At the present time, are you struggling to obtain new restaurant customers? Perhaps you’re wondering why your loyal customers are no longer making an appearance. Don’t fret. I am going to introduce to you some generalities in digital marketing for your restaurant in 2021.
All things considered, 2020 has been a year like no other. The acceleration of technological advancements has moved the needle on things like curbside, QR, and yes, digital marketing. Quite literally, there’s been a huge shift from how restaurants attracted customers in the time prior to the pandemic. The secret sauce is no longer a secret. At least, it can’t be if you’re wanting to survive in the restaurant space. If you’re like me, you’re constantly wanting to learn ways to attract loyal customers, stay 10 steps ahead of your competition, and strengthen your restaurant backbone. Stay ahead-of-the-game. Digitizing your restaurant may seem monstrous, but with the right tips and tricks, you’ll be attracting new and loyal customers in no-time.
Digital Marketing 101
Invest in a Digital Marketing Strategy
First, you want to have a plan; a digital marketing strategy. This will vary from restaurant to restaurant. The important thing to keep in mind is what is going to be good for your business. Digital marketing is a great way to promote your product and services using the internet, computer, mobile phones, and other platforms. Likely, you’re in the know-how and can see that now more than ever the importance of health and safety as it relates to customer retention. In sum, if you don’t have a digital marketing strategy, now is the time to devise one.
Fun fact: 47% of business owners operate digital marketing on their own. 50% of those owners only spend about 2 hours a week on marketing efforts. And, 61% of marketing professionals say the number one challenge is lead conversion.
Know Who You Want to Target
Choose a Target Audience
Equally important, you want to attract consumers who will benefit from your product and services. This is called your target audience. Thus, knowing the correct audience to target will organically lead them down the proverbial funnel. Being that you are a pizzeria located in New York City, you wouldn’t want to target those in the beauty product industry. Think about management. Narrowing your target audience will really help in the overall management of your marketing strategy. To that, the more you know about your consumers (target audience), the better. Digital marketing for your restaurant in 2021 has changed, and for the better.
Precision Demographics for Targeting
- Age of consumers you want to attract
- Location – in relation to your restaurant
- Income level – if you’re a five-star Michelin restaurant, you likely won’t want to attract low-income groups.
The above are just a few examples of demographics one considers when thinking about their target audience. The perfect customer does exist, you just have to put in the effort to find and attract them. You want to sell to the customer that will consume your product and services. Even more than that, you want them to become repeat customers (loyal customers).
The Consumer Knows Best
In any case, you really need to think about your customer. Why would they come to your restaurant? Ask any restaurant out there, and they will all say that a key part of branding and marketing for your restaurant, is giving your consumers what they want. If you are paying attention, you should be able to observe what your customers like and dislike. Don’t be afraid to connect with your customers. Ask them directly. What do they like?
Get a Website
Today, driving traffic to an optimized website is one of the most important things in digital marketing. If you do not have a website, you are killing your success. You need space to convert your customers. From thinking about being a customer to being an actual customer. A uniquely designed website will give you a competitive advantage in the market place. When creating a website, make sure you walk-the-walk. Your website should align with your brand; product and services. Don’t overshoot your USP (unique selling proposition). Make sure whatever your USP is, you deliver. If you promote fresh ingredients, and clearly the ingredients are not. Congrats, you just broke a promise and lost a customer. You get what you give. Period.
Your Website is Your Story
Your website is your craft. Think of it as a way to attract your customers and “trap” them in a compelling way. A well-crafted website will deliver results. You want to drive as much traffic to your website as possible. Doing so will give you multiple chances to grab data to use to your advantage. Any restaurant owner who says a website is not important, struggles. Especially now, more than ever, and with the pandemic, thousands of visitors are being driven to websites.
Not only is a website great for traffic, but search engines like Google work extremely hard to make you appear in their results. Therefore, if you do not exist on the WWW (world wide web), good luck. Every bit of content matters. Not just any content; saucy content. You want content that is relevant, unique, and you want a lot of it. Having a website is one place to have content for Google to recognize. You can collect valuable data like user behavior, pages with the most views, drop off rate, time of high traffic, time with the lowest traffic, location of the user, and so much more. These are all areas you can analyze to then improve upon your site and how you market to your audience. The proof is in the data.
Email Marketing
Do you like knowing who your customers are? You should. Knowing who is coming to your website places you at an advantage. If you use nifty plugins to grab the attention of a new user before they leave your page, or while they are browsing your content, you can take that bit of information and store it in a CRM. Using features like abandonment forms, simple contact forms, or pop-ups are a great way to collect identifiers like first name, last name, and email.
Once you’ve collected the information you’ve asked for, use it. Solicit away. Setup marketing campaigns and email campaigns all with the hopefully long and extended list of contacts you’ve acquired through your website. Not to mention, it’s fun!
Make it personal. If you really want to attract loyal customers, know them by name not their email. Your goal should be to make your communications personal, because that is what customers really like. They don’t want to be email blasted messages that have no real meaning and that don’t give them a feeling of belonging. You want to belong, don’t you? Well, your customers do too.
Conclusion
I hope that these generalities on digital marketing for your restaurant in 2021 will help to improve your restaurant. Thank you for reading. Also, if you find this blog to be useful, please consider sharing it with a friend! Whether you’re a veteran in the field of digital marketing or a fresh-out-of-the-box newbie, having a digital marketing strategy will set you up for success. Your audience should be clear and you should focus on what they truly want. One way to figure this out is by having a unique website to create a multitude of funnels. Don’t cut off your customers. Create arms for customers to grab onto. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. You just need to pave the roads for truckloads of customers.
Make the profit you want. Get technical by creating a digital marketing strategy for your restaurant going into 2021.
Cheers.
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