21 Mar Restaurant Marketing Mistakes to EASILY Overcome!
We want to see you succeed online, and to do so here’s a piece on common restaurant marketing mistakes. These learnings can be applied to any sort of digital marketing for caterers, home chefs, bakers, and more. If you’re here, you’ve probably already gone through our pieces on Digital marketing 101, getting social media right, and have downloaded our Digital checklist for starting out.
Common Restaurant Marketing Mistakes range from:
- Confused branding
- Low quality photographs
- Improper budgeting
- Unfocussed Business Development
- Review Responses
- and even Incomplete databases and avoiding PR!
We’ve broken down how each of these elements impact your business and ways you can overcome them too.
“89% consumers say they have researched a restaurant online before dining there”
- Brand Story
With a strong story, everything created contributes to the same message, providing customers with a unified face they can become acquainted with. Creating brand standards helps humanize and personalize a restaurant, making it more relevant or approachable for prospective and current diners. A brand promise is imperative for establishing the promise with your guests that you’re all about consistent service and delicious food
Lacking a proper promise for your brand, a well-defined personality, thought out positioning and an overall brand-story will confuse your customers and you in the long run too. People are drawn to stories, over corporations; especially when it comes to food. A well rounded approach to marketing and PR can help tell your brand’s story. Head to our piece on digital strategy for your food business for more details on how to get started on this.
Unclear photographs:
While your brand or story is unique to you, for people searching or stumbling across your digital presence- pictures and videos are the starting point.
Here are a few things to keep in mind
- Try and stay away from stock photography (even if necessary).
- Do consult a professional photographer for food and location photography,
- Find and partner with a budding enthusiast (family or friend)
- Learn to maximise reach with the same (or same series) of shots
- Update your photos regularly
Head to our piece on food photography for your food business and discover how you can make a great, lasting impact even when on a budget.
- Budgeting for Marketing:
To promote and bring success to your efforts, a budget must be allotted to help reach your ideal potential customer. One of the more common marketing mistakes when promoting a restaurant is to not provide a suitable amount of money for targeted advertising. While organic reach can be good in cases; the fact is – it can take a very long time to steadily convert tables and orders for a food business. This has more to do with ever changing algorithms and platforms monetising more and more than it does with the great content you or your team is putting out.
The amount required for marketing will be different for different types of cuisines, restaurant or delivery styles, etc.
When an amount is allotted for the purpose of restaurant marketing, it is to pay for targeted advertising, the digital and social marketing teams, and any resources involved in strategy or overseeing processes. Marketing teams usually require skills such as Digital Marketing Manager, Designer, Content writer, Photographer, Social media manager, and if possible even a PR manager.
If you have a reasonable budget, then you may consider hiring a marketing agency to take on your digital promotion requirements. Look for testimonials or reviews- the best way to find a team is through a referral.
Integration, Insights, and Promotion are the new Location Location Location
- Right Plan:
Right planning leads a business to success. And so, there are a few things to consider before jumping in.
Here are questions you could try and answer that may help make a plan:
- What are the components of my restaurant marketing?
- What goals can be accomplished through this marketing campaign?
- What is the season, timing, or structure to start a campaign?
- What is my PR and Traditional marketing budget?
- Which social media networks will be used?
- Who is going to run and monitor those social media accounts?
- When do we post on these social media and how often?
- How to avoid marketing mistakes when promoting your business online?
As you go thought the information and resources available on this YouTube channel, you may find answers to these questions. If you need help with putting something together or getting started, be sure to drop a comment or write to us at the earliest.
- Unfocused on Business development:
To effectively build your business, you have to keeping learning, experimenting, and executing. Consider influencers, businesses or bloggers you may partner with, look for events to be present at, and make a note of digital aggregators imperative to list with as well. Further, start thinking of ways to brand merchandise and even additional partnerships for co-branding opportunities.
If your forte is just the food or a part of the entire process, fantastic! Focus on that- learn from what flavours work, what is seasonal, and even the trends that can impact your industry. Business development is a function that exists across the entire value chain when it comes to food.
- Responding to Reviews:
Giving your customers adequate and timely attention is another key tool which makes any business successful. Therefore, whether a startup or a pro restaurateur, avoid the blunder of not answering your customers feedback or comments. Whether Positive or Negative.
Addressing customers builds a good rapport, helps you learn, and can help to improve your food business on the whole. Hire someone or have a schedule to check your platforms and the various ways people can reach you (Mentions, tags, inbox, posts, etc.).
Make sure to address your customers issues within 24 hours or respond to their comments within 48 hours. This effort will help to build a strong client chain and put your restaurant above the average.
- Measuring Results:
Figuring out which type of content gets the most attention, and what is being ignored by your audience will help you see what people most like about your food business.
This is a continuous process, and there are chances that what people love today may differ a few days, or even weeks later. It is important to try to understand the psychology of your audience; which can be done best through analysing and learning from data.
- Not Considering Positive PR:
A PR campaign done well, is subtle to say the least. If you’re a large QSR or chain, perhaps the conversation may be slightly different. Consumers across the world now say that they view traditional advertising as one sided (purely promotion), and that PR may be more trustworthy. The difference is that PR can focus on cultivating authentic articles about a restaurant, rather than relying just on self-promotion or ads.
Being featured, written, photographed or talked about by a trusted source not only makes an establishment project its best, but ideally can also help boost staff morale and helps in making the team proud of their work. Drop a comment with your experience or connect with us for any questions.
- Customer Database:
Keeping up to date customer records lets you segment your more loyal customers. If you own a physical establishment, interact with your customer face to face and talk to them. The advantages over e-commerce business are obvious- Online takes just a wee bit more effort to visualize your customer, and getting in to their psyche. Take advantage of your location!
If you can collect information on at least 10% of your customers, this may help understand your audience better. There are a host of ways to do this; you can use email campaigns, comment cards, feedback or loyalty card programs, and many other strategies. Head to our video on Customer Loyalty for more details
- ‘Cause marketing’ missed opportunity?
You can partner with a non-profit brand helping different communities or individuals. Those customers already involved with or sensitive to the cause of your choice may feel a greater affinity towards your business; and new customers appreciate brands participating in social good. Remember to execute your strategy delicately and honestly.
- Taking your competitor lightly:
If you are doing restaurant marketing and you are not concerned about your competitor, then how will you stand apart in the market?
What is competitor research? Go to their restaurant, stalk their social profiles, check their menu, taste their food, compare prices, and offers- so you can understand where your restaurant is good, at par, or needs improvement. When you know your competitor, such knowledge can be used to create more opportunities for you.
- Not having Existing customers:
If you dive in to your numbers, it may not surprise you to find that Repeat customers are the primary reason behind the restaurant’s success and generating ongoing orders. There are ways you can promote a re-visit, and at least for someone to consider coming back to you. If you want to improve your sales, then you have to focus on the needs and expectations of your customers. You can do this by asking customers what they liked about your restaurant and what they don’t. It will help to make a repetitive client chain. Our piece on Loyalty in your restaurant can help you learn the precise strategies that can work for your type of food business.
Set Your Expectations:
Business success is based on Patience and Consistency.. As a general rule of thumb, digital marketing for a restaurant or food business pays off in the long term. While you may hope it, it is unrealistic to expect to run ads straight off the bat, and expect an immediate spike in orders the next week. Whether SEO, listing on aggregators, or planning an ad strategy; appropriate and well planned milestones are great for mapping expectations.
If you’re an owner or marketer who has some suggestions or ideas to add, please do share your digital marketing for restaurant mistakes with us. If you found our resource helpful and its helped you speed ahead of the other businesses in your area, we’d love to hear from you too!