirable by millennials. People tend to avoid a restaurant if they look “pretty” on Instagram. If you own a restaurant you understand how important and difficult is it to convince customers. Instagram lets you do that as it helps you present your menu in a beautiful way. There is also an option to run ads like photo ads, video ads, carousel ads, and stories ads. You need to create a business account to set up ads. With the help of the easy-to-use interface, the hashtags and story features available on Instagram and see your restaurant grow.
Twitter: Restaurants have now started using Twitter to reach out to customers, engage with them, and increase brand awareness. It is amongst the most popular social media platforms that can help you reach thousands of people, mostly for free! You can run Twitter-specific Promotions and Offer “insider” deals only for your followers. Understanding hashtags is important. It can generate a lot of traffic. Use Twitter cards for photos and videos.
But along with the above mentioned, some more things are to be kept in mind:
Content: It is important to find and make a decision about the kind of content you wish to post. You can post engaging content like recipes, chefs, menu, ambiance, etc. Interesting content keeps people coming back to your social media and also to your restaurant.
Regularity: Updating your social media profile regularly is important. This would ensure that people keep seeing your restaurant on their feeds. As we know out of sight, out of mind. If your goal is to be noticed, regularity helps more than anything.
Originality: There is nothing better than being original. Post images that are fresh and from your restaurant. This engages people.
Tracking: Tracking and Analyzing your social media is as essential as posting. This helps you understand if you need to invest more time into your social media account for engaging more people.
Social media is an important part of marketing. You can choose where you want to endorse your brand and attract and retain consumers. Make a plan with your restaurant consultant or take the help of an agency to get started with your social media marketing.