How to promote your restaurant online

In the era of information boom that we are experiencing nowadays, a piece of particulars can spread within only few seconds. And that means a lot to online restaurant’s marketers.

Why?

Because all of your competitors are using social media to advertise for their businesses. So if you don’t, you are hundreds of steps far behind them.

I know that plenty of you, restaurant’s managers, are still having numerous troubles in building reputation on social media. Therefore, in this article, I will show you how to promote your restaurant online. If you are looking for more revenue and profits, the following content should not be ignored.

How to promote your restaurant online

1. Place yourself in your customers’ position

This is an important factor no matter what business you are working at. Particularly, in online marketing, you need to know what your clients want to see on your social media or what will stimulates them to come to your restaurant.

It can be a picture of your restaurant’s design or its wonderful view from above because many clients love great view. I learned this because in the town next to mine, there is a place like that called P’Chef and you can see quite much the whole place in the highest floor. Its owner also knows how to show that advantage on its website and it has become the most famous restaurant in that town.

Otherwise, if you want to attract customers for your delicious and well-set dishes, which most restaurants choose this way, you may need to know how to take pictures of the food. I even hired a photographer to do that when I opened my first restaurant. And it was the wisest decision I had ever made.

You can choose whichever method you like. Just make sure that you know what your clients want and give them precisely those things. You will succeed in no time.

2. Build a website for your restaurant

There are various reasons why you need a website to promote your restaurant. However, the most common one is that most people in the world are interacting with hundreds of websites every week or even every day. Many of them can be your competitors. Therefore, a website can increase your competitiveness in the market and the chances to be found on Google if you work on a great SEO process.

Besides, according to the Small Business Administration, the world’s internet use has reached to two billions. And the businesses having websites generates 39 percent of their income higher than the ones who don’t have any. Those are firmly not small numbers. So the only thing you have to do now is to ask yourself whether you want your restaurant to be famous in the neighborhood or the whole world. When you have done answering, I’m sure you know what to do.

3. Tell some bloggers to blog about it

This method will considerably work if the bloggers you ask are famous. It is just similar to paying popular actresses, actors or influencers to check-in with your restaurant and post the pictures to their Instagram. Nevertheless, you don’t pay bloggers. You can offer them a free meal or arrange a fantastic table for their first date. I believe it would save much money for both of them and your restaurant.

Moreover, a blogger does have more skills in SEO than you. So they can work on it better and get you a significant number of shares as well as reputation. I tried this way last year and it was completely successful. The number of customers was extremely boosted and I even had to reject many of them because I could not afford enough tables. You can try this way if you like.

4. Invest in Facebook marketing

I’m sure this method is very familiar with most of managers of restaurants nowadays. We cannot deny the development of Facebook and its influences to doing business. In fact, it is now the most famous of social network in the world with exactly 1.79 billion users. It means that at least tens of millions of people are getting into Facebook every day and see tons of news, one of which could be your restaurant. So if you know the simple principles to advertise on it, you will easily succeed. These are some of my secrets that you can apply:

• Publishing beautiful pictures

These include your restaurant’s profile picture, cover image, and pictures on posts. Profile picture and cover image are the face of your business online. So you should choose them carefully. What I often do is setting the profile picture with the logo of my restaurant and the cover image with a dish from it as well. Therefore, when people look at my Facebook, they will immediately know what type of place it is and how delicious the foods are. You can build a strong impression on your clients by doing that. Otherwise, you can set a picture of a nice waiter or your restaurant. It will also work.

And remember to update information regularly. Attaching every post with a picture of your restaurant’s dishes is always a beautiful idea to catch people’s eyes and increase interactions. Try it and you will see it.

• Learn how to use Facebook advertisements

Most of the businesses are using Facebook advertisement for promoting because it works efficiently. I don’t know if Mark Zuckerberg hired some marketing experts to build that feature or not but it is brilliant. Nevertheless, it’s not as plain as you think although its principle is simple.

Fundamentally, you will identify the clients that will see your ads and Facebook will find them for you. But to accomplish that process and earn customers, you need to know how to create an excellent ad copy, which picture to choose, how to retarget the old clients, and so on. Therefore, sign up for a Facebook advertising course or buy a book about Facebook marketing if you want to raise your revenue.

But there is one thing I need to remind you. If you are too busy to learn about Facebook marketing, you need to hire a professional to do it, not a novice. As you can see, a starter is amateur and contains more risks than an expert. And the one who takes consequences of those risks will be you. So be careful with your option.

• Create some online discounts

And finally, this technique can increase the number of check-ins and shares. Do you notice that clothes shops often tell clients to share a post to get a 10 or 20 percent discount? That is a very useful way to promote their reputation. You can apply it to your restaurant.

For example, telling your customers to tag five of their friends into your post to get a voucher or like and share it on their Facebook account are some great ways to do. Otherwise, when clients come to your restaurant, you can tell them to check-in and geo target it on their Facebook to get discount for their dishes. It’s another method I often used when I first learned online marketing. I hope you can apply these ways smoothly.

5. Get your restaurant’s name on reviewing websites

Among the promoting methods, this one is still new to numerous people. However, it has proven its effectiveness on helping businesses in increasing their sales. In a research several years ago, Marchex discovered that over 80 percent of searching results on Google point to network results and customers’ reviews. Therefore, if you can get your restaurant’s name on those sites, you are likely to bet on a certainty.

The first reviewing site I ever knew was Yelp. You probably know it as well. Having been founded more than 10 years ago, it had become one of the longest and most prestigious sites for reviewing businesses in the world. There are many other popular ones that you can take advantage, such as Angie’s List, Foursquare, Goodsnitch, Manta.

Conclusion

Have you found out how to promote your restaurant online?

I hope you have. So if you like this writing, do share it. It’s probably a way for you to imagine how real online marketing is like. And don’t hold your questions in your mind. Comment them down below, and I will glad to answer.

To sum up, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you in my following articles. Goodbye.

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