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Why you should be marketing your restaurant on social media

The world of social media marketing for restaurants can be challenging but is an essential strategy to succeed in today’s ever growing digital age. But why? Let us tell you…

Social Media Marketing increases your restaurant’s visibility

Social media marketing is a fantastic tool that holds the power to increase your businesses visibility. By utilising the various social media platforms, you increase your restaurants exposure to reach a vaster audience. Social Media Marketing for restaurants can also help in local SEO by making your restaurant more discoverable in local searches.

It allows you targeted advertising

Targeted ads allow businesses to target and home in on specific demographics such as location, age and particular interests or themes. This ensures your targeted social media campaigns are reaching the intended audience, which in course attracts new potential customers. Another fantastic way to target a desired audience through Social Media Marketing is using specific hashtags on your posts, highlighting topics relevant to your establishment, I.e., food, different cuisines or restaurant themes.

It increases engagement with customers

You can directly interact with your customers through social media – whether this is responding to comments and feedback, direct messaging, and answering questions. Building this relationship with your customer base encourages loyalty and repeat business, which aids in strengthening brand advocacy, customer loyalty and increased profits.

Another great way to build a relationship with your customer base is through user-generated content and encouraging customers to share pictures and experiences of their meals. This can then be re-posted on your social media pages, which gets your customers involved with marketing but also gives your business a level of authenticity.

It’s a cost-effective marketing tool

The beauty of social media marketing is that it can be very cost-effective – organic social media marketing is completely free and aids you in building a community with brand-new audiences for your business. A variety of social media platforms also offer affordable advertising, allowing your business to reach a new and large audience without splashing lots of cash.

It’s great for feedback and improvement

Feedback and improvement are a vital part of any business – positive or negative. This feedback offers valuable insight which allows you to make improvements and enhance your businesses overall customer experience.

Our top 5 solutions for social media marketing in hospitality

It’s all well and good understanding the importance of social media marketing for restaurants but knowing ‘how’ is different. So, what are the more effective ways to action this? Below we outline our top 5 social media marketing ideas for restaurants.

Produce high quality visuals

Ever checked out a restaurants social media before going to see what the food looks like? Us too. This is why Investing in high-quality imagery and content of your menu items is absolutely key to engaging a new customer base.

Create engaging content

Ensure you are creating engaging content that is authentic to your business; this can be anything from construction of dishes, BTS in your kitchen, interviews with chefs and any special events. Content variety will keep your audience engaged.

Strong and consistent branding

Strong branding is what will help your business stand out in a crowded industry and help in defining how your audience recognises you on social media. This is reflected in theme, colour schemes, and tone of voice across all your social media platforms. Staying consistent with frequent posting is one of the main rules of social media marketing, ensure you are posting regularly with relevant content to keep your audience engaged.

Engage with your audience

Building a strong relationship with your following on social media will aid in repeat business and improving your social media strategy. Put the time into interacting with your audience, replying to comments, liking tagged posts, re-sharing content and responding to any direct messages. This is one of the simplest yet effective ways to build a loyal following.

There are real human beings behind the brand – show that!

No one likes to see super sales led content. So, how did it all start? Sharing your start up story, allows your following to see the personable side of your business. As well as this, highlighting your team in regular updates with engaging team content, and other non-promotional content will connect people with your brand.

Now you have all the right understanding and tools to create a great following and engaged customer base through the power of social media marketing – what are you waiting for!

If you are interested in finding out more of our top tips and guidance on how to increase your businesses success, follow the link to our Downloads page now