How to promote your restaurant online

In this article we are offering 20 tools for online promotion of your restaurant. You’ll learn how they work and how to incorporate them together. We’ll make a marketing plan for you, which will enable you to setup these tools in order to get your business started. We’ll help you each step of the way from where to start, what online service to choose and use, after which you’ll have a foundation to build upon. You’ll also have the option to make necessary changes whenever you need to.

As a result, you’ll have an understanding of what to do in your internet marketing plan for your business for the next 6 months.

1. Make a website.

The site is the starting point for all your online promotions. Some businesses only use Facebook page. Facebook page, of course, is needed, but it’snot enough.

What to show on the site:

• Short description of the restaurant, kitchen
• Interior and exterior photos
• Photos of your popular dishes.
• Menu
• Online reservation
• Map
• Working hours
• Buttons for social networks

2. Optimization for search phrases

Website optimization is a set of measures aimed at raising the site’s position in the search engine for results in certain queries. We are talking about internal optimization. This can be adapted on the technical settings and adjust the content to the requirements of search engine.

This is essential to ensure that Google searches for your site according to the queries you need.

This will give you visitors to the site who are looking for a restaurant in the search engines.

3. Facebook page

It’s impossible to ignore the most popular social network, when you are engaged in Internet marketing. Many people are so used to using Facebook that they do not just use it to communicate with friends, but also to learn local news, search for goods and services, search for places, organizations and businesses in the social network. Facebook is a great way to use Internet marketing but can be limiting to create a wider scope of business.

Only minimal action is necessary – to create a web page of your business. Specify the address, phone numbers, working hours, and coordinates on the map. Upload photos of the restaurant, dishes, menus, events. Keep track on any new events going on and regularly update photos of your restaurant.

On the Facebook page, you can advertise your website, and on the site – promote Facebook page. Such synergy will significantly allow you to increase your audience.

4. Google Maps

This is a free map service with marks of various places and organizations on the map. Today many people use Google Map to find restaurants, hotels, and tourist landmarks. It’s very useful if lots of your customers are tourists. Google guide is a great way to attract new customers, you just need to register details on Google Map.

You can specify the restaurant data:

• Address
• Phones
• Working hours
• Website address
• E-mail
• Photo

This is your internet marketing base. It’s a great way to get your restaurant’s online promotion started and keep you busy for a few weeks.

Strongly advice

It’s not necessary, but we strongly recommend to use them.

You can register your website anywhere, to get the target audience and start to promote paid advertising.

5. Instagram

It is the fastest growing social network, According to research 63% of Instagram users are between 18 and 34 years, with 75.7%  of them female and 24.3% male active members. It makes sense to open an Instagram account. What are the methods of promoting this social network?

• Target advertising;
• Purchase advertising in other public servers / groups;
• Stand by opinion leaders;
• Contests, sweepstakes (giveaway);
• Vampires (sfs);
• Flash mobs.
• Mass Felling
• Mislaying

Instagram is owned by Facebook, so the maintenance of advertising in Instagram and the data statistics is made in Facebook administration panel.

6. TripAdvisor

The most popular travel guide website online, you can register your business for free at tripadviser.com. And start building your customer base and reviews. Tourist are able to locate your restaurant with GPS . Features like Find me now make it easy for customer to find you.

Add your website to TripAdvisor so that customers can click on to your website and get direct information about your restaurant.

7. Registration in Listings and Directories

On the Internet, there are many popular Directories. What are these websites?

• Listings of sites, directories of organizations in your city or country
• Industry directories sites: leisure, food, tourism
• Lists of restaurants
• Travel sites and services

Most of them you can register for free and you can attract visitors to your site. If you see the statistics on the returns that you get at some sites you get a lot of visitors, you can give additional advertising on this site.

8. Twitter

We all know what  Twitter is.

Live Twitter feeds 24/7 the possibility of advertising are limitless

• Tweet engagements. Reach more people and drive conversation
• Followers. Grow your community on Twitter
• Website clicks / conversions. Send people to your site (to purchase, sign up, etc.)
• Leads on Twitter. Collect emails from people who express interest in your business

You have targeting options that help you reach more people who are likely to be interested in your restaurant. Target by usernames, Keywords, Interests, Location, Device, Gender, Language, TV conversation.

9. Foursquare

The Biggest geolocation social network designed to collect feedback.

A feature of the advertising model, Foursquare is that you pay not for views and clicks of your advert but for Check-ins at your place. Retargeting scheme is used for attracting customers: people at your area will come to your place. Or people who have already visited such places (for example some near bars or restaurants). Or those who are looking for the keywords associated with your restaurant.

10. Yelp

Very popular reviews site in the service business. In the restaurant business this site is especially popular. The Function service is almost the same as that of TripAdvisor or Foursquare. You can setup a free account to post photos and messages to customers. On Yelp, there are possibilities of paid advertising – while searching for a restaurants in your city or region, your restaurant will be on the first place in the list with a note «Ad».

11. Advertising on Google.

Google’s advertising service is called Google AdWords. A huge amount of advertising possibilities. This is the contextual advertising, where ads are shownon your queries. Text ads and banners on Google partners’ sites. Advertisement on YouTube (we’ll tell more about it later). An incredible number of features and options. If you are in internet marketing, advertising in Google is what you’ll definitely use.

12. Advertising on Facebook

We distinguish advertising on Facebook because it is an independent branch of online promotions. You can advertise your website on Facebook, even without your page.

Advertising options in Facebook are very wide. It is a common banner, which can lead to your Facebook page or your website. Advertising news and publications. In Facebook there’re many opportunities for targeting: sex, age, marital status, interests, profession, geographic location, etc. There are very good tools for advertising and statistic analysis settings.

There is the possibility of re-targeting, when visitors to your website displays advertising on Facebook.

There is also the possibility of free advertising – likes, shares, publish and comment on other pages and various groups. Just use these free methods very carefully, to avoid spam.

Optional

It’s good to use

Tools that customers bring you, but not as much as the previous methods. Also here were methods that require high investment of effort, time, money. Nevertheless, they are all – powerful tools, proven over the years.

13. YouTube.

There are two main options for promotion on YouTube.

1. a) You can create your channel and upload your videos. It can be a video of your parties, your recipes, interesting videos about food, restaurants, about your city, funny videos. Increase the number of video views, channel subscribers. You can insert links in the video. So you can send your target audience to your website, blog, a page with a subscription to the newsletter, Facebook page.
2. b) Paid advertising on YouTube. This service is owned by Google, so you can use advertising opportunities of Google AdWords. These are banner ads while watching videos, promotional videos, your videos are at first place on specific queries (marked “Advertisement”). You have good opportunities to target your desired audience, there are various settings which display advertising and statistical reports.

14. Coupon Websites

The idea is that you give a huge discount (50-90%) on your menu at definite time. And coupon services give you dozens or hundreds of clients who are interested in your offer. This scheme has advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that a lot of people become only interested in the lowest price. And when the offer ends, these people will not come to you for a second time. On the other hand, if you just have opened a restaurant, it’s a great opportunity to make sure that you acquire a lot of customers. You can recommend customers to leave feedback on the review sites to get low prices and promote discounts on TripAdvisor, Yelp or Foursquare.

15. Your blog.

Start a blog on some popular blogging platform like blogger.com or at your own website. Regularly, at least once every 2 weeks post something useful, interesting and entertaining. Publish information that will interest your target audience. If you can attract readers, they will always come back to your blog to learn something new.

Useful articles – a great reason to subscribe to your newsletter. It is easier to advertise an article, attract the target audience rather than just advertising a restaurant. Blog articles can be linked to social networks. In general, the blog itself is a magnet for customers and helps different tools of advertising.

16. E-mail Newsletter

You can maintain constant contact with clients via personal e-mails messages and announcements. Photos, and interesting articles. If you have a blog that you constantly update with new material which makes e-mails essential part of communication. Why a newsletter? To constantly remind about yourself, increase loyalty to your restaurant, provide visitors to your restaurant for various events.

There are a variety of mailing services to simplify and automate this work.

17. Guest posts

You can write interesting articles. Post them on news sites or popular blogs. If you’re a talented writer why not write interesting articles, don’t let your talents go to waste publish your work on a blog.

10. a) you can get a link from popular online resources. It helps to move your website to Google’s Top10.
11. b) You can get access to your target audience, ads, and referrals to your site

It’s a good way of online promotion for a new website.

18. Pay with a tweet.

Online services with a concept to give you back something (bonus or discount) click on likes, reposts, re-tweets in social media you can make announcements and adverts or post. For example – paywithapost.de

Are you still interested? It’s free and very cheap advertising for your restaurant in social media.

19. Paid advertising on content sites:

City’s guides, travel portals, culinary sites.

You can negotiate directly with the sites owners where your target audience is, by placing an advertising banner or advertising your articles.

20. Comments: sites about food, in blogs, Facebook pages

Why not participate in the discussions and comments? Firstly, you can leave useful and interesting comments, you can create a trust for you. Regularly participating in the discussions, you can attract visitors to your website, to your account, your restaurant. It rises your online popularity as people subscribe to your newsletter, e-mail, social networking page. It will take time to grow your business, but it’s all for free!