Anyone involved in the restaurant business will confirm that it's a ruthless business. The profit margins are slender, and the predictability is nonexistent. Even people who aren’t involved in the industry have observed how a restaurant with a great location, great menu, and splashy launch quickly falls into the doldrums of empty tables, half-price specials, and eventual closure – all within a few months or even weeks in the most competitive markets.
Of course it all boils down to the basics - food, ambiance, and service; but really it's the mobile and internet marketing and the digital age that are so important in getting your restaurant noticed above all your competitors. Some establishments are always on the look-out for that 'secret weapon' which will help them get noticed, and draw in their customers. One of those secret weapons is so obvious it’s almost invisible: Your humble standard blog.
Blog Benefits
From a marketing perspective blogs have a lot going for them:
• They’re cheap. Actually, in most cases they’re free in the sense of not incurring any additional expenses once you have web hosting and a designed site.
• They’re personal. Your consumers love a human voice, and they like to know there's very real human thought and emotion going into the food they enjoy.
• It's shareable. Maybe you don't need to 'Go Viral' but you can always aspire to write something interesting that people are happy to share with each other.
Strategies of Blogs
It can be quite easy launching a blog - setting up a Wordpress site and writing some chatty notes about your menu, your business, and whatever events are happening at your restaurant. However, you can get much better results by using some more complex and effective strategies.
Your Staff Diaries. Getting your staff involved can be incredibly fun, a team-building exercise, and a great attractor for customers. Your chefs, your servers, your host or hostess – getting everyone to contribute something to the blog not only makes it feel like a fun, welcoming place that people will want to be in, but also personalizes everything. A restaurant lives in a community, after all, and reaching out in a friendly way to your whole potential customer base can only help integrate the place into that community.
A Discussion on Menus. Most customers aren't amateur chefs or foodies. They come to enjoy a meal they couldn’t possibly prepare at home, and they’re often not educated on the science and art of menu creation. A great marketing tool for your restaurant is a series of ongoing blog posts that explains why you make the food choices you do. Click here to find more about restaurant website hosting.
Become Involved in Your Community. Getting involved in your community is another great way to become the restaurant of choice. Getting out there and involved is one great idea, but simply providing some food-related information for the whole community is another way of establishing your restaurant’s brand. You can even feel confident in promoting other restaurants every now and then - this just confirms that you are indeed a part of the community.
Yes, a blog can be extra work, but you'll have lots of fun doing it: plus the benefits of having a blog for your restaurant will probably be your own 'secret weapon' to filling all those tables each and every night!
Of course it all boils down to the basics - food, ambiance, and service; but really it's the mobile and internet marketing and the digital age that are so important in getting your restaurant noticed above all your competitors. Some establishments are always on the look-out for that 'secret weapon' which will help them get noticed, and draw in their customers. One of those secret weapons is so obvious it’s almost invisible: Your humble standard blog.
Blog Benefits
From a marketing perspective blogs have a lot going for them:
• They’re cheap. Actually, in most cases they’re free in the sense of not incurring any additional expenses once you have web hosting and a designed site.
• They’re personal. Your consumers love a human voice, and they like to know there's very real human thought and emotion going into the food they enjoy.
• It's shareable. Maybe you don't need to 'Go Viral' but you can always aspire to write something interesting that people are happy to share with each other.
Strategies of Blogs
It can be quite easy launching a blog - setting up a Wordpress site and writing some chatty notes about your menu, your business, and whatever events are happening at your restaurant. However, you can get much better results by using some more complex and effective strategies.
Your Staff Diaries. Getting your staff involved can be incredibly fun, a team-building exercise, and a great attractor for customers. Your chefs, your servers, your host or hostess – getting everyone to contribute something to the blog not only makes it feel like a fun, welcoming place that people will want to be in, but also personalizes everything. A restaurant lives in a community, after all, and reaching out in a friendly way to your whole potential customer base can only help integrate the place into that community.
A Discussion on Menus. Most customers aren't amateur chefs or foodies. They come to enjoy a meal they couldn’t possibly prepare at home, and they’re often not educated on the science and art of menu creation. A great marketing tool for your restaurant is a series of ongoing blog posts that explains why you make the food choices you do. Click here to find more about restaurant website hosting.
Become Involved in Your Community. Getting involved in your community is another great way to become the restaurant of choice. Getting out there and involved is one great idea, but simply providing some food-related information for the whole community is another way of establishing your restaurant’s brand. You can even feel confident in promoting other restaurants every now and then - this just confirms that you are indeed a part of the community.
Yes, a blog can be extra work, but you'll have lots of fun doing it: plus the benefits of having a blog for your restaurant will probably be your own 'secret weapon' to filling all those tables each and every night!