The 9 Step Marketing Guide for Restaurants

“Good online advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief”

– William Bernbach.

In today’s world that is consumed by technological consumerism, reaching the right audience

at the right time is the name of the game. Especially, with the advent of the startup ecosystem

in the F&B sector and advertising spends going through the roof, branding is not just a privilege

any more, that a few big players can afford to invest in. It has become more of a necessity!

This trend is all the more evident when we look at the online ecosystem where every major brand

is vying for attention. And if you are involved with the F&B sector, your job becomes all the more

difficult. The market leaders spend millions to ensure that the smaller chains get pushed to

oblivion.

But therein also lies an opportunity. Something that even major food chains fail to understand

is that the F&B sector, unlike any other, cannot be influenced heavily through inorganic forms of

advertising. Only the most organic and personalized content will be effective.

Hence, we bring to you the most definitive and comprehensive 9-step guide to online marketing

for restaurants.

An Online Marketing Strategy for a Restaurant needs to be segregated into three major

categories to ensure the most productive and effective results.

(1) Basics (2) Essentials (3) Add-ons.

Basics

Basics are measures that need to be taken in order to ensure that at least you have an online

presence. Essentials are steps that need to be implemented, so that your brand becomes

valuable in the online space. Add-ons are mechanisms that a brand must use to truly become a

market leader.

(1) WEBSITE:

Experts are of the opinion that as much as 95% of independent restaurants do not have a mobile

website, 40% do not have menus that can be read online, 37% do not use social media websites

in any way, and as much as 50% stand alone restaurants do not even have a functional website.

Due to a number of emerging food aggregators, owners feel that it is sufficient and much more

economical to enlist their services on an aggregator platform, thereby using the entire advertising

budget on sales promotions. Aggregator platforms do provide an opportunity to propel those

sales figures even higher. However, what we fail to understand, is that order volumes are directly

proportional to the amount of brand recall that your product demands.

In the absence of an online website, you don’t capitalize on an opportunity to create a brand

image, and thereby do not influence the consumer’s buying needs. In addition, if consumers can

order items from an online ordering website, the brand has greater control over the medium of

sale. This can directly be mapped to higher number of promotional offers, thereby resulting in

higher overall sales numbers.

(2) SEO:

In a gist, search engine optimization is the process of ensuring that your web page ranks higher in

organic (unpaid) search results. Why is it so crucial for restaurants? The entire F&B sector is

dominated by peer reviews and opinions. Consumers are most influenced by other consumers’

testimonials and opinions. We like to call this “Influencer’s opinion”. Organic searches are 8x more

effective than paid searches when it comes to the F&B sector. In short, getting your restaurant to

rank higher in unpaid searches (read Google searches) is the name of the game.

“Using the right kind of content and keywords, and designing the layout of your website in a strategic way so that

web crawlers can access your information with ease, is by far the easiest and most effective way to enhance you

organic search rankings”, says Pankit Chheda – Cofounder of MassBlurb - An automated tool that has designed

SEO websites for major restaurant chains in India.

Considering the ROI, we would say that’s it’s the most inexpensive investment that a restaurant

owner can make, since he gets a lot more amount of online traffic without incurring any

additional advertising expense.

(3) Information Push:

When was the last time you looked up a restaurant on an information publishing website such as

Zomato or Burrp? The answer is not important. What is significant is that all of us, have at least at

some point or the other visited one, and have let it indirectly od directly influence our purchasing

decision.

“The entire F&B sector is dominated by influencer marketing. Reviews and ratings by your peers are the single

most influential factor when it comes to your decision to visit or not to visit a restaurant. Word of mouth is King”-

says Sanket Shah, Cofounder and Marketing Head for MassBlurb.

Under such circumstances it becomes even more pivotal to get accurate information published

at the right places. It’s very important to ensure that your restaurant’s information is consistent

across all publishing websites, and is updated frequently.

Another factor that one needs to remember is that publishing website results rank much higher

than information from other sources, primarily because of the sheer volume of traffic that they

cater to. Hence, when consumers are looking for information, they may prefer accessing it from

such websites rather than the brand’s standalone web page. For e.g. Zomato might be the first

point of contact for anyone looking to get contact information for a particular restaurant.

Essentials

(4) SOCIAL MEDIA:

In order to create a truly coherent online brand image, a website may not be enough. While it

does lay the foundation stone for establishing an online identity, ensuring brand recall takes a lot

more than that. The web is unlike any other medium of information, because consumers interact

with it continually and each consumer defines his own experience on the medium. Hence, social

media websites become very effective in customizing a brand’s user interaction and experience.

“A company that builds a loyal social following has a built-in army to promote their content, day in and day out.

That content will get shared, get links, send social signals…all of which can’t be a bad thing.” – Will Reynolds,

Founder, Seer Interactive

There are ways that a brand can leverage the prowess of social media. It enables a restaurant to

have consistent interaction with its existing as well as futuristic consumer base, push information in

the most organic way feasible, and run promotional offers to get more and more consumers to try

their product. To enable this, restaurant brands need to have a content strategy that is coherent

with the kind of image and influence that it wants to project. The creatives need to be in

alignment with the theme and the brand projection of the restaurant.

If leveraged adequately, a restaurant’s social media page can enable it to build a community of

brand evangelists and influencers, thereby increasing footfalls and revenue.

(5) Social Platforms to Generate Revenue (Lead Generation):

At the end of the day, It all comes down to increasing footfalls into the restaurant, thereby

increasing revenue. However, what most owners do not realise is that social media, if leveraged

appropriately can be a great source to generate sales leads.

‘’Social media provides an excellent platform to generate leads organically”- says Harsh Vakharia- Chief

Innovations and Operations Manager, MassBlurb.

Many of the major restaurant chains personalise their communication with their customers in the

form of grievance redressal, personal messaging, pushing promotional offers, executing contests

and campaigns and communicating the brand’s core values effectively on social media

platforms.

In fact, we recommend that brands can get one step ahead by sending personal invites and

rewarding regular customers and followers, thereby creating brand evangelists that will influence

the brand’s perception amongst their peers. Industry stalwarts believe that personalization is the

key.

“If your customers feel that they are being treated as important assets and are being rewarded for their loyalty to

the brand, then that’s half the job done!”- says Riya Parikh- Chief Content Curator at MassBlurb.” “In addition it

also gives you the advantage of being at the right place at the right time in the right way”

Add-Ons

Sustaining high business performance is a product of continuous strategic alignment.

- Med Yones

(6) ANALYTICS:

It is of prime importance that brands analyse the effectiveness and ROI of their marketing

activities on a regular basis, especially when marketing spends can be upwards of thousands of

dollars.

The right marketing mix in the online space may vary significantly based on factors such as:

(1) The micro sector that a restaurant represents- fine dining, resto- bar, bakery or a lounge,

(2) The social media platforms that a restaurant’s customer base largely uses.

(3) The market competitors that deal in the same cuisine as the restaurant and their locations.

(4) The kind of positive and constructive feedback/reviews a brand receives.

We recommend that every restaurant brand must assess the effectiveness of its promotional

activities on the basis of 4 major parameters:

(1) Web Engagement and Ranking Analysis:

How interactive is your website and the number of conversions that you get out of it, as well as

how does it fare on organic search rankings.

(2) Competitor Analysis:

How do your competitors fair in terms of social media engagement, reviews and ratings on

publisher websites as well as their market position in comparison to your brand.

(3) Review Analysis:

What are your brand’s strong points as per your customers and what are your key areas of

improvement. It’s a great way to get to know what your customer precisely needs and make

amends to your modus operandi.

(4)) Outreach Analysis:

This can uncover flaws with the kind of content that you use and publish, It can be very crucial in

revising your creative and communication strategy and also evaluate if you are projecting the

right brand image with the right set of audiences.

(7) VIRTUAL NUMBER AND DATA COLLECTIONS:

A very basic insight into how major brands increase their revenue every fiscal year is by retaining

the existing customer base in addition to new client acquisitions. It’s very important for any

restaurant owner to maintain an active data repository of its existing customer base, as well as all

instances of interaction with them. This gives them a major insight into the demographics as well

as ordering patterns of the customers. More importantly, it gives you as insight into the most

important touch points for your customer base.

The most transparent and effective form of data collection pertaining to customer interaction is

phone calls. A restaurant cannot afford to miss calls of customers, whether it be enquiries or

orders. Also, many a times there is miscommunication between the central kitchen and the outlets

regarding the in-store inventory, thereby directly affecting the orders that can be placed.

A very effective and convenient way to resolve this is through a virtual number, which is a business

phone number without a directly associated telephone line. One virtual number can be

associated with multiple phone numbers and hence, Its highly improbable to miss phone calls. In

addition, a lot of virtual number systems also enable you to store and hear the phone calls and

automatically update a database of every customer call.

Why is this data important?

“Virtual number data is a great way to send out offers and SMS/Emailers to the existing client base, as this

becomes more of an organic marketing activity rather than an intrusive marketing strategy"

- says Apeksha Dhawan – Head of Technology- MassBlurb.

The probability of your existing customer base accessing these offers and using these coupons

can be as high as 50%, which is a very high ROI.

(8) CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGER:

What can really provide a competitive edge to a restaurant brand and propel it to be a segment

leader is effective management and servicing of existing client base. In the F&B domain, this may

involve everything from personalized interactions to grievance addressing to data warehousing.

The success of CRM implementation largely depends on the level of automation that can be

enabled in terms of data collection and analysis. A number of large restaurant brands have

automated promotional systems and the results are monitored on a regular basis. It is also

important to maintain track of a customer’s previous purchasing decisions, so that customized

promotional offers and interactions can be implemented. It also enables them to implement a

good forecasting model to integrate sales history with future sales projections.

There’s also a psychographic reason as to why an optimal CRM system can directly map to higher

revenue. People today expect personalization. It is very important for brands to project

themselves as human- A brand that people can interact with and contribute to. Maintaining n

effective data warehouse and sending promotional offers based on previous purchasing

decisions can be a great way to let your customers know, that you are paying attention to their

needs.

“A business absolutely devoted to Customer Service Excellence will have only one worry about profits.

They will be embarrassingly large.” -Sir Henry Ford

(9) AUTOMATION:

Now that you have zeroed down on an online advertising and content strategy, it’s important to

realise that the implementation is the name of the game. 90% of the restaurants and food chains

realise by the end of week 2, that they do not have the bandwidth to execute their plans on a

consistent basis.

However, a very effective way to resolve this strategy-bandwidth mismatch is by using automation

to your advantage. A number of Point Of Sale software (pos) companies also provide data and

order management systems so that restaurants can access their customer database and draw

analytics.

Another such unique offering is by MassBlurb which is a completely automated dashboard, which

can enable you to perform all your online marketing activities- website publishing, information

push, social media marketing and lead generation, analytics, virtual numbers and data collection

and CRM, from one point of contact.

Whatever the cuisine, the scale of operation and the business model, these 9 definitive steps

will enable you to reach all your online audiences effectively and comprehensively.