Marketing Restaurant Online

Facebook is a platform that you as a restaurant owner should use it as a networking tool to build a tribe of your own that would become your customers and eventually your loyal fan.Some of the restaurants might think that just creating a Fan page on Facebook is enough. Well that is just a start. There are other things that a restaurant has to do in order to be successful in promoting your restaurant on Facebook. Below are the 4 tips on how your restaurant can use Facebook to market your restaurant.

1. Create a brilliant Fan page
2. Reach out
3. Get Active
4. Join Groups and create events

Create a brilliant Fan page -As a restaurant business you now have an opportunity to create a Fan page and attract unlimited number of fans and create an unique brand. Some of the the singers and actors have  millions of fans on Facebook. So as a restaurant you can do the same if you choose to do so. But the key is to create rich contents that your customers would like to read. Share some relevant information that your customers would eagerly want to hear from you. It may be about healthy food, or how to remain healthy while eating good food. Add some good quality photos of your delicious food. May be make an announcement of a happy hour or a surprise wine session at your restaurant. Another important thing is to create your own branding image. It must be original and reflect what your restaurant represents. If it is casual restaurant then make it visible with the updates, the photos or videos that you share with your customers.

Reach out- Just creating a Fan page on Facebook is not enough. You have to find a creative way to attract the potential dining customers to your Fan page. Like Gary Vaynerchuk says, you have to hustle to bring those hungry customers first to your Fan page and later to your restaurant. So how do we do this? Well the most effective way first is to identify the key influential people that are related to your food industry. It could be food blogger, or healthy eating group on Facebook. You have to be creative enough to make friends by networking with them. I promise your marketing effort will be much easier leveraging their influential powers to may be thousands and millions of people at one click of a mouse. Alternatively you can also start engaging with potential customers within your town or city by engaging with ongoing updates. Though a little slower process it is worth the effort provided you do it consistently every day. Even if you can make friends with few people - a small number  that is countable on fingers, it is worth to create a momentum. The compounding effect of fans that can be generated virally over a period of some time like few months can turn out to be mind boggling.

Get Active- Now that you have reached out influential people within your restaurant and food industry and also potential customers from your town or city that are on Facebook, you need to get active with them. That means first you must share valuable contents or useful information that are relevant to them. You can do it by making a quick updates on Facebook. The frequency is also important. There is no set rules how many updates you can or can not do. The important thing is that the number of the updates has to match with relevancy and usefulness to your customers. At least one update a day is critical. Because if you don’t make any updates then it can be felt by your fans. It would be like your fans calling you on the phone but no one is picking up the phone. That displays that there is no actions going on and will be clearly visible by the fans on the fan page. So even if there were fans initially they will lose interest and start dropping from the fan page. So please don’t let this happen. The key thing to remember is engage with fans by asking questions and getting feed backs. They will comment and provide feedbacks and your job is to listen. Listen first what your fans are saying. Internalise it and respond to any or all of the comments. This way it shows that you do care about your fans. It also tells them that you do exist as a human being.

Join Groups and Create Events - There are so many groups on Facebook. You can search the type of the groups that you are interested and join the group. Not as a restaurant business but as a regular individual who has a interest on that topic. Lets say you want to attract environmental conscious customers then you can join a group which discuss about environmental impact issues that are dear to their heart. Hope before you join this group you have inclination to at least adopt some of the ways where you are contributing to the planet by just doing simple things like using paper products instead of plastics or foams. Now you can proudly  talk about how businesses, just using paper products can help in protecting the environment. You could share some of the case studies with them. You could also share some good articles that talks about the same issues with some results. Now when you prove them that you are knowledgeable person then they will start trusting you and respecting you. While you are sharing your ideas, you have a reason to display some of the results that you have achieved at your restaurant. You can share and they will listen this time because you have already gained the trust from them. You can even create an event with a theme like , “Saving the environment While enjoying the great Food.” where you are only using recyclable products and also raising money for charity programs like Saving the Planet or something similar to that. These are just some ideas that I am just throwing at you. You can be much creative and come up with your own events based on your interest but also relevant to your restaurant.

Hope you get some ideas how you can be creative and use Facebook as a networking tool and start building a qualified network of potential customers that you could turn them as your real customers at your physical restaurant and hopefully  loyal fans for years to come.