The Top 5 Ways to Do Better Restaurant Marketing
Here in New Orleans, we love food. And at Online Optimism, we love marketing food. Ok, and eating it too. But we often hear from owners and managers that they just don’t know where to start. So here’s our five best tips for improving your New Orleans Restaurant’s marketing!
1. High Quality Images
The closest thing to tasting food, is seeing it, because seeing food can also activate salivary glands, which aid in the beginning of digestion. Showing pictures of your delicious, and beautiful foods, will actually make people hungry for your food. Consider hiring a professional photographer, or using some Apps to enhance your photo skills. Now if we could only transmit smells through the internet…
2. Get Friendly With Yelp
We’re very aware – restaurant owners have a love/hate relationship with this, the biggest of the local directories. But for your organization’s sake, just learn to love it. Yelp allows you to post photos, which is the #1 essential restaurant marketing tool. It also allows restaurants to post menus, hours, location, offer deals and more!
Finally, and most importantly, it’s trusted by consumers. So you should at least pretend to trust it too.
3. Loyalty Programs
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? The principal states that 20% of your customers contribute to 80% of business. Therefore, identifying, rewarding, and retaining those super user customers is essential.
4. Open Table
Although similar to Yelp, Open Table has a very different user experience. While Yelp is mainly for browsing through restaurants, Open Table acts as a middleman to actually book your experiences. It is more akin to a concierge service than a browsing device. It’s great for restaurant owners though, because rather than a user getting directions to your restaurant, they actually make a reservation – it’s one step further on the customer funnel.
5. Instagram
To put it simply, Instagram is the social network for images. Being a foodie is common on Instagram, and not only is Instagram the central place for restaurants to share their own images, but a place for customers, or users to snap their own impromptu photos, which reaches a network that previously restaurants had little access to. Encourage photos and hashtags at your restaurant.
Love the tips, but a little too busy to manage all this yourself? That’s why we’re here to help! Just call 504-521-6222 to get the conversation started.
Image Sources:
Yelp
