Social media marketing has become a crucial strategy for promoting and running a business in digital times. These strategies can be leveraged by restaurants, to drive social media platforms’ large audiences into their potential customers leading to growth and development.
Important social media channels
- Facebook: It is an ideal channel to build awareness and recognition impacting restaurant sales. According to research, 72% of users used Facebook to decide what restaurant they want to eat at. Facebook holds substantial power due to various features allowing building community and sharing ads that can reach the correct audience.
- Instagram: Instagram is a popular channel for food bloggers and micro-influencers, and its second most consumed content is food content. Leveraging this influence to target the audience can increase brand recognition and retention. Its various features for audience interaction and ad formats aid in building a robust online presence.
- Twitter: Twitter is an excellent social media platform for engaging with the audience, however, it can be used for running promotions as well. Offering exclusivity with deals and discount coupons specifically to the followers can increase engagement. Curating custom hashtags for the restaurant enables customers to use them and increases referral traffic.
- Local business registration with Google My Business:
Google algorithm prioritizes local results providing users with a list of restaurants, in their vicinity. Restaurants that appear in local listings have a competitive edge and better local search rankings. It boosts online orders and enables users to provide reviews adding credibility and genuineness to the restaurant. - Share dine-in customer experience:
Sharing customers’ and diners’ experiences through testimonials can allow the restaurant to add authenticity to its brand and generate more incoming customers.
Customers are always eager for reviews and testimonials by experienced customers to know about the restaurants’ hospitality, services and food opinions. It has a strong influence over other customers’ decisions about the restaurants.
Best practices for the fast food restaurant business
- Organic media planning:
The social media presence and organic growth require constant efforts. Similar to SEO, its results are gradual but effective in the long term.- Posting with consistency: Social media requires the restaurant to post frequently with intervals to remain relevant. It also requires identifying the optimal time to receive high engagement from the audience.
- Audience Engagement: Interacting with the audience within the comments or resharing of stories and posts with the restaurant tagged can encourage more customers to share food posts and tag the restaurant.
- Use video features: Social media platforms have introduced stories and short video formats that can include engaging and attention-grabbing content to keep the audience engaged.
- Managing reviews:
Managing the reviews is essential as they showcase the audience’s perspective of the restaurant and the restaurant’s persona concerning the reviews. Responding to the reviews and addressing them, may they be positive or negative comments, can build a responsive image of the restaurant.
Addressing negative comments portrays the restaurant’s willingness to learn and evolve. This can also potentially turn the negative reviewers into brand advocates. Acknowledging and addressing them can also show other customers the restaurant’s values and eventually lead to increasing its customer base. - Customer experience marketing:
Social media platforms can be used to share customer experience and can enable building trust within the restaurant. Allowing customers to share the experience can also maintain transparency with the guest leading to loyal and repeat customers.
According to research, 69% of millennials take pictures of the food they are about to eat. Encouraging the guest to share their restaurant experience and tagging the restaurant can influence their followers to visit the restaurant. It also promotes the restaurant in a good light. - Live food preparation and recipe videos:
A phrase famously said ‘we eat with our eyes’ is highly true in the world of social media. The audience on online platforms is highly interested to see photos and videos of food preparation, its behind-the-scenes and other various food content. Showcasing the food in videos can effectively attract new guests. These platforms offer various features like 10-second videos, minute-long videos or 5-minute videos that can be leveraged to show the restaurant’s food. These also showcase the restaurant’s expertise and experience, allowing customers to entrust them. - Social ad campaigns:
As established earlier, social media presence is highly essential for restaurants to remain relevant. Social media ad campaigns are an effort towards the same. However, they require planning and strategizing with creativity. They aim to attract customers and foster connection with them while offering them exceptional deals, providing experience testimonials and more.
Every social media platform has its features and unique benefits for advertisements. While Instagram offers photo, reel and story ads, Facebook has carousel ads with photo and video ads that can be leveraged to the restaurant’s benefit.
Social media content
Social media for Fast Food Restaurants
- Beneficial social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
- Register with Google My Business for authenticity
- Share customer experiences for credibility.
- Practice organic media planning, managing reviews, marketing customer experience, and leveraging videos and ads for impactful results.
