Show Notes
Whether you are a new restaurant or a seasoned veteran in the space, one thing is for certain, you have to market. 10 years ago businesses could get by on sponsoring the local sports team, putting out some flyers, and having friends tell their friends. As the world gets busier and more crowded, competition rises. Which means there are more places to grab food, so having a clear and strategic plan to beat the competition.
In today’s episode we are going to break down 5 Awesome Facebook Marketing Ideas for Your Restaurant.
1. User generated content. This is probably the easiest and one of the most effective ways to grow your audience and engagement on social. Who writes the best copy… the customer who loves you. You’re never going to beat Susy’s family photo talking about how she had the best experience spending time with family and eating your amazing pizza.
2. Quizzes. A fun way to have new customers try out your place is to have them take a quiz to find out which food item they may fall in love with at your place. Think about it this way, pick your top 5 favorite dishes, and based off how they answer, they are given an item to try. To sweeten the deal, offer a free appetizer or dessert when they come in.
3. VIP Messenger Bot. Create a simple Facebook messenger VIP list where people who sign up can receive special discounts, get to try new menu items before they’re released, freebies, etc. Its a great way to incentivize your most loyal customers.
4. Make some videos, yo! Show us a slo-mo version of you preparing the best dish. The goal here is to make mouths water. A quick, 15-20 second video will do here, but make sure you add a call to action at the end of your video. Whether it’s a simple “come see us today” , “mention this video to get 25% off” or “comment below to be messaged a free appetizer” It’s completely up to you, but don’t let the great video fail.
5. Use Events. Depending on your restaurant you can come up with different event ideas. Live music, trivia night, holidays themed, drink specials, dance classes… these are all great ideas to create events around. The best thing is that you can create Events on Facebook to promote them. Facebook does a great job promoting events organically and you can always put some gas to the fire by using paid ads.
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Transcript
Aaron [00:00:00] Hey, guys. Whether you're a new restaurant or a seasoned veteran in the space, one thing is for certain you have to market your restaurant. Ten years ago, businesses could get by on sponsoring the local sports team, putting putting up some flyers and having friends tell their friends or word of mouth as the world gets busier. We have less time to pay attention to things and there's more restaurants, which means there's more competition. This means that you have to figure out a way to be strategic online. You have to create a strategic plan to beat out your competition. We talk about all those things. On this episode. Let's jump in.
Christian [00:00:50] All right, let's get started. Number one, user generated content. I mean, this has to be super easy, I guess, for restaurants that have actual users posting about their their stuff. You know, I think I think about user generated content and then I think about us. And it's like people don't really post about, you know, marketing agencies, but restaurants. Mm hmm. Yeah. That you should at least get maybe two posts per week at least hopefully and you can always repurpose them, too.
Aaron [00:01:21] So like, you know, you get that one that did really well. If it's three weeks later or month later, whatever, you could use the same picture again.
Christian [00:01:31] So you had to be paid attention to, you know, I guess the location and then actual hashtags as well. And then looking on all social media networks to not just Facebook, but, you know, looking on Instagram, Twitter, maybe, I don't know, Yelp. Yes.
Christian [00:01:49] That's what I was also thinking. Like it could be cool, too, because some people might just post pictures on Yelp or Google reviews. You can grab those and then go back to Facebook and then put him on there and say, like, hey, Jenny and Marc were celebrating their fifth anniversary at our restaurant. Congratulations, guys all like that would be amazing for them to see something like that.
Aaron [00:02:09] I would love that. I mean, I guess sweet. And then I would messaging and be like, hey, give me some free food.
Christian [00:02:13] Yeah, exactly. So I think, yeah, these are generic content is definitely a strategy that every restaurant should be using and any food related place really just taking advantage. I mean, it's free for. Yes, very, very well.
Aaron [00:02:28] And it's also I mean, one of the things that I wanted to make sure it's like they're going to do the best job of, like writing the copier, the verbiage versus you, like you could say, like we have an elegant salmon, you know, sprinkle with this lemon, whatever. And then you got Susie over here who takes a picture with her and her family or whatever. And they say they had the best time ever. Like, you know, that's going to do 10 times better than what you say about your food. So it's just stuff that you can't think of. And that's why it's so it's so good to have it. And I would say that like other than like a restaurant, it just started like a day or two ago, even ones that just started. You're gonna have user generated content, even just the, you know, brand new ones or, you know, ones that have been around for like six months. You're still going to have user generated content.
Christian [00:03:16] Yeah. I guess I think about user generated content. I immediately go to pictures, but it could be just reviews as well. And just making or grabbing and review and making it into an image, you know, you could do that and, you know, make it brand and everything. I've seen some other people do that on Facebook as well.
Aaron / Christian [00:03:36] Yeah. And even if you didn't know how to do that, you could say like, oh, I loved the steak. You could take a picture of your steak and upload the steak and the like. Review is like a, you know, two images together. So I could go back and forth like. Love the steak. And this is what it looks like. And then people are like, oh, my gosh, like, I've got to go try the steak. Exactly. Yeah, I think that will be awesome. All right. No dose quizzes.
Aaron [00:04:01] And as I was writing this, I thought it would be really cool for you to do quizzes based off of like your if you have seasonal stuff. Tha'll be great if you don't. Which is like your five. You top five or six items and you just showing this to people who are new and saying like, oh, Christian, you know, what kind of food would you best you know, or what kind of food would be best for you to come try my restaurant? Because I feel like a lot of times when people go to a restaurant I like unless they've been there before. I just don't know what to give. I don't know if I don't try this or try that. It all looks so good or and I don't know about this stuff. And then you just ask like five or six questions and it says like, Hey, Christian, you'd be best to take our, you know, Apple would smoked bacon burger. This seems like your kind of burger. Here you go. And then at the end of the at the bottom of it's like, hey, come try this burger out. If you don't love it, you know, we'll give it to you for free or whatever. I don't know. I mean, that's something like that. But at least give them like a free appetizer or dessert and say, like, yeah, come check us out like you. You'd love the burger and we want to incentivize you or sweeten the deal by giving you a free dessert.
Christian [00:05:06] Yeah. And yeah, I was just thinking, not like not even that, but I mean, you couldn't even make it something fun, you know, where you know, I don't know. Maybe you have you know, the restaurant has three owners and they're all have like very different personalities.
Christian [00:05:23] And it's more of who what type of emotion are you? You know, obviously, those like you were like a little mean and had like the same person, but just different emotions or whatever emotion are you today? I mean, you could definitely just explored a lot of different things when it comes to quizzes. It doesn't have to be sincerely like super or like restaurant related. And at the end of it, you can still give them that deal for the free appetizer or. Dessert. Right. If you're a sporting star, it could be sports related. Yeah, exactly. Don't have to be about food or drinks or whatever. Yeah, exactly. All right. So this our ad today. Actually, I want to talk to you about the Website calculator. I don't know if we've actually done this before, but we originally finished a brand new Website cost calculator. So you answer a few questions and then it gives you an average price on what the Website should cost you. So you're in the you're shopping for a brand new Website. You have no idea what other people are charging. These are pretty standard prices for agencies out there. Well, they're charging. But more specifically, they're a little bit geared towards, you know, what we would charge. So if you're interested in us generating leads revenue with a brand new Website for you, then you need to complete this Website cost calculator. And let's do this. Go to our Facebook and send us a message and say Website calculator and we'll send you the link directly.
Christian [00:06:59] So you know how to type anything and just find us on Facebook at BitBranding and send us a message that says Website calculator and we'll send you that link. And there's no strings attached. You just fill out the questions and we'll give you a number right there. And then.
Aaron [00:07:15] All right. We are back. Number three, we're talking about the five awesome Facebook marketing ideas for your restaurant. In case you were driving, made a left turn and then got frustrated because you made the wrong turn. We're going to bring you back here. Number three is the VIP messenger Bot so this is kind of a strategy that we stole from somebody we interviewed a while back in see seat.
Aaron [00:07:39] And it's worked pretty well. You should check out that episode. It's just look up Jace Beanie. And I think it's probably like five or six episodes removed from this one. But if you just type in Jace Beanie on our Website, it should pop up anyway. He used this Facebook Messenger VIP funnel or strategy to incentivize people to join his messenger list and then he message to people and offer the deals. It's really that simple. Facebook wants you to message people because it means that they that you they can run more ads to those people. And he wants them to engage with messenger because they own the platform. So getting people on your messenger does a couple of things. One, the open rates ridiculously high, much higher than email two It allows you to either message those people as a broadcast, which maybe grab a hole. We go down a little bit later. Check out a tool called Mini Chat to make that happen or three inexpensively run ads to the people who sign up, meaning they signed up and you got a thousand people on your list. It may cost you a couple of dollars to reach those thousand people and just offer them, hey, get a free appetizer, get a free dessert. I'm coming up. I don't know what else I would love from a restaurant, but I love the free up dozen and dessert. That's why I go back to those two.
Aaron / Christian [00:08:56] Well, I was thinking also, if you have a brand new menu item and you have these people in this exclusive messenger list, you get in them. Hey, we're about to launch this new item. We need some taste testers. You will eat that, you know. Well, you totally and figure it out.
Aaron [00:09:13] And if you're trying to play on words. There he was. Yeah. I'm always thinking the lazy dog, because we went to that VIP thing was late at Lazy Dog. And I just had to. It was such a good experience. Maybe because I got like three dinners off of it and I went back there after that. I mean, I'm giving them money now. Two but three free dinners. But yes, they message me, is it like, hey, we got a new burger and I love all your guys burgers like we have a new burger. You've come in a few times, you know. Thanks for joining our VIP list. Come try this out is next week. Let us know what you think. Leave us a review and that's it. I'm like, yes. OK, absolutely I will. You know, I'll give you that. And, you know, do you want my social to like whatever, just giving you the just give me the free burger. So it is super engaging, too. Like it's it's engaging. Plus it's also it can be automated to an extent. Tubes as well.
Christian [00:10:03] Yes. And I mean, yeah. This messenger bot thing, it's just a way to think more martial incentivize your most loyal customers, you know. Because people who actually signed up for that are going to be super interested in your restaurant. And they're the people who are going to keep coming back, back, back.
Christian [00:10:19] So number four is make some videos about yo yo, you can play some videos, yo.
Christian [00:10:30] Yeah. I mean, with videos we talked about this almost almost every episode, but we talked about this a lot. And there's a ton of different things that you can do with video and food, slo-mo videos. You know, just a quick 15, 20 second videos. You can do promo videos. You can do videos even about your people. Doesn't have to be necessarily all about food or, you know, maybe how to make a drink and things like that. There's a ton, ton, ton of ideas that you can do with videos and restaurants. And I really don't think that restaurants are taking advantage of that. You know, using video to his full potential.
Aaron [00:11:12] Yeah. You see, I mean, when you're on Facebook or I mean, we're talking about Facebook care about you and Instagram, like most of the time they're just posting pictures. Most of the time in a video helps you like I mean, it can be short, like you said that 15 to 20 seconds, like, OK. Show the experience. Show somebody enjoying the food. Like that's gonna do a lot better than just one picture because everybody else just does one picture. So I think the video helps you stand out. And one thing to note here, to make your videos effective.
Aaron [00:11:42] It's great to do all of those things. We're talking about showcasing your employees, showcasing them, making the food, maybe an offer or whatever. But make sure to add the call to action the like. Come see us today or, you know, use this discount or mention this video and get a percentage of whatever it is, just have some kind of call to action at the end versus oh, I watched this video. It looked good and there's just nothing like it. I guess as a restaurant owner, you should look at like Pizza Hut or anybody else who advertises during like, you know, prime time. They're not wasting their time. I just saying like. Hey, we have this pizza at this offer and then they just cut out. They always say, like, get delivery today, order now, whatever it like, get online in order. Like they're at it. They're making you go to, you know, take action. They want you to do something. And so you should do that as well.
Christian [00:12:31] And I do want to say maybe a 4.5 here, make videos and make videos inside of Facebook stories. I believe Facebook is pushing Facebook stories more and more. And I think you're going to see that more so in 2020. So it's very important to sort of stay ahead of the trend or new features that Facebook is coming out with. So definitely do videos and try to incorporate them into Facebook stories, which is somewhat new. Not all people are using it, but Facebook is definitely going to be having a push for that. And this coming year.
Aaron [00:13:06] Awesome. All right. Our last one here for five awesome marketing ideas for your restaurant is to use events. And I think this is probably one of the ways that I get drawn into a restaurant is like, oh, great place to eat. And then they have something going on. I mean, it could be a restaurant, could be a trivia night, but it also could be like a theme to night to like, hey, come in and where you're seeing a hat or like I think Chick fil A does, like dress up like a cow and get free chicken or something like that. But like, you see that all over social media plays a huge brand. But even your local business, like, you know, if they come in and they're wearing like for the holidays, like elsewhere, I've seen a hat and get 10 percent off or get a free, you know, ice spiked eggnog or something like that.
Christian [00:13:50] Yeah, exactly. And I think the main thing with the Facebook event is that people do search for that.
Christian [00:13:56] There's this weekend where I have nothing to do and we're just looking for something. And that's one of my go to places. I will go to Facebook events and just browse and see what's going on. And I did see some places where they do that. They may even have just a drink special on a Friday night. And that's all they have is just a drink special. But they create an event for that smart and it just catches my attention. You know, it's like, oh, this restaurant. Oh, they have this drinks. OK, cool. So is this a way to, I guess, capture more people and using Facebook to its full potential? And I think that's what these marketing ideas we're talking about messenger. We're talking about events. We're talking about Facebook stories. So it's not just posting on your wall. We're telling you as a restaurant owner to use Facebook to its full potential and use all its features in order to, you know, to boost engagement and get more eyeballs to your page, into your restaurant. So events. I think it's another great avenue.
Christian [00:14:55] I think there was even a an app, a Facebook. I don't know if it's a Facebook event or Facebook local was. I think they got rid of it, though. You should know that there's a Facebook local app I think has like offers and different things like that, which offers is another great.
Aaron [00:15:13] Yes. Coz you can see the discounts. OK, so maybe maybe it was. I don't know. They deleted one of their apps because nobody use it. All right. I think I downloaded it, but then it got deleted or something like that. I don't know if it was Facebook I've been through. Christian to on a quick check real quick. We're waiting guys now. I don't know. Yeah, I think the events free. And you can actually we didn't talk about Facebook local as well. You're looking for one thing we did not touch on. It was five, five point five. Again, we kind of gave a little bit more. Just doing any type of paid traffic to that. So if something's doing well, it's hard to get a bunch of likes and comments and shares, whether it's, you know, Facebook ads, go to business manager ads, manager, run ad behind it. If you do not at least just boost your post, especially for those local restaurant owners. It's just going to help you reach more people. So I think they'll be very helpful for you guys. All right. That is it. Today, we had five awesome marketing ideas for your restaurant. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this. Make sure to go and park or stop running on the treadmill or whatever you're doing and write down the ideas or just go to over to BitBranding dot Co forward slash Podcast. This is episode 129. You can see all of the show notes there and you can actually get a written version. Addition is kind of copy it all down. If you have been subscribed for a while and haven't left us a review, we would love an honest rating and review. I know we got one more review, but they just didn't leave a comment. Oh, I'd love for you to leave a comment. That way we can shout you out on the podcast. And if this is your first time listening, you listen to all the way to the end. Please make sure you hit subscribe so you do not miss out on any episode. And we are available. I guess I don't we don't talk about us too much. We focus on iTunes or Apple podcast, but you can subscribe on any of the platforms that you listen to us on. So whether it's Spotify or anything like that. And as I'm thinking about that Spotify, I just did their year in review. So if the Marketing Natives was your podcast in review, send us a screenshot and over on Instagram d them and let us know. We'll definitely give you something special for that. So if we were your podcast on Spotify, we want to know. All right. See you guys next week. Bye.
