As a restaurant owner, you’re most likely always on the lookout for ways to market your establishment and get new diners in the door. Sometimes this comes easily via word of mouth from current patrons and other times we‘re sure – it’s a bit of a challenge.
However there are numerous restaurants experiencing nice growth due to new web marketing trends such as social media. Many restaurant owners mention that they’re getting an influx of new customers due to efforts on Instagram, YouTube and the newest social media darling; Pinterest. Yes! Pinterest. But how are they driving traffic from this image based network to their doors? This article covers a few good tips and how you too can benefit. Read on.
Image via (Chez Freddy)
# 1. Restaurant Photos
If you have a groovy place, by all means show it off to the world. Better yet let others show it off for you via photo pins on Pinterest. Take as many shots as possible of all areas of your restaurant; including indoors, outdoors, popular seating areas, your top dishes, etc and pin them on a board you could call “restaurant gallery” or something similar. Just be sure the photos are nothing short of stunning, creative or interesting as this is what will compel others to share and pin with their friends.
Feel free to continuously update this board with new photos as time goes by. Popular nights at your restaurant and or big parties are a great opportunity to take photos for this board.
# 2. Customer Involvement
Nowadays one of the best ways to keep customers engaged is to involve them. With Pinterest this would take the form of creating a board that allows others to join and pin in it. They call them group boards and essentially these are collaborative boards where you allow others to join and pin as a group.You could ask customers to submit photos of their favorite meal and best one wins a prize or you could ask customers to take a photo when they come in for their birthday party and so on. The ideas really are endless.
At The Menu Shoppe we try to take advantage of as many social media marketing efforts as we can and so far it is indeed paying off. Pinterest group boards are an excellent way to get new or current customers involved and engaged with your brand; and therefore your business.
# 3. Food Videos
Pinterest is known for images but they also allow videos and the savviest “pinners” know that videos do well when it comes to food, recipes and such. You know the old adage “if an image is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million”. This could not be truer in the food niche, as would be customers want to see and experience foodie delights as if they were there sitting at a table.
So get your video camera or smartphone out and take videos of your food, your restaurant, your staff and anything else that takes the customer virtually “there”. Be sure that the videos are shot with good lighting, are crystal clear and short. Keep each video under two minutes long as anything longer than this will make you potentially lose viewers. And pin pin pin them to your video board.
Pinterest is an extremely popular social networking site that is mostly made up of females who love to drool and share food related items. So this makes it an ideal destination for your strategic marketing efforts. Try one or all of our tips above to get new foot traffic in the door or keep current customers coming back for more.
What ways have you seen restaurant owners use Pinterest for marketing purposes? Tell us below in the comment area as we might do a follow up post to showcase new ideas.
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