Thinking about stepping your restaurant marketing game up in 2019? Find out how getting digital can help in the hospitality industry:

Looking to get more people to your restaurant in 2019? It’s time to scrap the flyers and the newspaper adverts and get digital.

In the lead-up to the New Year, we’re going to be looking at ways that you can rethink your restaurant’s marketing strategy for the digital age. 

While it can be tempting to rely on the old methods, you’re doing your business a disservice if you’re not embracing digital marketing strategies for your restaurant and here’s why:

You’re getting reviewed whether you like it or not

TripAdvisor, Yelp and Google Reviews have pretty much turned the entire world into a restaurant critic with just a few strokes of a star system. Getting yourself a business TripAdvisor or Google account means you can keep track of what people are saying about you and respond. Actively showing that you appreciate good reviews and defending yourself against unwarranted bad reviews can be the difference between a customer choosing your establishment over one with similar qualities.

Start taking bookings online

75% of the UK population own smartphones, however a quarter of them do not use them to make phone calls.[1] In the modern environment, having a phone booking only service is a rigid barrier to large segments of your market, particularly with the under-30s. The cost of setting up a simple website including a form where customers can request a table for a specific time and date will inevitably be recuperated through bookings. “47% of restaurant consumers said that making reservations online is easier than making restaurant reservations in other ways”.[2]

The Internet Is Your New Shop Front

A study in 2015 in the US found that up 86% of potential customers check out a restaurant’s menu prior to visiting. This illustrates how important an online presence and user-friendly website can be to success or indeed, survival.[3] Therefore everything associated with your business should present the best picture possible. A Facebook page with your friendly picture of your FOH staff smiling in your uniform shows you as professional, yet welcoming. Also, you’re able to convey the aesthetic of your restaurant to the prospective customer with just a few quick snaps of your interior, enticing your customers to check you out in real life.

Showcase your talent

You’ve probably heard the cliché about people only using Instagram to post pictures of their food- well if you’re a restaurant then this is pretty much exactly what you want! Setting up an Instagram page for your restaurant and posting attractive pictures of the food and drinks can entice an entirely new customer base to your restaurant. Furthermore proudly showcasing the creations of chefs and bartenders will show your staff that you appreciate their hard work and talent enough to display it to the public. Research conducted by Zizzi, one of our customers, in 2017 showed that 30% of Millennials would avoid a restaurant with a poor Instagram presence.[4]

Marketing your restaurant online can make the world of difference to your earnings in 2019, it’s inexpensive and the perfect branding tool to really make a name for yourself in this industry.