You’d assume that as a restaurant, your business’s success predominately comes down to producing something that tastes good. This is something we’ve heard quite often in our experience as a specialist food and drink marketing agency. Don’t get us wrong, it’s certainly a key component, just as is ensuring your customers have a great experience. Unfortunately, however, this just isn’t enough nowadays to ensure your business stands out from the crowd.
If you really want to see your business grow and flourish, marketing it effectively should be your top priority. With the right approach, you’ll be getting those bookings in quicker than ever before. Take the wrong one, however, and there’s a strong chance you’ll end up worse off than when you started. Considering this, where should I begin? What components of marketing will work best for my business? These are questions we get all the time, so our VerriBerri team prepared this guide to answer them!
Why Does My Restaurant Need to Be Marketing Itself?
Can you imagine walking down the street and picking a restaurant to eat in without doing any prior research? I don’t know about you, but I certainly couldn’t! Essentially, I want to know everything about it before even setting foot inside. I’m not alone either. In fact, a recent survey found that 77% of customers do the same thing before dining in. Of this figure, nearly 70% have been discouraged from visiting a restaurant because of its online presence. A customer’s perception of your restaurant is the defining factor between long-term success and struggling to stay open. A strong marketing strategy is the perfect way of achieving the former, whilst avoiding the latter.
What Services Does our Food and Drink Marketing Agency Offer?
When it comes to marketing your restaurant, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach that is guaranteed to work. Every brand is unique, so the strategy that works best for you will differ from your competitor down the street. That being said, some of the services we can help you with include:
Social Media
There’s no doubting that social media is a must have for every business, and restaurants are no exception to this. Not having an online presence significantly limits your brand’s awareness, interest, and engagement with existing and potential customers. After all, with an estimated 4.9 billion users, there is no greater opportunity for exposure than social media.
This doesn’t mean that every social media platform will be beneficial for you, however. What’s most important is that you are where your customers are. If they’re on Instagram, create an Instagram account. If they’re on some platform you’ve never even heard of, create an account on there too. As a specialist food and drink marketing agency, we’ve found the greatest success to be on Facebook and Instagram.
What’s more, it’s not enough to just have an online presence. Any content you put out must be engaging, creative, and tailored specifically towards your target audience. Maintaining this level of consistency, however, can be challenging for many restaurants owners, with so much on their plates already (if you pardon the pun!) If you’re struggling to devote the necessary time to this, contacting an agency like VerriBerri can help alleviate this pressure.
Public Relations (PR)
How your restaurant is perceived in the public eye is just as important as the actual service it provides. Just think of how far people travel to dine at the top London restaurants, based solely off their reputation. Why should that be any different for your own? It might take some time, but so long as you have the food and experience nailed, it’s entirely possible! Painting your brand in a positive light with PR can help you achieve this dream.
But what actually is PR? We’ve all heard the term at some point. Most people associate it with protecting the image and reputation of businesses and celebrities. But PR is so much more than that. There are so many different approaches that can be taken, including traditional press coverage, link-building, and influencer marketing. But is PR worth the investment, and more importantly, the risk? By utilising our extensive portfolio of media and influencer connections, we can paint your restaurant in the best light possible. What’s more, at VerriBerri – our specialist food and drink marketing agency – we offer a PR guarantee. This means that no matter what happens, we will always deliver the results that you deserve, no questions asked!
Influencer Marketing
Whilst influencer marketing technically comes under the remit of PR, we thought it is deserving of its own section. For the majority of restaurants, word of mouth plays a significant role in determining their success. Whilst this used to come solely from our friends and families, nowadays, people are consulting social media influencers for recommendations. In fact, over 70% of customers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media referral. People trust the opinions of these individuals. They find them to be more authentic and reliable than a business’s typical marketing efforts. Because of this, influencers have become the ideal tool for boosting your restaurant’s awareness and swaying potential customers’ decisions.
SEO
Remember that we mentioned many consumers look online before dining in a restaurant? First, they have to be able to find it and good luck with that if you’ve never invested time into SEO! This is essentially a technique used by brands to improve their Google ranking for specific terms relevant to themselves. For your restaurant, these may include “restaurant near me,” “oriental buffet,” or “pizzeria,” as a few examples. If your brand is not amongst the first page of results for these terms, you’re significantly hindering your visibility. If you’re interested in reading more about SEO, you can do so by clicking here.
Contact Us
Whether you know what area of marketing you need help with, or are completely in the dark, we can help! To get in touch with our specialist food and drink marketing agency, click here. Alternatively, give us a call today on 01376 386 850.