Restaurant Marketing in 2013: Why Storytelling Matters

Restaurant Marketing in 2013: Why Storytelling Matters

Restaurant marketing consultants everywhere are talking about the power of social media and local SEO.  But very few restaurant marketing consultants are talking about the power of storytelling.

There are some very empty restaurants out there serving good food. There are also some very crowded restaurants serving OK food. Why are some restaurants busier than others? Did they hire a restaurant marketing company?  What’s their secret restaurant marketing sauce?

Just as there are many flavors of ice cream, there are many flavors of restaurant marketing. When it comes to marketing a restaurant, there’s a particularly effective flavor, called Storytelling.  Restaurant marketing ideas, trends and strategies are helpful, but the secret sauce to powerful restaurant marketing is about great storytelling.

Great food and great beer is a pre-requisite.  But what does your restaurant offer that others don’t.  Marketers call this your unique selling proposition, or USP. Forget about “lowest price” or “best quality”, how are you REALLY different? The best points of difference are remarkably subtle. 

Shaping perceptions in the mind of the customer base is where many restaurant owners tend to get lazy.   Smart bar owners are constantly focusing on their points of difference and storytelling in a smart way to win over the influencers.

restaurant marketing influencers

Not all bar flys are created equal.

There are two types of bar flys.  You want the “influencer” type.  Not the loner type.  Influencers are the cool kids…the class clowns.  They typically have a large influence over a large circle of friends in close proximity to the bar. Usually these influencer type bar flys are great storytellers.

Last year, I spoke to a bar owner who estimated that his “influencer” bar fly added $100,000+ to his bottom line at year end. (This  puts the cost of working with a marketing agency into perspective. )

What’s your restaurants story?  What do you stand for?  Are you clear about it?  Is your staff clear?  It’s true you can’t be all things to all people, so don’t try. However, certain brand traits are non divisive and appeal to the majority without diluting the brand.  For example, are you supportive of animal shelters? (animal loving bar flys) Do you love bicycling? (bicycle loving bar flys) Do you provide free, helpful information about the local music events in town? (music loving bar flys). A professional marketing agency can help you gain clarity.

Santa Barbara Marketing Online Web Design Branding Strategy

How do I market my restaurant cost effectively?

After clearly defining your brand, it’s time to choose a “platform” from which you can speak your brand messages.  Let’s talk about communicating those points of difference to the masses. I’m not talking bumper stickers people!

social media marketing

Unless you’re a chain, direct mail, radio, television are often too expensive.  Locally owned restaurants owners are competing on a different level.  Smaller fish need to swim faster with a sophisticated social media, SEO and web marketing plan to stay competitive.

Social media, search engine optimization and email marketing are newer, better, more cost effective ways to spread the word.  By using these lower cost online marketing platforms to communicate your unique selling proposition, bar profits, and bar flys will increase.

Advanced restaurant marketing plans require critical thinking sessions with a marketing consultant every week.  The world of online marketing moves fast and staying current is crucial to success.  The marketing consultant should ideally have a degree in marketing and many years of experience in the field.   Testimonials are a good indicator of their track record.

restaurant marketing Ideas

“Break the illusion of separation with your customer base, one story at a time.”

The best restaurant marketing ideas tell stories about the people who work there, about the food, the patrons, the thinking behind the food. Like any good story, these are elements that help potential customers identify in some way with the restaurant. More connections = more likability.

restaurant marketing trends

Facebook just happens to be one of the easiest, and most effective platforms for storytelling in 2013.  So USE IT!  However, keep away from political commentary. Restaurateurs making divisive political comments on Facebook or Twitter will lose more customers than they make.

Google Reviews Restaurant Marketing

Local SEO with keyword research, directory submissions and reviews are three additional focus areas for restaurant owners. These are specialized marketing tactics that restaurant owners should consider allowing professional marketers to help with every month.  Staying competitive in business requires specialization of roles to keep operations running smoothly.

Optimize your web site for local search keywords your customers, and tourists, type into Google when searching for your business. Use your blog to add value to the reader.  Websites aren’t just for large companies; now more than ever, small local businesses are realizing the importance of having a website and implementing an Internet marketing strategy. Engage in local SEO practices and be sure you get a keyword research report from a reliable online marketing company before you start optimizing your site.

Internet directories are the new yellow pages.  Since the internet is the #1 place people go to find a restaurant now, it makes sense to get listed in as many local directories as possible.  There are 100’s of local directories in your area – find them and get listed.

Yelp Restaurant Marketing Tips

Yelp and Google reviews are the black swans for restaurant owners today. Online restaurant restaurant reviews are perhaps the most overlooked area of restaurant marketing today. It’s important to get creative and find ways to increase the number of positive reviews on Google Plus and Yelp.  Consider teaming up with local food bloggers and turn them into brand ambassadors. Woo local food bloggers into reviewing your restaurant in return for a free meal. The back links will increase Google rankings, and the positive review will help your reputation.

Grow your email database and you’ll grow your restaurant business. Compared to direct marketing, email marketing is a less expensive way to stay top of mind with those bar flys.  Keep customers informed with educational, entertaining, engaging information through your email newsletter every month, tie the content into social media and blog.

Restaurants need to market themselves – how they tell their story and explain why customers should give them a try is critical to long term success. Restaurants need to communicate consistently and creatively to their audience, and not go broke in the process.  Get with a smart marketing company that’s familiar with the low cost, effective marketing tools and tactics.  There are literally 100’s of no cost ways to market a business with the internet today. Learn them, and execute consistently.

restaurant marketing ideas

Can I do it all by myself?

Can you cut your hair all by yourself?   Well maybe yes, but how do you think it will turn out?  Smart bar owners stay focused on what they do best, running the bar, and let a professional marketer do what they do best, shaping perceptions and winning the influencers.

Execution is everything. A tennis player does not have time to stop mid swing and figure out how to swing the racket.   You have to go fast and stay consistent each month with your messaging.  Brand building is all about being ubiquitous in the mind of the customer base.

The need to improve perceptions about your restaurant hasn’t changed, but the mediums for doing so have changed dramatically in recent years (social media, blogging, email marketing, SEO press releases, online reviews).  Smart bar owners are using these new mediums to “influence the influencers” with smart brand messages.

Always remember, you could have a better product or service than your competitor, but if they’re telling a better story than you are, they’ll outsell you all year long.  It’s all about GREAT storytelling. This is an ancient truth in marketing, and it’s especially relevant for restaurants and bars.

Above all, stay consistent with your marketing every month and your restaurant business will be more successful this year.  Good luck, and here’s to capturing more market share and more bar flys in 2013.

Taylor Reaume

Founder/e-business Coach

Santa Barbara Marketing Founder Taylor Reaume

Stepwise Guide to Keyword Research

Stepwise Guide to Keyword Research

Here is a stepwise guide that will help achieve good rankings and dive more traffic to your website:

Step 1: Invest some time to find the best keywords

Keywords are the words that web surfers enter in search engines to find websites. It’s pointless to optimize your web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the search engines. For a successful online marketing campaign, you must target the right keywords. The keywords you use should be relevant for your website and web surfers should be searching for your keywords. If you target the wrong keywords, your website promotion efforts will be in vain and you will waste a lot of time and money.

Step 2: Find out which keywords are good keywords.

There are three different keyword types: keywords for browsing, keywords for comparing and keywords for buying. Keywords for comparing are usually the keywords that work best for search engine optimization. People who use that keyword type are looking for a solution to their problem and they are ready to buy. To get best results with your search engine optimization efforts, you should concentrate on that keyword type. Most people use a two to four word phrase in a search, so phrases are very effective. Single words cannot be promoted effectively because they are not very targeted. Internet users who use four-word searches are more likely to purchase goods or services than those using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).

Step 3: Don’t target the wrong keywords.

If you target the wrong keywords, you will lose time and money. You will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords for which your website cannot get high rankings at the moment. Or you will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords that don’t convert to sales. It is very important that you choose the right keywords that lead to high search engine rankings and sales. Make sure that you choose the correct keyword type. One-word keywords are not very effective because they are not very targeted. In addition, the competition for these keywords is very high and it is very difficult to get good rankings for them. Web surfers might not use the keywords you expect. For example, people searching for “optometry” might actually enter “eye doctor” as the keyword. It is important to find the keywords that potential customers really use. Internet users who use four-
word searches are more likely to purchase goods or services than those using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).

“10 Golden Rules Of Internet Marketing”

“10 Golden Rules Of Internet Marketing”

The following 10 golden rules of internet marketing will help you build a successful website in 1 year’s time on Google.

It can be done faster if you are a real go getter. Do these things below to achieve top rankings, and follow these steps to build a successful website

It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines. If you build a good site with

an average of 4 to 5 pages per user, you should be in the 10-20,000 page views per day range in one year’s time.

What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to “do something” with.

GOLDEN RULE #1: Perform Extensive Keyword Research

GOLDEN RULE #2: Start a Competitor Research Grid

GOLDEN RULE #3: Optimize Your Website to be both S.E. Friendly and user-friendly website & Setup your meta tags properly with your target keywords.

Step 1: “Keyword use in document title”

Step 2: “Keyword use in body text”

Step 3: “Keyword use in H1 headline texts”

Step 4: “Keyword use in domain name”

Step 5: “Keyword use in page URL”

Step 6: “Remove hidden, invisible or misspelled text”

Step 7: “Create “scan proof text” copywriting with BOLD and Italics”

Step 8: “No Duplicate Content”

Step 9: “Fix your Doc Type Tag”

Step 10: “Use Of Name Tag”

Step 11: “WIKI-ize your site with same site link texts”

Step 12: “Use Straight HTML Navigation Links on Your Website”

Step 13: “Optimize body copy for proper keyword density”

Step 14: “Validate your HTML code against http://validator.w3.org”

Step 15: “Optimize web page Load Times”

Step 16: “Auto Meta Generators”

Step 17: “Set up a 404 page and 301 page”

Step 18: “Set up proper robots.txt file”

Step 19: Add a site map to your website / Submit your site map to Google


GOLDEN RULE #4:
Make your site a “Call to action, Direct Response Site”

Step 1: “Install a Email-a-friend Module”

Step 2: “Install a bookmarking/social networking Module”

Step 3: “Install a Free Report (top 10 reason why…enter email to get it) Module”

Step 5: “Install a Most Popular Articles Module”

Step 6: “Install a Polls Module”

Step 7: “Install a Video Module”

Step 8: “Install an omnipresent Request Info Module in sidebar”

Step 9: “Install a Audio Module”

Step 10: “Install a blog and post updates weekly”

Step 11: “Install a Live Chat module”

Step 12: “Install a Happy Birthday Module”

Step 13: “Install a Commenting System”

Step 14: “Install RSS subscription module to generate repeat visitors”

Step 15: “Install RSS syndication module to syndicate helpful articles on your website – good for SEO benefit”

GOLDEN RULE #5: Make your site “trustworthy” in the eyes of your visitors

Step 1: “Install Security Logos and Web Seals”

Step 2: “Install a Help Desk module”

Step 3: “Install a Testimonials module”

Step 4: “Install a Live Talking Person on your website”

GOLDEN RULE #6: Off Site Promotion

Step 1: “Local Listings! Get your domain listed locally

Step 2: “Setup Google Webmaster Tools Account and Google Analytics”

Step 3: “Leverage the power of social media”

Step 4: “Spread the word around using the free Press Release websites”

GOLDEN RULE #7: Start an inbound/outbound Link Campaign with the Smart Choice Link Manager

GOLDEN RULE #8: Start a forum posting campaign

GOLDEN RULE #9: Create useful articles and post them on your website. Then disseminate them across the internet.

Step 1: “Create keyword rich articles for your website”

Step 2: “Submit articles to article directory websites”

GOLDEN RULE #10: Submit your optimized website to the search engines

Learn SEO: How to Increase Page Rank

Learn SEO: How to Increase Page Rank

Learn SEO! This Week’s Discussion Points:

“Increase Page Rank And How It Affects Your Rankings”

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We will be discussing a variety of topics related to page rank (seo juice) and how it affects your rankings in Google and other major search engines. You will learn SEO and how to increase page rank to attract more visitors to your site.

Tune in tonight at 7pm, we look forward to seeing you on the call.

Happening Tonight @ 7pm On Your Phone

Visit Our Blog for details on tonights discussion points.

If you are free on Wednesday evenings, we hold a complementary Search Engine Optimization Webinar from 7pm-8pm. It’s informative. It’s educational.  And it gives you the opportunity to learn SEO from a seasoned internet marketing professional. Our weekly search engine marketing conference call can help you increase page rank to drive traffic to your website.

Call this number,484-589-1011 ( access code 223-974-217) and you will hear us talking about “Smart Things To Know About Search Engine Optimization”. You are encouraged to use the webinar Voiceover IP. The right way to join is to follow this link and register at gotomeeting.com.

To join this webinar the lazy way:

Step 1: goto www.joinwebinar.com
Step 2: enter this Webinar ID: 676368720
Step 3: fill out your name, email, etc
Step 4: check your email for webinar link

To join this webinar by phone only:
Step 1: Dial 484-589-1011 Step 2: Enter access code 223-974-217
* you cannot speak, only listen…

Why learn SEO?:
• Increase page rank
• More phone calls
• More leads
• More business

Search Engine Keywords: the #1 Keyword Research Mistake

Search Engine Keywords: the #1 Keyword Research Mistake
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Learn how to choose Search Engine Keywords! This Weeks Discussion Points:

#1 Biggest Mistake In Keyword Research

#2 Biggest Mistake In Keyword Research

#3 Biggest Mistake In Keyword Research

Tune in tonight at 7pm, we look forward to seeing you on the call.

Happening Tonight @ 7pm On Your Phone

Visit Our Blog for details on tonights discussion points.

If you are free on Wednesday evenings, we hold a complementary SEO Webinar from 7pm-8pm. It’s informative. It’s educational. And it’s a great way to understand the process of choosing search engine keywords. Call this number,484-589-1011 ( access code 223-974-217) and you will hear us talking about “Smart Things To Know About SEO” You are encouraged to use the webinar Voiceover IP. The right way to join is to follow this link and register at gotomeeting.com.

Search engine keywords are the foundation of any website’s natural search strategy. Keyword research is the first step in building a search engine optimization campaign: keyword research involves determining which terms you want associated with your search engine content and how you want readers to find your website. Keyword research is an integral part of internet marketing, and this webinar will teach webmasters the proper techniques for choosing search engine keywords.

To join this webinar the lazy way:

Step 1: goto www.joinwebinar.com
Step 2: enter this Webinar ID: 676368720
Step 3: fill out your name, email, etc
Step 4: check your email for webinar link

To join this webinar by phone only:
Step 1: Dial 484-589-1011 Step 2: Enter access code 223-974-217
* you cannot speak, only listen…

Why SEO?:
• More visitors to your website
• More phone calls
• More leads
• More business

Fee To Join: $7 via Paypal

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Search engine keywords should be chosen with precision and thought. The worst thing a webmaster can do is skimp on his or her keyword research: search terms are the keys to natural search traffic and can be the difference between a successful website and one which receives no traffic.