All Tips you need to market your restaurant during the COVID-19
COVID-19 has created a major impact on the hospitality and restaurant industry. As a result, your restaurant must be struggling to survive. However, there are some effective strategies available for the restaurant to follow and ensure its survival in the middle of the pandemic. All you have to do is to understand how to market your restaurant, so that you can keep the sales coming in your way.
At the time of marketing your restaurant, you can pay special attention towards social media marketing. it is one of the most convenient methods available for you to get in touch with the potential customers of your business and get them to purchase the dishes you offer.
Using social media for restaurant marketing
Using social media for restaurant marketing is never a bad decision. That’s because restaurants in all around the world can use it as an effective marketing tool and generate successful results. Here are some stats that prove why social media is one of the best platforms available for a restaurant to proceed with marketing.
- Around 32% of the brand mentions in Twitter are related to food and beverage brands.
- 36% of the diners in America follow their favorite restaurants on social media.
- #food is among the 25 most popular hashtags on Instagram. Under this hashtag, there are around 400 million posts tagged.
- According to a research conducted by Statista, it has been identified that the social media use will increasing along with the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. The usage of Facebook will increase by 62% whereas the usage of Instagram will increase by 43%.
You can keep these facts in mind and go ahead with your social media marketing campaigns to promote the restaurant. Then you can end up with receiving amazing results. Here are some useful and effective tips that you can keep in mind to get the most out of restaurant marketing in the middle of the pandemic.
Useful tips to engage with your diners during the COVID-19 pandemic
Here are some of the most effective tips that you can follow to increase the engagement you have along with diners of your business. If you can focus on these tips, you can end up with generating sales without any major issues.
- Update the online presence
Most of the diners don’t know whether your restaurant or open or not after the lockdowns. Instead of allowing your customers to guess, you can share the message on social media.
If your restaurant is open, you can upload some of the latest pictures taken inside. Then you can tempt your social media followers to come to your restaurant and enjoy their favorite dishes again. If you are offering delivery, takeout, and curbside pickup, you should let your customers know about them. This is where you should update the website, online listings, social media and even your answering machine.
Some of the restaurants are not yet open. In such a situation, you will need to create engagement with the customers by using posts with descriptions such as “Stay Tuned” and “Coming Soon”. You can even have a countdown on social media to keep the customers excited about your comeback.
- Publish photos of your food on social media
Publishing photos of food on social media is quite a popular trend among people. You can think about getting the most out of this trend to keep engagement with the audience.
You can come up with a post schedule, where you are uploading pictures of your menu items daily. You will also be able to use the same trend to share more details about your restaurant staff, including the managers. People would love to see the team that keeps on serving them with good food.
Due to the competition you have from other restaurants, there is a high possibility to lost top of the mind among your customers. That’s why you should keep on updating your social media every single day. You will have lots of opportunities for posts. For example, you can share the photos of your fresh dishes and the photos taken to show your restaurant.
If you want to allow the customers to create some engagement, you can come up with a unique hashtag for the restaurant. Then you can encourage all the diners who come to your restaurant to use that hashtag and share a photo on social media. To encourage more diners to do this, you can think about providing them with a small discount on the bill.
Hashtags can contribute a lot towards the success you can reap out of social media marketing. Hence, you shouldn’t be shy with the hashtags. Make sure that you use the best and the most popular hashtags such as #foodie, #foodphotography and #foodstagram. Then you can create maximum engagement with ease.
- Share cooking tutorials and recipes with the followers on social media
Since you are experiencing a drop in the number of customers who walk into the restaurant, your staff will have more time to share recipes as well as cooking tutorials. You can get the help of the staff to prepare them. It is better if you can create videos on how to prepare some of the best dishes in your menu. Then you can help your customers to try those dishes at the comfort of their homes.
Along with these recipes and tutorials, you can make some money as well. All you have to do is to offer meal kits. The meal kits can contain ingredients that are needed to make some of the dishes you offer. Then people can get them delivered to their homes and try your dishes. This will help you to generate some revenue.
- Get the help of your influencers
This is the high time for you to get the support and assistance of influencers and keep on promoting the business. Your influencers will be able to provide a lot of support and assistance to you in taking your busines to greater heights. You can even partner with new influencers, who have the potential to increase your engagement.
Always keep in mind that influencers are in a position to help your restaurant with attracting new consumers. Hence, engaging or partnering with local influencers is not something you will regret about.
- Keep on engaging
You should engage with your followers as much as you can on social media. You should like the posts of your customers, reply to the comments and share their posts through your official social media accounts. It is even worthy to have a dedicated person to keep on engaging with the customers. Then you can easily get them to come into your restaurant and help and support your business.
Final words
Now you have a clear picture on how to promote your restaurant during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Any restaurant will be able to do this. All you have to do is to come up with a strategic plan and stick to it with the social media marketing campaigns. Then you can reap maximum benefits that come along with it.
