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As a restaurant owner or manager, it may feel like there are a million and one things to stay on top of day to day. However, one responsibility that you should never let slip from your hands is the marketing of your restaurant or cafe!
Whether you have someone on your team in charge of marketing, or are doing it by yourself, these are the effective online channels you should use to advertise your restaurant or cafe and its menu:
Google My Business
Without a doubt, Google is the first point of call when searching for information and directions to your restaurant or cafe. In the digital world, a restaurant or café without a Google My Business listing may as well be non-existent!
The must-have business details include:
- Opening hours
- Your business address
- Link to your website
- Contact information
Here, your customers also have the ability to post (both good and bad) reviews – so be sure to keep an eye on this platform. We recommend responding to all written reviews and offering to reach out to those who have had negative dining experiences. By doing so, you can show prospective customers who come across these reviews that your restaurant management is receptive and ready to embrace feedback.
Think of Facebook Pages as an extension of Google My Business – where you can input all the aforementioned business details with the addition of:
- A short description
- A long description
- Price range
- Messaging times
- Popular times to visit
- Links to other online platforms
- Your menu (to be uploaded in the About Section > Add Menu)
- Ability to take online reservations (through adding the Book Now button)
Moreover, Facebook Pages offer customers the simple luxury of contacting you directly. If you’ve yet to, it may be wise to assign a team member to tend to your Facebook queries – in their absence, have a professional and courteous Automatic Reply set up to let customers know you’ll get to their message when you can!
With Instagram boasting over 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, there’s no online platform quite like it. This means that if your business isn’t on it, you’re missing out on exposure to thousands of new customers. With Instagram being the most visual of all the social media apps, users naturally take to sharing tasty pictures of their food via Instagram posts or Instagram Stories. The more people post about your restaurant or cafe online, the more in-store traffic you’re bound to gain.
As a restaurant or café owner, this mindset should be no different. Your business’ Instagram profile should be centred around tantalising food and drink photos posted regularly – with fancy new items introduced as they are added to your menu. It’s also a wonderful place to promote any ongoing discounts or specials, which can quickly gain virality with loyal customers commenting and tagging their friends.
If you don’t already, we recommend linking your menu in your bio and encouraging your customers to take pictures of your food. Creating a geotag and designated hashtag are fantastic ideas for users to identify your restaurant or café and be linked back to your Instagram business profile – should they want to find out more.
Menuzen
A revolutionary new menu maker tool, Menuzen is set to take the hospitality industry by storm with its impressive features which are all free to use forever. With the capabilities to create, manage, publish, share and collaborate on live menus, Menuzen is making costly menu updates and customer confusion a thing of the past.
Best of all, Menuzen’s impressive cloud-based technology means all changes made to your menu are updated in real-time – making it easier than ever to showcase your current menu accurately and conveniently.
Not to mention, you can get creative by using the free elegant templates available on Menuzen. There are further plans for the app to integrate into Facebook, Instagram Zomato and more. For now, you can enjoy the ability to print and/or share your live menu creations to Facebook, Instagram or your website via your very own unique URL or QR code.
Sign up to Menuzen for free to design your live menu!
