Are you looking to increase your restaurant’s reach?
With over 1 million restaurant locations in the USA, you’re going to need all the help you can get to get word of your restaurant out there. Failing to market your restaurant only means that not as many people will visit and it will get lost to irrelevance. This is then a surefire way for you to go bankrupt before long.
What’s great is that it’s easy to market your business! You only need to have the best restaurant marketing ideas to let people know and to keep them coming back. In this guide, we’ll be using Instagram as the primary platform.
This is because it has over one billion active users, and it’s easy to market any brand there. Read on to learn how you can market your restaurant on Instagram.
Entice Food Bloggers
The first thing you should always do when you have a restaurant you need to market is to approach food bloggers. There are many of them on the platform, and you can find them with ease. What makes it important to get them in your restaurants is because they have lots of followers on their account.
Getting them to eat in your restaurant is a surefire way to put your brand on the radar. It won’t be long before their followers will check out the place for themselves. This means that your restaurant has a chance to bring in new customers who are on the platform, increasing the chances that they post about your business.
What’s great with food bloggers is that they’re easy to approach. You only need to send them a message on the platform to reach out to them. Some may ask for compensation in exchange, while others may do it for free.
Regardless, you will want to treat them with the best your restaurant has to offer. Their opinions on the food, service, and ambiance will hold the weight of a thousand customers for their followers.
Feature the Most Popular Items on the Menu
A great way to market your restaurant is to show people on Instagram what you have to offer. What better way to do this than by trusting your current customers and featuring the dish the majority keep ordering. It’s the most popular dish for a reason, after all.
When featuring it on a post, be sure to write something about it to entice people. A great way to write a description would be to tease them with a few facts. Describe what it tastes like, but don’t give out too much information.
This way, they will have to try them out for themselves to sate their curiosity. You should also make sure that your post about the food looks attractive. People on Instagram spend their time browsing through different posts by other businesses.
You’ll need to step up your game to be on par or superior to their posts. This is important if you don’t want potential customers to look at you as an unprofessional on the platform.
Introduce New and Creative Food Items
A great way to increase the engagement a post gets is to feature new additions on the menu. People are always looking for new experiences and products. This is more effective for restaurants since it means that customers will have a new dish to eat.
Once you show them that there’s a new item on the menu, you can expect a small surge in customers in the days to come. They will come to try the new dish before they give their verdict. This also makes it important to make the new dish distinguishable from others.
People don’t want to get hyped up over a dish that only has small revisions from other dishes. They will want a new dish that has a unique flavor profile and is completely different from everything else on the current menu.
Doing this is a great way to refresh your customer’s view of the menu. It also shows that you’re an active business. It’s a great way to reel in new customers since they look for innovative restaurants to give them a break from the regular food they see.
Feature Customer Posts
If you want to increase your engagement with your customers, feature their posts about your restaurant. This is a great way to show that you care about your customers, helping form your brand’s identity. It also makes you look more approachable and friendlier to customers.
When doing this, you should first ask if you can use the image that they posted on Instagram. This is important because some people take issue if their post gets used by others. Once they give the signal, you can feature the image and post on your restaurant’s account.
You can also reward those who make a good post about your restaurant. A great way to do this is to give them a discount the next time they visit. You can do this by commenting on their post to let them know about it.
Promote Your Restaurant Through Hashtags
A feature that Instagram makes a lot of use is the hashtag feature. You can use this to promote your restaurant and increase your reach.
Using hashtags allows you to make any post you make reach more people. Make sure that the hashtags you use will have meaning and won’t confuse the people who see them.
There are two ways for you to incorporate hashtags into your posts. The first way is to create an original hashtag for restaurant marketing. Doing this allows you to create a catchy hashtag to promote your business.
This allows your followers and customer to reference your restaurants in their posts with ease. It’s a great way to go viral, especially if your hashtag is truly catchy.
Another way to use hashtags is to incorporate trending ones into your post. Make sure to do your research before using the hashtag you want to use. This is to make sure that it’s relevant to your business and doesn’t have another meaning behind it.
Use the Live and Stories Feature
There are other features that you can use on Instagram to promote your restaurant. You can also use the stories feature to create posts that will engage your customers. Stories are short videos that will only last 24 hours.
You can use this feature to your benefit by creating some stories about your restaurant. A good idea will be to create a behind-the-scenes video for your followers to see. A trip behind the scenes is always a treat since most people don’t know how things go in the industry.
Another feature is the live video streaming feature that the platform has. This is a great way for you to showcase events and holidays to customers who aren’t in the venue. It’s also a great way to show customers that you can also host their next event.
Do Promotional Giveaways to Increase Engagement
Do you want to go viral on the platform? A great way is to create a promotional giveaway and have your customers participate in it. You can do this by giving a discount if your followers leave a like and comment below.
This is also a surefire way to create an effective marketing strategy. This is because people will then comment and like the post.
This will make the post generate more of what the Instagram algorithm likes. Doing this will make it possible that the post will become featured on Instagram. It’s a surefire way to generate buzz surrounding your restaurant and new customers.
Celebrate Restaurant Milestones
Among the rising restaurant marketing trends, one revolves around the celebration of milestones. This makes you include your followers in an important event like the nth customer of your restaurant or such.
You can also celebrate the anniversary of your restaurant when doing this. What’s important is that you make the customers feel involved in what you’re doing. You need to do this if you want your restaurant to survive.
You can also do this to celebrate the birthdays of your employees. This makes it a surefire way to gain the loyalty of your customers and your employees.
Make Your Restaurant Instragam-Worthy
One way to succeed in marketing your restaurant is to make your customers do it for you. For the platform, you need to make your restaurant as “Instagram-worthy” as possible.
Make everything from the food, the background, and even the tables Instagram-worthy. Doing this ensures that people will want to take pictures around your restaurant. The more pictures they take, the more they will upload on their profiles.
Try These Restaurant Marketing Ideas Today
Keep your restaurant from becoming irrelevant by using these restaurant marketing ideas. With these ideas, your restaurant is one step closer to becoming the trendiest one in your area. Generate customers and market your brand now!
Do you need help with your marketing campaign? Marketing a restaurant needs lots more attention than most marketing campaigns because you need to lure in customers with promises and deliver on them when they arrive. Contact us here, and we’ll get in touch with you as soon as we can!