When it comes to online marketing for restaurants, many businesses believe that social media is the key. However, despite its popularity, social media doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, it can sometimes be the opposite. Here are some common mistakes that restaurateurs make and why you should avoid them.
Putting All Your Eggs In One Basket
If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of time, you know that we often criticise traditional marketing methods. We think that these days, you should only focus on the channels and metrics that work for you.
As a restaurateur looking to optimise marketing costs and ensure the highest return on investment, you should therefore spread your efforts across different channels and platforms. Why? Well, it’s easy enough to blast out a press release and spend a few thousand dollars on a social media campaign. Unfortunately, these efforts usually don’t produce the results that you’re looking for. Instead, they serve to fill your social media newsfeed.
If you want to succeed in the restaurant industry, you need to develop a multi-channel marketing strategy. This way, you can ensure that your marketing dollars are well spent and that you’re seeing the results that you want to see.
Ignoring Online Reviews
As a business owner or manager, you’re naturally inclined to want to improve your restaurant’s Yelp rating. After all, higher ratings imply that your restaurant is a better place and more customers will be attracted to it. Naturally, you’ll want to ensure that your customers have a positive experience when they visit your establishment.
While it’s certainly beneficial to improve your Yelp rating as much as possible, you should never try to manipulate it. This is because, ultimately, Yelp is a neutral party that reviews your restaurant based on the information that they have about you. In other words, there’s no way that you can boost your Yelp rating by paying Yelp to promote your restaurant.
Underestimating The Power Of Email
With the ever-changing nature of marketing techniques, it’s important to keep up with the times. While social media is one of the most popular platforms among consumers, it’s also one of the most ineffective when used for marketing. This is because, traditionally, most people get their news from social media. As a result, your tweets and Facebook posts may not reach your target audience.
However, one of the most effective ways of getting the word out there about your restaurant is through email marketing. Why? It’s simple. Most people check their email regularly, so the likelihood of them seeing your press release is high. And when they do see it, they’ll probably click on the link and be brought to your website. From there, they can either book a table at your restaurant or make a purchase.
If you’re interested in boosting the effectiveness of your email marketing, you can take advantage of a tactic known as content curation. Essentially, this is the act of creating themed email newsletters that summarize news stories and engaging articles from around the web. By doing this, you can ensure that your emails are chock-full of useful information. And, as a result, your clients are more likely to engage with your emails and potentially visit your restaurant.
Not Developing A Plan B
When you have a plan that you think will work, you’ll usually follow it to the tee. This is why many businesses fall into the trap of over-optimising in planning their social media campaigns.
The problem is that any plan that you might create for social media marketing will probably work. At least, it will to some extent. After all, you can’t control how others will utilize the platform or what they’ll say about your restaurant. Ultimately, this will determine the success or failure of your efforts.
For these reasons, it’s important to have a backup plan in case your first plan doesn’t work out. Otherwise, you’ll be forced to start from scratch again. Worse still, you’ll lose a lot of money and effort in the process.
Luckily, you can always rely on Plan B. And, as a business owner, you should be developing a plan C and D just in case plan A fails. Otherwise, you may be in for a lot of heartache.
Not Testing Different Marketing Channels
The restaurant industry is constantly changing and evolving, and online marketing techniques are changing too. With more and more people turning to the internet for information, it’s important to keep up with the times and ensure that your marketing dollars are going to the most useful channels.
In addition to this, many businesses get stuck in a rut with regards to their marketing channels. After all, it can be quite difficult to constantly change the way that you’re doing things. For this reason, it may be a good idea to try out different marketing channels in order to see which ones work best for your restaurant.
Therefore, instead of just focusing on one channel and assuming that it’ll bring in the customers, try out different methods and platforms. This way, you can discover which ones generate the best results for your restaurant and, as a result, reduce your costs and increase your profit.
Ultimately, the success of your online marketing campaign depends on you. More so, it depends on whether or not you’re doing everything that you need to do in order to succeed. While traditional marketing methods can still be highly effective, you should never assume that these will bring in the customers for your restaurant. Instead, you need to discover the metrics that work for you and then find a way to reach your target audience.