If you’re looking for effective content marketing tip to increase your restaurant’s revenues and expand its online presence, chances are you’ve realized that traditional marketing is becoming increasingly ineffective.
A restaurant’s site without a blog, for example, is a rarity today because more and more businesses produce content to attract additional attention and engage their target audiences. Besides, it’s a known fact that businesses with blogs get about 126 percent more lead growth than small businesses without, according to the Content Marketing Institute.
If you’re after some tips to create a new content marketing strategy for your restaurant or looking for some ideas to add to an existing one, here are four tips to get people talking about your business.
Start a Blog on Your Website
If your restaurant’s website already has a blog, you can just skip this one. If it doesn’t, then you should know that having a blog is a great way to:
- Improve your online reputation
- Build an image of an expert in the field/niche
- Supply curious leads and customers with fresh, interesting ideas
- Increase traffic on your website
In other words, a blog is a tool to make more people fall in love with your restaurant. As it was briefly mentioned in the introduction, businesses that have blogs attract more leads than those without; so, setting up a blog on your business website is something you absolutely need to do to make sure that your restaurant’s name is the first thing that comes to your customers’ minds when they think about eating out or new recipes.
Write Specific Article Types
Whether you’re looking to increase website traffic, grow lead base, or improve your sales, here are four types of articles your blog must have.
Articles about Recipes
There are lots of people looking for recipes online, and some of them may even be after some recipes they’ve tried at your restaurant. By blogging both about dishes from your menu and others from cuisines you specialize in, you can unlock great benefits, including:
- Awareness of your bar and menu items
- Improved search engine results position
- An opportunity to demonstrate your expertise
- Attract more customers
“Just stay away from industry terms and acronyms,” says James Daily, head of the content department at Flashessay. “This can really turn off your audience because they won’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Articles about Diet Dishes
Many of your potential customers follow a certain diet, and you just cannot afford to ignore their needs. For example, you can write about vegetarian, gluten-free, Mediterranean, low-carb, and other dishes that meet specific dietary restrictions.
Writing articles about diet-specific dishes is recommended even if you don’t serve them because it’ll greatly contribute to the improvement of your position in Google results if you play your cards right.
Articles about Special Events Happening at Your Restaurant
These articles can attract the attention of those looking for some special restaurant experience. If your venue hosts some kinds of special events such as wine tasting or master classes, feel free to blog about it. This way, you’ll also let people know how awesome your restaurant is for hosting interesting events.
To make enticing descriptions of events, restaurants often refer to writing and proofreading tools such as Grammarly or use services like Men with Pens or Essaysupply.com to find experienced restaurant copywriters.
Take a look at these examples of headlines of articles about special events for inspiration:
“Things to do in [City where Your Restaurant is Located]: Steak Masterclass at [Name of Your Restaurant]”
“What to do in [City where Your Restaurant is Located] This Weekend: Jazz Concert at [Name of Your Restaurant]”
Here are more examples at Pizza Delfina’s (a California-based pizzeria) website.
Articles about Restaurant Updates
For example, you can write about things like:
- New menu and bar items and why customers should try them
- New staff members and guest chefs, their experience and expertise
- Interior design updates
- Kitchen updates
- Website updates
For example, here’s an article at an Australian-based Sage restaurant’s blog about their new head chef. It also contains a brief bio of the new chef and one of his favorite recipes.
Get Active on Social Media
Social media is an important part of any restaurant’s content marketing strategy because it allows them to share a lot of content and build their customer base without significant investments. Besides, getting visual is something you have to do to showcase those tasty dishes prepared at your restaurant,
For example, here’s how a Washington-based restaurant The Dabney does that on Instagram.
Dishes aren’t the only thing that you should post on social media. Also, you can share news, events, updates, and, of course, the unbelievable atmosphere of your restaurant.
For example, here’s how The Dabney showcases their patio.
Social media is also great to get customers’ feedback and manage relationships with your clients. You can even use Facebook and Instagram as an alternative to customer relationship management software to some extent. The case is that many clients that are unsatisfied with your service or meals won’t contact your personnel but go online and live an angry post instead. You need to monitor any relevant hashtags and your brand’s mentions to act precisely and swiftly. A timely and polite response to a complaint can transform an absolute PR disaster into a good opportunity to establish your brand.
Use Storytelling
Storytelling is basically translating your marketing message into narrative form. It’s really popular among brands because it “humanizes” them and makes it easy for people to connect with them. One of the reasons why storytelling became popular is that people tend to connect with other people, not businesses.
Content marketing is a tool that enables businesses to take advantage of storytelling. By producing consistent, entertaining, and engaging branded content, you can deepen loyalty and establish long-term relationships with your customers.
The effectiveness of branded content is proven. For example, the “Storytelling: The Current State of Branded Content” report found that it had a significant impact on awareness and persuasion metrics.
Here are storytelling tips that can help you to enhance your content marketing and get more customers:
- Have memorable characters and a well-written plotline
- Read stories of other restaurants and find out what inspired their owners to tell them
- Be honest and authentic. People know it when you’re trying to sell too hard
- Explain your values clearly
- Show your personality and individuality to demonstrate why your story is unique and deeply personal
“Restaurants take different approaches to storytelling; for example, some briefly describe their history in values on their websites while others create videos,” says Derrick James, a copywriter at Resumes Centre.
In order to maximize the benefit of your storytelling, you should a campaign that features the following elements:
- A separate section on your website containing a textual description and visuals explaining the story of your restaurant
- Videos featuring important persons such as people who started the business and what values they stand for
- Social media posts featuring branded content and telling people the story of and life at our restaurant
A good example of storytelling is this video made by Ciao Restaurant. It tells the story of people behind the business—Giuseppe Di Giovanni and his wife Gloria Di Giovanni and explains why they decided to open a restaurant in the San Diego area even though they are from Italy.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully, these ideas will continue you to get started with your own content marketing strategy or improve your existing one. Feel free to use them but remember one important thing: content marketing isn’t about you. Every piece you create should be informative, helpful, interesting and entertaining for your target audience. So if it’s not, don’t publish it.
