According to a report, The restaurant industry contributes to 51% of food dollars in the US alone. Moreover, another report suggests that 90% of people search a restaurant online before going there. This goes to show how important it is to have a digital marketing plan for a restaurant in place.
We all know that the pandemic hit the restaurant industry hard. There has been a 65.91% decline in US restaurant dining owing to the pandemic.
However, now that we are rising above it, your restaurant needs an upgraded digital marketing plan to be heard, be seen, and be loved. I am sure, you don’t want to be in the loop of decline right? You want to shine on.
So, in this blog, you’re going to learn how to create an effective digital marketing plan for your restaurant in 8 easy steps. Are you excited? I sure am.
A great restaurant is born with a great idea, that is given wings by a digital marketing plan. However, not many pay much attention to it.
It does sound like a lot of work to many restaurant owners and entrepreneurs that they end up ignoring it completely. This should not be the case.
Times have taught us that a digital marketing plan is very important for the success of a restaurant and should never be neglected.
So before going to the steps of creating a strong digital marketing plan for your restaurant, let’s understand what a marketing plan is.
What is a Marketing Plan?
A marketing plan is a detailed report about how you are planning to do a marketing strategy to achieve your business goals.
It is basically a blueprint of how you are going to persuade customers to come to your restaurant. When this is done on a digital scale, it becomes a digital marketing plan.
Through a well-carved digital marketing plan, your restaurant business will be heard, be seen, and be loved by everyone you are targeting and beyond. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?
3 Reasons You Need a Digital Marketing Plan for Your Restaurant
1. Digital Marketing Plan Helps In Setting-up and Measuring Goals
Every business needs a direction. When it is about the restaurant business, this business is heavily reliant on literal footfall.
So, with a digital marketing plan in place, you will have a clear idea of what you want, how do you want it, and what will you do to get it.
A good digital marketing plan will help you in setting up realistic quarterly and annual goals for your restaurant business and promoting them on digital channels.
When you have realistic and measurable goals in hand, it saves you from unexpected surprises and confusion while running your business. In a way, it prepares you for the future. Share on X
2. Digital Marketing Plan Gives Your Brand A Unified Touch
A digital marketing plan unites everyone by giving everyone the same goals to achieve.
Now let’s say you are a restaurant. If you function differently on social media, differently on Google, and differently on the website, your customers will be confused and opt-out of choosing you.
Being a part of the hospitality business, you have the extra burden of keeping your customers delighted at every point of interaction that they have with your business.
The digital marketing plan will help you achieve just that. Mainly because it will act as a clear directive of what one is supposed to do, how one is supposed to represent, and what kind of personality will one be showcasing across all digital channels for your restaurant.
3. A Digital Marketing Plan Helps You Be Proactive
With a digital marketing plan in place, you are aware of the actions your restaurant brand needs to take to be heard, be seen, and be loved across the digital channels.
Not only this, with a digital marketing plan, you will have a sense of being proactive as you will start to see the results of properly planning your marketing activities.
Furthermore, since we have seen how uncertain and dynamic the marketing world is, a digital marketing plan will help you be prepared for the contingencies.
When you are well prepared for contingencies, you will have a competitive edge over others. How does it get any better than this right?
What to Include in Your Restaurant’s Digital Marketing Plan?
The business of restaurants is competitive. If you want to compete here, your strategy needs to be out of the box and engaging. You have to take a complete look at all the aspects for running this business successfully.
Starting from customer service to menu optimization, and then marketing those optimizations, a restaurant needs to have it all.
A report suggests that 92% of restaurant diners read reviews before choosing a restaurant. Moreover. 77% of the people are more likely to believe online peer reviews than critic reviews.
Not only this, a report further suggests that 33% of the people will not go to a restaurant if they have a bad online impression of it.
These statistics are a specimen of how important digital marketing plan for restaurants is.
These days, people have started to look at their favorite restaurants and food online. The question arises, what if you are not online? How will your restaurant business be heard, seen, and loved then?
This is something that has made restaurants opt for digitalization. But for this, it is also necessary to build a solid digital marketing plan. I am sure you all will agree to this.
Let’s have a look at a few things that your restaurant’s digital marketing plan needs to have:
Make Your Website Look Perfect
Websites play a great role in attracting customers. If you own a restaurant, your utmost focus should be on optimizing your website which appeals to your target audiences.
Most consumers go online these days to search for the restaurants they want to opt for, and they will visit your website.
Your customers judge any business’s credibility based on the website. If your website makes them feel undesirable, they are likely to jump to other websites to find other restaurants whose websites appeal to them.
Always design your website in a professional manner that is functional as well as user-friendly. Make your navigation process easy.
Your customers should not get confused while searching for things they want. They should easily find things such as your menu, time of operation, your address, etc.
Also invest some time and money in getting good and professional pictures of your restaurant space, food items that you offer, and also your staff. These all give your costumes a sense of intimacy with your restaurant. If they like it, they may visit it.
Focus on SEO
This is one of the most important steps in the digital marketing of your restaurant. Always perfect your Search Engine Optimization to get greater traffic. SEO includes getting organic traffic to your website.
This helps in driving more relevant customers to you. Moreover, most of the online interaction starts because of search engines and good SEO. Research shows that 93% of online interaction starts with a search engine.
You can boost your SEO by creating a blog on your website with engaging content. Use keywords and other forms of SEO coding like metadata embedded in pictures, videos, headings, etc.
You can also create a Google My Business account. Mention your contact details along with your address so that your customers can easily find you.
Try Increasing Followers on Social Media
Including social media in your restaurant’s digital marketing plan is an awesome idea. Do you know why? Because top Instagram hashtag is #Food which garnered 25,279,694 mentions as of 2020.
Moreover, 40% of the people said that they are more likely to visit a restaurant they have engaged with on social media.
Therefore, if you don’t use social media marketing for your restaurant, chances are you may fall behind.
This will also help you to provide effective networking opportunities to your customers.
You can extend your services to people who are attracted to your restaurant. It will further help you in building long-term relationships with your customers.
You can attract more followers by hosting competitions and offering free meals and gifts to the winners. Engage with them regularly and also encourage them to like, share, comment on your posts.
Go for Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is gaining huge popularity. According to the statistics, an approx of 68% of US marketers use influencers for marketing their business.
Therefore, you can also include influencer marketing in your restaurant’s digital marketing plan to achieve success.
This will help you in increasing your reach by establishing credibility. The influencer you choose will act as an opinion leader and will guide his/her followers to your restaurant.
You can choose an influencer and ask them to come to your restaurant for a meal, they can then post about it on their social media channels and you can also post about them on yours.
Since influencers have a great list of followings, it will help you in increasing the reach of your restaurant.
Through influencer marketing, a sense of trust will also prevail amongst the audience and your restaurant will receive an increased footfall.
Opt for Email Marketing
Another effective strategy for your restaurant’s digital marketing is email marketing. Start by building a list of email recipients who have subscribed to your mail.
A good way to get more email subscribers is by offering discounts to already subscribed customers.
Then, design an email that you will send to them. In that mail, you can express gratitude to your subscribers. You can also encourage them to visit your restaurant again.
You can also give them discount offers on their next visit or next online purchases from your restaurant.
A lot of people might have a preconceived notion that email marketing doesn’t work anymore. However, if you play your cards right, this is far from the truth.
Email marketing, when done correctly will give your restaurant elite and quality customers. This is what you want right?
Now, let us have a look at tips for creating the best digital marketing plan for your restaurant.
6 Tips for Creating the Best Digital Marketing Plan for Your Restaurant
Digital marketing is something that is not going to fade away. Its intensity may become high or low but it’s not going to vanish in the coming future.
When it comes to restaurants, present times have shown how important it is to digitally advertise your restaurant.
So, it is necessary for a restaurant to efficiently make plans of digital marketing to make their presence felt amongst the target customers.
To ace the digital marketing plan for your restaurant, you might need some tips. I have got just those for you. Let’s take a look at them
Make Your Brand Image Solid
If you want to grow your restaurant business, you need to make your brand image a solid one. Keep the mission statement in mind and remind yourself why you have opened this restaurant.
Then, make sure the digital marketing plan for your restaurant is in sync with the mission of your brand.
Also, describe your restaurant’s value. Always sound realistic to your customers. Never sound fake because it can hamper your business.
Your value will strengthen the relationship between your restaurant and your customers, this way your brand will grow.
Set a Reminder of Who Your Target Audiences Are
Any digital marketing plan will be successful if the target audience is kept in mind. After all, they are the people to whom you provide your restaurant services.
Your target audience is defined in terms of demographics, the behavior of customers, etc., product/services they need from you, etc.
Your digital marketing strategies should answer queries from customers’ points of view. It should answer questions such as do my customers communicate on social media, do they review my sites,
Are they influenced by discounts and offers? Do they prefer online services or like to visit restaurants and many more.
This will surely help you in identifying your potential customers and creating a digital marketing plan effectively.
Perform SWOT Analysis
Having a look at your competitors is also essential for a good restaurant digital marketing plan. It helps you understand the market from a broader perspective and a different point of view.
We know how competitive the restaurant industry is. If you take one look around at Times Square you will find 50 restaurants just then and there.
So, it is important for your restaurant to rise above competitors. For that, you need SWOT analysis before creating a digital marketing plan.
You can choose a few local competitors to do self-analysis. Then perform a SWOT analysis.
For analyzing the strength, identify what your competitors are doing. This will help you in enhancing your existing services.
For analyzing weaknesses, see what mistakes your competitors have made and how you can improve them.
For opportunities, find ways to exceed your competitors. Think and come up with new ideas.
Lastly, for analyzing threats, look at the things that your competitors are providing their customers and something that you cannot provide them. This will help you in making a successful digital marketing plan for your restaurant.
Make Video Content to Promote Your Brand
Visuals are a great way to attract customers. Images and videos tend to stay in a person’s memory for a longer duration. So creating an effective marketing strategy with this can help you stand out from the crowd.
Restaurants are making great use of videos to promote themselves. It has also created a lot of popularity in terms of the restaurant brand and its products/services.
Remember good content is always the key to success. Moreover, when your content is in the form of video, it turns out to be more interesting and engaging.
With video content, your restaurant brand can even go viral. It has the potential to direct traffic to your site or channel from varied social media platforms and even third-party channels. On average, 500 million hours of YouTube are watched daily.
Keep a Constant Look at Ratings and Reviews
Another important tip. If you want to create a digital marketing strategy that should be helpful for you, then keep monitoring your consumer’s reviews and ratings. This is important because most people prefer to read reviews before they visit you.
Their choices highly rely on the reviews and ratings that your restaurant brand gets. It also solidifies the intent of buyers and makes their choices accordingly.
Reviewing is always a part of a restaurant’s digital marketing strategy. Also, keep responding to your customers to form better relationships.
Also, register your restaurant on as many sites as possible. This helps in getting more customers and thus attracting more reviews. It is also a step to make an effective online presence of your restaurant.
All in all, doing these things will help you in building and protecting your restaurant’s reputation. It will also give you an idea of areas of improvement and come up with better digital marketing ideas.
Learn the Art of Creating Effective Elevators Pitch
Developing an elevator pitch helps you in describing your restaurant and related things in 60 seconds or less. Crafting a proper message in a shorter duration is very necessary for you.
It helps you in building your brand image. If you craft your elevator pitch well, you can make customers choose you over others.
Your elevator pitch will include the name of your restaurant and its theme, what type of cuisines to offer to your customers, what initiative you take to retain your target audiences, and many more.
Create a Digital Marketing Plan For Your Restaurant: 8 Easy Steps
Now that you have understood almost everything about the digital marketing plans for your restaurant, your next step is to create a restaurant digital marketing plan.
Here are the main elements of a marketing plan that you should remember while creating yours.
Step 1) Executive Summary
An executive summary will include a brief of your entire marketing plan. Two important parts that you should always remember to include are:
Main goals – Point out in the executive summary what your restaurant’s short-term and long-term goals are going to be.
Recommendation of the plan for the management – All the major points about your plan should be listed here so if you have to show your plan to investors or other management teams, they can easily and quickly get an idea of your business.
Step 2) Current Marketing Situation
The areas you need to cover in this section are –
Your target market and your restaurant’s position in that target market.
Detailed analysis of what the market needs are and what the needs of the customers in that market are.
What kind of competition is there in the market?
Is there any kind of distribution required for your restaurant products? What will that be?
Information about other similar products in the market. What kind of sales are other restaurants generating? What kinds of prices are they charging for their products and how much profits are they making?
Step 3) Threat And Opportunity Analysis
Information about what kind of threats and opportunities are there in the operating environment that can affect your business. These are generally external factors so they don’t fall under your control.
Still having an understanding of how any kind of positive or negative developments in your business environment can affect your product will make you prepared to take the right actions at the right time.
Step 4) Objectives & Issues
In this section, you will be required to list down all your quarterly, yearly and five-yearly goals for your restaurant. Make sure that all your objectives follow the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals)
Step 5) Marketing Strategy
Talk about the marketing strategy that you are going to use to achieve the objectives from the step above. You should also list if there are or can be an issue that can stop you from achieving these objectives.
In general, your marketing strategy should explain three things to anyone who reads your marketing plan and these are –
How are you going to engage customers with your restaurant?
How are you going to create & offer value for your customers in this competitive restaurant market?
Moreover, how are you planning to build and maintain customer relationships?
Also, A good marketing strategy is generally specific to your business needs and goals, and should only target all those audiences that will love your product.
So, That’s why segmentation, targeting, and positioning are going to be important for defining your marketing strategy.
Another thing that should be a part of your marketing strategy is the budget. This will help you in keeping a track of your marketing expenditure and measurement of your results.
Lastly, your marketing strategy should explain what kind of strategies you are going to follow for every marketing mix element (product, place, promotion, place).
Also, This implies how you are going to strategically define the price, place, promotion, and product for your business.
Not just that, also add how all these four elements of your restaurant business are going to respond when there are any kinds of threats, opportunities, or critical issues in the operating environment.
For example, let’s say the government bans the import of corn from Mexico, how is it going to affect your product, price, promotion strategy, or place of distribution for your restaurant?
Step 6) Action Plan
This section will describe how you are planning to turn your marketing strategy into various actionable tasks.
An action plan is as important as your marketing strategy because it is the implementation of your strategy. Without proper implementation of your strategy, it serves no purpose.
Four major areas under this section are –
What? What are going to be those actionable tasks?
Who? Who will be responsible for executing those tasks?
When? When will that responsible person or team execute the task?
How much? How much are they allowed to spend for the successful achievement of their objectives?
Step 7) Budget
The budget section of your restaurant marketing plan is going to cover these things –
Revenues: How much are you expecting to earn in revenues in the next quarter, a year, and in 5 years?
Cost of Production: How much will the operation of your business and production of your offerings be going to cost you?
Distribution: What will be the cost of the distribution of your products?
Marketing: How much will you need for executing your marketing strategy?
Once you have taken these into consideration, you can choose the digital marketing elements accordingly. Many digital marketing elements are easily affordable.
For paid marketing, your restaurant is free to set the budget it desires and can change it anytime it wants.
Step 8) Control
This is the last but the most important part of your digital marketing plan. This area covers details about how you are planning to measure the results and ROI on marketing.
What if the current restaurant marketing plans are not reaping the results you hoped? What will be your next steps? Which digital marketing areas do you need to focus more on?
All these will be covered under the control element of the digital marketing plan. Through understanding and analyzing your restaurant’s digital marketing efforts, you can take a step towards improvement or upgrades wherever needed.
Key Takeaway: Digital Marketing Plan for Restaurants
Creating a digital marketing plan for your restaurant is a pretty simple but very crucial step. It saves you from all the future frustrations when you suddenly find that your restaurant is not performing as you have imagined it to be.
Following the above-mentioned eight steps will help you in preparing your digital marketing plan for the restaurant.
If you need help with digital marketing your restaurant and building valuable customer relationships, get in touch with us.
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