Eating food is a necessity but eating tasty food is a compulsion! Similarly, marketing for restaurants is a compulsion for every restaurant owner.
Everyone loves to try and eat new cuisines every now and then. It’s no wonder there are tons of restaurants for different customers with different tastes.
But as a restaurant owner, we know that you’re faced with the daunting task of bringing in new customers to your restaurant.
How can your restaurant stand out in the increasing competition in the industry?
Is your restaurant being overlooked?
Are you planning a grand opening for your restaurant?
Is the daily footfall less than your expectations?
If you’re faced with any of the questions above, it is time for you to create a master marketing plan for Facebook. RecurPost, a social media scheduler, allows you to schedule Facebook posts. This article will help you with marketing for restaurants and cafes.
Have you noticed people sharing those scrumptious pictures of their food on social media Platforms?
That picture definitely brings an instant craving to your belly.
Undoubtedly, word-of-mouth is one of the best sources of marketing. However, when we combine word-of-mouth with Facebook, its impact grows significantly.
It all begins with creating a buzz on Facebook about your restaurant’s cuisine, culture, and community.
Your social media manager should also have a strategy in place for interacting with the audience on Facebook.
71% of customers are likely to recommend a company that responds to them quickly on social media.
People now trust social media more, they seek for approvals of people via social media. 99% of Gen Z and Millennials rely on social media and online reviews while selecting a restaurant.
Reaching your audience at the right time at the right place is very important and Facebook marketing will help you do that.
Here is a foolproof plan for Facebook Marketing for restaurants
Start with your audience
What is your niche? What are your ideal customers?
Answering these questions before you start thinking about marketing for your restaurant or cafe. In restaurant management, your first goal should be identifying what and who you sell.
Use the most-favored method of creating buyer personas or take surveys of your existing visitors. This helps you understand their behavior, demographics, and lifestyle pattern.
By understanding your audience, you’re at an advantage since you know how they’ll react to your content.
A new term that is floating around is ‘Warm Audience’.
A warm audience is a group of people who have previously interacted with your Facebook page. It includes people who have commented on your stories or posts but haven’t visited your restaurant.
As a marketer, it is important for you to convert these warm audiences into your walk-in customers. Engage them with discount policies, offer marketing or free giveaways.
Create interesting and unique restaurant marketing campaigns
The secret to your success on Facebook lies in the creativity of your campaigns. To create interesting and unique restaurant marketing campaigns, consider utilizing various strategies such as eye-catching visuals, interactive contests, and enticing offers. Additionally, schedule Facebook group posts to engage with the target audience consistently, sharing updates on new menu items, exclusive discounts, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and interactive polls to build a loyal customer base.
Here are some points that you should take care of while ideating campaigns for your restaurant’s Facebook page:
- Use Foodgasm-ic pictures
Marketing for your restaurant or cafe starts with pictures that make your audience hungry. For that, you need to have some really good photos of your dishes ready at hand.
Don’t try to cut the costs and do it yourself. Hire a professional food photographer and have them click and edit your food photos.
Bonus tip: Ask some of your customers if they don’t mind having their picture taken when they are enjoying their food. Real people greatly influence other people’s choices.
- Lure your audience with offers
By keeping regular offers/discounts on your food menu, you’re providing your audience with a reason to celebrate at your restaurant.
Be careful with discounts though. If you become a brand known for discounts, regular pricing will drop sales because everyone will just be waiting for the next sale. - Make use of holidays
Post interesting content during the holiday season. It is during these periods that people want to indulge in some extra luxury. - Run a Loyalty Program
In the restaurant business, loyalty of the customer is an absolute must because you want people to keep coming back. To make that happen, you need to reward their loyalty.
Set up a loyalty reward program where you reward your most loyal customers with points. Your customers can later redeem those points for free dishes. - Run online contests
Use online contests like ‘#tag this picture & get a free mocktail’ or ‘share with a friend & tag us to get 10% off
Such things work, these things won’t cost you much and will generate huge profits for you.
Engage with your followers
You can get the most out of your Facebook marketing by talking to your audience.
Engaging with people on Facebook will generate walk-ins to your restaurant (which your primary motive).
Ask interesting questions to your audience. Use Facebook stories to ask engaging questions related to cuisine, food, culture, or your audience’s experience.
Respond to the audience’s feedback (even if it is negative). It is important to appreciate your audience for taking the time to review your service on Facebook.
Recommended Read: How To Schedule Posts on Facebook Groups Effectively
Offer something different – Share recipes
This one of the most innovative ideas that every restaurant marketer should follow.
You know why people come to you. Because they can’t cook those dishes at home. What if we tell you that sharing recipes a part of your marketing for restaurants?
By sharing a couple of recipes from your menu, you will create a personal relationship with your audience online.
They will love it when they will find the recipes for their favorite dishes from your menu.
You can also give them some tips on the problems which they face in their daily routine.
These tips will make the audience feel that you are concerned about them. You can even share the videos from your kitchen & chef explaining the recipe.
You can always ask your audience for a picture of their own version of the dish and share it on Facebook.
Marketing for restaurant using Facebook ads
Marketing for restaurants and cafes is not complete without paid ads. They allow you to reach out to your potential audience at a fraction of the cost of billboards or Newspaper Ads.
Facebook ads have the most astounding reach when it comes to online advertising.
Before starting with your ad, you need to finalize your goal/objective for opting for Facebook Advertising.
Do you want more traffic on your page?
Do you want people to engage with your post?
Or do you want more leads for your restaurant?
After deciding a goal for your Facebook Ad, next you need to work on selecting the audience. Select an audience for your ad campaign by considering the demographics, interests, and behaviors.
You can also consider the use of a custom audience by uploading the database of your regular offline customers.
While creating your audience, you can target your ads to be seen to the people belonging to a particular location or people whom you would like to be your future customers.
Don’t think much, attract new audiences to your Restaurant Facebook page with Facebook Ads.
Plan in Advance and Schedule posts
Social media marketing is a full-time job, you need to make efforts to connect and interact with your audience constantly.
You need to plan your social media campaign in advance so that you can schedule them. Marketing for a restaurant and cafe depends a lot on managing the social media campaign. A well-planned and executed campaign & engaging business hashtags will bring you new leads.
Scheduling your posts will lessen your task and make your work easier.
You can schedule the post on Facebook or you can use RecurPost which will help you to automatically post at the right time and with advanced features such as recycling your evergreen content, making it one of the most trustworthy free Hootsuite Alternatives & oneup alternatives available in the market.
Marketing for restaurant events on Facebook
Every restaurant organizes events. To promote your event to a wider audience, you should be promoting it through Facebook. Try creating an event page and inviting your friends and customers to attend the event. Regular gigs, musical nights at your bar, or Easter Day Celebrations need to be showcased on your Facebook page and stories.
It provides a chance to show your restaurant’s culture, vibe, and feel.
Go live on Facebook
Yes, you heard me right, go live on Facebook.
Facebook’s live feature has an astounding reach and it lets you interact with your audience in real-time.
Since being live offers your viewers a real-time experience, it is significantly more engaging because of its realness i.e. without the use of any edits or filters.
One great example would be to go live when the chef is cooking or when a great event is taking place at your restaurant. You can answer people’s questions, get answers to your questions. It will be fun for you & your audience.
The RecurPost supports restaurant marketing in addition to Facebook
RecurPost helps you in driving more traffic to your site by scheduling posts on multiple channels targeting the right audience and posting at the best time.
You can schedule Instagram posts to engage your audience with entertaining posts. It is possible to post on your profiles, pages, and groups on Facebook. You can post on your personal and business profiles on your Instagram account.
You can schedule tweets with RecurPost by creating variations. RecurPost enables you to schedule LinkedIn posts on your personal and business pages and start networking with global leaders in your industry.
RecurPost is the perfect Pinterest scheduler for you if you’re big on visual marketing. It also allows you to schedule Google My Business posts with CTAs of your choice, which helps improve your business ranking on google.
Don’t miss the opportunity!
Being omnipresent in the highly competitive restaurant industry is indeed of utmost importance to restaurant marketers today.
Facebook has the highest number of users when compared to any social media platform. It is imperative to have a foolproof plan of marketing for restaurants for Facebook.
I am sure this simple plan for Facebook marketing for restaurants would be a great help to you.
Grab the eye-balls on Facebook by creating outstanding content if you don’t want to lose your customers to your competitor.
Get started and build some loyal fans for your restaurant on Facebook!
Debbie Moran is a Digital marketing strategist with 5+ years of experience producing advertising for brands and helping leaders showcase their brand to the correct audience. She has been a part of RecurPost since 2019 and handles all the activities required to grow our brand’s online presence.