Social Media is enabling marketing to be easier, cheaper, and much more direct and targeted for all businesses but specifically for Restaurants and businesses that are essentially built around developing a customer base that likes them and are receptive to coming back to them to buy again....the task for marketing is to get them to come back, to come back more often, and to spend more money.
Many restaurants (particularly when takings may be down during a recession) have learnt to market themselves and advertise as its essential to 'spreading the word' and getting customers, however, many restaurants advertise in local media - lifestyle magazines, newspapers, etc - as well as leaflet drops, and so on, however, that rarely connects with your target market and therefore is largely wasteful.
Advertising in local media such as this is primarily targeting new customers and trying to get new customers to come and visit your restaurant - thats not the best spend of your marketing budget and will return a very poor return on investment - its simply not targeted at what should be your target market for your advertising to speak to. A restaurant needs to build a customer base and followers, a customer community of customers who have been to your restaurant already, they like the food, like the atmosphere, etc, and will come again ...consequently a restaurant needs to concentrate on marketing to these customers, getting them to come again and spend more.....consequently this brings in new customers as happy, loyal, restaurant customers are your best 'word of mouth' marketing tool, and 'word of mouth' is the best form of marketing. Full stop.
Therefore, restaurant marketing is easy! Its all about Database Marketing - grow a customer database and target your marketing specifically to them, try to drag more out of them, and then let them spread the word to new customers - because they will.
A customer who likes a restaurant is a great ambassador. They are very receptive to your marketing, they like you, they want to know what else they can get out of their relationship with you...consequently they will provide you with their details to be kept informed of whats going on with you, your company, your brand...they will sign up to your newsletter, they will read your marketing material, they will join your Facebook group...they will want to to add your 'restaurant' to their 'friends' on Facebook...they want to hear more from you.
Database marketing is embracing this understanding and making every penny of your marketing and advertising budget work, no waste. Now with the emergence of Social Media and Social Networking and the establishment of Social Media Marketing it is now much easier and accessible for restaurant of any size to communicate tangibly and affordably with a customer database.
How Can A Restaurant Use Facebook?
Facebook is the market leading Social Networking Site with now over 300,000,000 users worldwide (many of them have been in your restaurant!), now spanning the generations (the biggest growth area in 2009 being the over 55yr age group - 523% increase).
As well as individuals setting up personal profiles a company can set-up a business profile - a 'Facebook Fansite'. Firstly you want as many 'fans' as possible to join your fansite as this is your customer database. Their are several ways to do this;
Invite customers whom email addresses that you have to join your fansite by simply putting their email address into the 'search' bar on any facebook page and then sending them invite - if they are on Facebook and have used that email address on their profile details page then it will bring them up. Likewise you can search for them through the usual methods, ie, their name and location, and then invite them.
You can add completely new customers who don't even know you but fit your target customer profile by using facebook advertising to design a simple advert for your company facebook fansite which will then display itself alongside the pages of Facebook users fitting your facebook profile. Remember that facebook is a world of raw data, however precise your target market your advert can be finally targeted - 30-40yrs, sheffield, likes eating out, etc, etc.
You should also promote the fact that you have a Facebook fansite in your other advertising, on your website (with a link to your Facebook page) and also through general initiatives in your restaurant, ie, when paying ask customers if they are on Facebook, if they are then give them your facebook address on a feedback card (or similar) and ask them to join your fansite to receive the latest information on you and special offers for your Facebook Fansite Fans - or take their details and invite them on line.
Basically, integrate into your day to day marketing and operational, customer-interaction, activities and work to expand and grow your Facebook Fansite customer Fan base. You will also find that your fan base will grow organically as if person Y joins your group, all their personal profile friends see that they have done through their homepage notifications, and a percentage of them will follow suit - a numbers game.
You can send out pictures, text, and video to all your Facebook Fansite 'Fans' instantly. For example, 'two for one desert offer this coming Thusrday night, book now..', as a 'status update' will then be posted not only on your restaurant profile homepage but also posted on the 'wall' of every single member of your Facebook Fansite for all your 'fans' to see as they logon to their facebook account that day (82% of Facebook users check Facebook at least once a day)..thats direct, targeted marketing that lands infront of the right audience everytime.
Upload a couple of pictures of the restaurant/staff/dishes and a paragraph or two of text and post this to your Restaurants Facebook Fansite and this forms effectively a 'mini press release' which once again, will be posted not only to your profile page but also straight infront of your target customers. You can also upload videos with the same coverage across all your fans content, as well as blog entries, and countless applications.
For example:
Last Thursday evening Willows was very proud to hold the North Manchester Business Network business networking meeting for September in our new function room. The meeting was attended by more than 60 local business people from a wide variety of businesses throughout the city who were able to network informally with each other - develop new contacts, sales, and relationships.
The new function room held up well on this its first official outing with the flexible format being perfect as the meeting was split into 'open networking' and a more formal 20-min presentation with both being able to be up and ready and the attendees could easily flip between the two. We served a light buffet throughout the three hour event and all seemed to go down very well with many attendees choosing to stay on a little later and moving on into the main bar for a few more 'casual' hours of networking.
How Can A Restaurant Use YouTube?
YouTube is the worlds second largest search engine with over 100,000,000 videos now uploaded, in 2006 26% watched videos regularly online, in 2008 it was 86%.....people now search YouTube as an information source and are now used to watching videos online - TV advertising is in vast decline?
Your Restaurant can have its own YouTube channel. Here you can host videos about your restaurant for both your customer base to watch and engage with you more, find out further information, as well as for you to engage with new customers - many people find brands and companies now for the first time through YouTube videos.
Users are used to viewing both amateur footage as well as professional videos through the same websites such as YouTube and your videos could be a combination of a video introduction to your restaurant and your staff, ideas, etc, and a great idea for restaurants is to develop a 'subscription' customer base following your channel on YouTube by adding something along the lines of a 'recipe of the week' (or something like that - use your imagination) which users would soon look out for and would showcase your restaurant.
Remember that Social Media and Networking is not about 'selling' and you should consistently review to make sure you are subtly marketing and sharing information and knowledge as opposed to selling, ie, a 'recipe of the week' could be a video of your head chef preparing a dish, providing the recipe and procedure to follow effectively free of charge to your customers - but it is your chef, in your restaurant, on your YouTube Channel - they may try to make the dish themselves but they will also want to try it in your restaurant.
YouTube videos are very 'embed-able', ie, they are not just used on YouTube, they can be spread very wide across your social media platform - facebook, Twitter, Blogs, and so on, and you should do as this not only 'spreads the word' wider but if it links back to your website, it will help to raise your website in search engine searches.
How Can A Restaurant Use Twitter?
At first many people don't get Twitter and its takes them a while (a very short while) to understand what a fantastic communication medium Twitter is and what a fantastic marketing tool Twitter and its associated platforms are.
Twitter is a 'micro blogging' service that really asks one question - what are you doing now? Users answer this question in no more than 140 characters and other users 'follow' each other. People who 'follow' you will be kept bang uptodate with what you are doing, they feel involved and in a relationship with each other, and they can interact by responding to the 'tweets' of their followers.
You get 'followers' by inviting people you already know, inviting people to find you, and by utilising some of the website and applications that has sprung up around Twitter to support the vast number of interactions and information that it produces.
The protocol tends to be that if you follow somebody they will 'follow' you back. Using applications such as www.tweepsearch.com' you can search for users based on what the have entered in their bio, ie, sheffield, food, etc?
Once again, you can send one simple message to all your followers instantly.
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