As a restaurant owner, you need to utilise social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to help grow your brand and your business. So how can marketing on Facebook help boost sales in your restaurant?
Whether you’re a new company or already established, Facebook marketing for restaurants can help drive more customers into your business and grow your brand across the country.
The hospitality industry can be difficult, it is very seasonal, and in countries such as Cyprus, the market can be extremely reliant on tourists. Therefore, an easy solution is to advertise your company on a platform that billions of people are using every day.
Yes, you heard correctly, Facebook estimates 1.62 billion users every day, incredible right? Therefore, if you’re not marketing on Facebook, you can be missing out on a huge potential audience.
The best part of using Facebook for marketing is that it can be simple to do, and it can be really effective if done right. Below is everything you need to know to do just that.
3 Simple Ways to Use Facebook Marketing for Restaurants
1. Create & Manage your Facebook Page
If you haven’t done so already, create a Facebook business page for your restaurant. You want to fill out the most necessary information, including your company name, location, contact details and some images to start off with.
You want to make it as easy as possible for users who visit your business page to find the information they need. So, what is the most important information that users are looking for when reaching a restaurant?
Facebook allows you to add all sorts of data to help you advertise to potential customers, you can add your location, website link, contact details, menus and a whole lot more.
You will then be given a Facebook page link that you can use on your website’s design, to link to your new company page.
Get Reviews (Social Proof)
Reviews are one of, if not the most, important deciding factor for anyone when researching restaurants. Reviews act as a form of “social proof” which is evidence that a place is either good or bad. Your reviews can be the bread and butter of your company and Facebook is an amazing place to collect them.
With so many active daily users, if your restaurant’s Facebook page has many good reviews, then potential customers will likely come to visit your business.
By marketing on Facebook, you can really hone down on reviews, providing incentives to collect ratings from customers. Some tactics you can do are:
- Prompting customers to review you from their receipts
- Add buttons on your website prompting customers to leave a review
- Simply ask customers who expressed a positive experience if they do not mind leaving a review for you.
It is important to note, that if you get a bad review, do not act angrily, it is always best to try empathising and offer a solution and an apology if needed. Remember, people will also see negative reviews too.
Add Images & your Menu
In order to successfully market your restaurant’s business on Facebook you 100% must show images and your menu on your business page. I have noticed, especially in Cyprus, it can be difficult to find a menu displayed on Facebook pages and updated pictures can also be rare to come by.
Most of the time content is outdated and it leaves the user with more questions than answers, which is not good if you are wanting them to come to visit your restaurant.
Therefore, you must have an updated menu added to your page and constantly update photos, whether that is of the interior and layout of your restaurant, of the delicious food and drinks you offer or of your friendly team. Users are drawn to images, so make sure you use some good ones!
Facebook really understands the importance for restaurant owners to add their menu to their platform, so they offer a solution, you can have your very own menu tab that is directly used to show potential customers your menu.
With the new Pages Experience (Facebook Business Page) you can:
- Click “Manage” on your page
- See the “Menu” tab on the left under “Tools to try”
- Click “get started”
- Begin adding photos (good quality and easy to read)
- You can select options for dining in, take away or delivery
- You can add optional information that displays the type of food you serve and also payment methods you accept
- Then click save
Bravo. You now have a fully functional menu on your Facebook page, this will help you market your products directly to customers. There is also a preview of your menu setup for you to see.
Grow your Followers
Now you have your page already set up, you’re displaying up-to-date information and you have your menu ready for users to check out. Next up, let’s grow your following.
In order to successfully engage in Facebook marketing, you need followers, these are people who have been selected to follow your page for updates and information, meaning they are interested.
Some great tips to grow your followers are:
- Post regularly
- Start by inviting friends and family directly
- Talk to your customers at your restaurant about following your page
- Run competitions and contests to get people to share, like and comment on your content
- Run ad campaigns (this is by far the most important Facebook marketing technique for restaurants, we will dive into this later on in this article)
2. Consistently Post Shareable Content
Your business should be posting regularly to engage with your audience. There are many things you can post about, whether it is a new dish you’re serving, a positive customer review, a promotion and so on.
The most important thing for marketing on Facebook for restaurants is to provide value to your customers. If your post doesn’t do that, then you need to question, whether it is worth it.
Here are some great quick posting tips to help with your marketing campaigns on Facebook:
- Share pictures of some of your audience’s favourite dishes (for new restaurants, you can share some of your favourite dishes)
- Repost User-Generated Content (UGC) this may be from people tagging your business on their stories
- Share some of the best reviews that you have received
- Post at the right time, there is no point in sharing content at 3 am if no one is online to see it
- Video posting, show videos of your employees, your super clean kitchen or your great interior with a full restaurant
- Share recipes. If you have a fan-favourite dish, share the recipe and ask people to comment with pictures of their attempts to recreate it.
- Create a competition, this can be anything you want. For example, ask people to like and share a specific photo of your restaurant, you select a winner at random and they can receive a gift card to eat at your restaurant.
This list can go on and on and on, it depends on how creative you are and what you are willing to do. But as long as the content has value for your audience, they will love it. Keep it wholesome, keep it friendly and keep it valuable.
3. Facebook Advertising Campaigns
Running advertising campaigns on Facebook is the most effective way to increase your brand awareness and help your company’s marketing.
While it is possible to simply “boost a post” by selecting an audience, a graphic and a budget, the best way to get the most out of your marketing is to use Facebook’s advanced advertising features.
The social media platform has one of the best audience-targeting algorithms available for companies to utilise and advertise their services online.
There are many different methods of advertising on Facebook and types of campaigns you can run, you will need to select the campaign type that best serves your objectives. However, here is how you can get started.
a. Create a Facebook Ads Manager Account
Once you have set up your Facebook business page, you can then use Facebook Ads manager as the “control centre” for your campaigns. Learn how to set up ads manager here.
b. Create your First Campaign
Begin your Facebook marketing by creating your first campaign in the ads manager dashboard. You will see a green button “create” to begin this process.
c. Choose an Objective
This step is really important and depends on the results you would like to see. There are 11 different choices you can select from, and you can make this decision based on whether you want greater awareness, more app downloads, greater likes or traffic to your website.
The choice you make will help Facebook’s algorithm optimise your ad campaigns for that objective and also show you the best options for optimising your own campaign for your goals.
The objectives are as follows:
- Reach
- Brand Awareness
- Engagement
- Video Views
- App Installs
- Conversions
- Messages
- Lead Generation
- Site Traffic
- Product Sales
As a restaurant marketing on Facebook, you can select between varying types of objectives that will benefit your business. Whether you want to grow your Facebook business page, send users to your website or message you directly.
Upon selecting your chosen objective, the next path for setting up your ad campaign will be entirely focused on that knowledge in mind.
d. Define your Audience
This is also a very important part of setting up your ad campaign and can be the differential factor between a successful marketing campaign and not.
As a restaurant, there may be a few indicators you can use to define your audience, especially in terms of location, however, you don’t want to narrow it down too much in case you lose potential customers.
Yet, in the beginning, it is wise to test a series of different audiences for multiple ad sets within your campaign, until you find the audience that reacts best to your campaign.
Upon setting up your audience targeting, Facebook does display various indicators that let you know how many people you are expected to reach, how narrow or broad your targeting is and various other details.
Some factors you can define your audience by are:
- Language
- Location
- Gender
- Age
- Education
- Ethnic Affinity
- Work
- Relationship
- Interests
- Behaviour
- Connections
- Politics
- Custom
Custom audience targeting allows your restaurant to define your audience based on previous data you have collected via Facebook’s analytics.
In your marketing campaign, you can have multiple “ad sets” which will allow you to define an audience for each one, it is best to create an ad targeted at different audiences until you find one that responds well (that you can see from the data provided by your campaign).
e. Allocate a Budget
You will need to set a budget, either a lifetime amount or a daily amount, here are the differences.
Daily Campaign Budget
Facebook will pace your spending across each day, taking each day as it comes. Also, it is important to note that the minimum budget allowed is €1 per day and at least double your Cost Per Click (CPC) if you have set a CPC.
Lifetime Campaign Budget
Therefore, using a lifetime budget for your ads means that you state a specific length of time for your ads to run ie. from the 15th of November to the 31st of December. Using this method, Facebook paces your ad spend over this period. If you provided your selected campaign with a €600 budget, then Facebook will use this across that period for marketing your company.
f. Setup & Design your Ad Creative
Your ad creative is the image you wish to use to get attention from users on Facebook. The ad creative is extremely important, it must be engaging and usually, it is best to offer some sort of promotion to really get people’s attention. However, your ad creative should reflect the objective you chose at the beginning of the campaign setup.
Ad creatives can be either a single image or a carousel of images (for the same price), for a restaurant, you may want to show a series of dishes, therefore marketing with a carousel ad type can help display more content to potential customers.
Carousel ad images should be in a 1:1 ratio, ideally 1080 x 1080 pixels. You also need to write a short headline (40 characters), link description (20 characters) and text (125 characters). You can find direct information about Facebook’s carousel guidelines here.
Once you have finalised your design, you can begin running your campaign!
g. Analytics & Remarketing
Well done, your ad campaign is set up and running, now what? Do we just wait? Well yes and no. Your ads will start collecting important data that will help you optimise them for future campaigns. It is important to check in with your analytics to make sure you’re on the right track.
We believe the following to be key metrics to keep an eye on when you are marketing on Facebook with ads:
- Engagement
- Performance
- Clicks
- Likes
- Comments
Each of your ad sets in your campaign will get its own set of analytics, the best-performing ad set can give you a good indicator of what you’re doing right. Perhaps you selected a specific audience for one ad set and it’s doing really well.
The data from Facebook ads can help you draw many conclusions that will help further campaigns and help your business overall. Facebook marketing can help you better understand your business, your audience and what potential customers like and don’t like.
When you run future campaigns, you can use the data from your older campaigns to further optimise them for better results.
Considering a Facebook Marketing Manager for your Restaurant?
Did you know that 34% of restaurant owners use their current staff to market their restaurants? While this may help reduce overheads, you may be missing out on huge potential by using an expert or team of experts if you hire a digital marketing company.
Social media management encompasses many avenues to help restaurants with their marketing. Whether you are an established business or a new kid on the block, marketing is always fundamental to the growth of a business.
Absolute Websites has helped many brands, start-ups and established companies, grow their presence, increase sales and meet objectives via Facebook marketing and other forms of social media management.
If you would like to make use of social media for marketing your business, then contact us directly and see how we can help you and your business.
