Some people cook for themselves, some prefer outside dining/or home delivery, while some prefer a combination. No matter where or how they eat, we’re all food lovers.

So, how do you attract foodies to your restaurant, and how do you keep them coming back to you? During the past few years, Facebook has become one of the best marketplaces. With its enormous number of users, you can promote your businesses or products through it.

Restaurants are a go-to place for people who like to dine outside. Couples go on dates, friends go to parties, families go to have quality family time, restaurants serve as a recreation for people. While most restaurants are famous for their food, some have a reputation for good ambiance and hospitality. Nowadays people want quality food in a good environment. Unlike the old days, when people searched for a good restaurant while walking down the street, people now search for them online. Facebook serves a great role in people’s decisions of choosing the perfect restaurant to dine in.

A person shares their reviews about a restaurant they recently visited and then people base their choices on that certain review. The same thing happens while ordering food too. People check reviews about what food they are going to order and then make decisions based on those reviews.

Want to add Facebook marketing to get more orders for your restaurant? Check out our website for boosting your online sales with our social media marketing at Admark.

As you must have currently acknowledged the value of Facebook in deciding a restaurant’s reputation, let us further take you through some points on how to make your restaurant successful by using Facebook and Instagram.

1. Create a Facebook Page

While forming a business or setting a new company, the first thing to do is to give it an identity. How are people going to recognize your brand? What do they have to look for? How can they find you online? All these questions lead to the answer of creating a brand identity online. One of the easiest ways is to create a Facebook page to promote your restaurant. Creating a Facebook page is completely free and saves you from the hectic tradition of giving out flyers to promote your restaurant.

There are several groups on Facebook where people share about new eateries and their experiences with them. People posting reviews about your restaurant can have a huge impact on your restaurant’s reputation. While posting reviews, they tag restaurants in their post to give them the recognition they deserve that will all go to waste if you are not actively visible on the platform.

Creating a Facebook page by your restaurant’s name is the initial investment of time you’re putting in to build your restaurant’s reputation. Setting up a business profile is not child’s play. It requires a lot of thinking on how to devise different strategies to pull customers in. Give your profile a professional look by setting up a logo, a cover photo, a catchy title, and a brief description of your restaurant. Adding an address and a contact number to your profile will help people connect with you better.

2. Posts Images and Videos of Your Food

It is scientifically proved that people crave food that looks delicious. They cannot smell through their phone though they can look at the pictures of the delicacies your restaurant is offering. Posting compelling pictures and videos of the food can awake people’s cravings and lure them to your restaurant.

Whether it’s a picture of the steaming steak with steams leaving the meat or the video of cheese oozing out of a burger, they can increase one’s appetite and make one crave for the food. These small clips and photos can take the internet by storm and certainly add to your restaurant’s popularity. Facebook gives you the option to edit your photos with its image editing feature. You can crop your photos, add text and stickers to them to make them more appealing.

You can also use the live stream feature of Facebook to host a virtual tour of your restaurant or show your chef making dishes live. People who are curious to know the process behind the preparation of their food and people who are concerned about hygiene can watch these videos to satisfy their curiosity and free themselves of any doubts.

3. Set up a Menu

Facebook has added a separate feature for restaurant pages by allowing them to add a menu to their business profile. The menu is the first thing people look at while ordering food. A separate menu on your Facebook page will help people easily go through your menu items and prices and make a choice based on that.

Normally when you add the menu feature on your Facebook page, it will automatically end up at the bottom of the page which makes it difficult for people to see your menu items when visiting your page. Though you can use the “pin to top” feature to get your menu at the top of your Facebook page for easy access of customers.

You can also add a call-to-action feature on your Facebook page with its “Start Order” feature. It will allow the customers to order food directly from your restaurant without having them leave Facebook.

4. Daily Trivia

People are curious to know about little things and answer trivia questions on social media. Mostly, they are not just interesting but also helps in polishing your brain memory. Asking people small questions on your Facebook page will intrigue them to answer. It will close the gap between you and your customers and show them how much you value your audience.

Even if people are not interested in your food, at first sight, trivia questions will still grab their attention making them answer your question. Interactive activities like this will develop an interest in people’s minds about your restaurant, intriguing them to try out your food

You can ask them general questions about food or make them specific by including your restaurant’s menu in it. Some of the example questions are;

• How do you like your steak?
• Potato wedges or fries?
• What do you like in your appetizer? (Include choices your restaurant offers)
• What do you prefer when choosing a restaurant? Good food or Good Ambiance?
• How many flavors of ice cream does our restaurant offer?

5. Fan Recipe Contest

Contests are always helpful to build the audience you are looking for. People with the same interests participate in these contests and make them successful. You can host events like fan recipe contests where people can send their recipes to get featured on your page. You can also include rewards to get a bigger audience and more participants.

The fan with the most likes on their recipe on Facebook will get their recipe featured on the Facebook page or they can earn a voucher for the next visit. You can also include rewards for other participants to encourage people to participate.

It will help build an organic audience for your restaurant and gain the trust of your customers.

6. Share Your Atmosphere

Back in the past, restaurants focused more on their food than their ambiance. But this concept has changed with the modern era. Restaurants are now more focused on their ambiance and atmosphere to provide their customers with a soothing experience of dining. People tend to prefer restaurants with good ambiance and atmosphere.

Use your Facebook page to share pictures of your restaurant. Post a picture with no customers to show them the calm atmosphere of the restaurant and with customers to depict the lively image of the restaurant.

You can also pin-post your customer reviews on your timeline to emphasize the satisfaction of your customers.

7. Run Ads

You have created a Facebook page, you have posted your menu on it, and you are done with setting up a business profile but still, not a single order came. You are disappointed to see that even after this much work, you couldn’t score your first online order.

What to do now? Well, you did set up your brand online but did you try to promote it? The most crucial thing of starting a business is to get your product out in the market. Facebook allows you to run your restaurant’s ad on user’s timeline to promote the identity of your brand. You can use these ads most effectively by customizing them according to your choice.

Whether your target audience is in a 5-mile radius or you want the whole city to know about your restaurant. You can also run an ads campaign just to gain likes by choosing the “Get more likes” option while running ads.

8. Join the Hype

Is it Christmas or Thanksgiving? Is it the soccer world cup next week or the concert show coming up? Events like these create hype among people & they go crazy over them. You can also join the hype train by putting up posts related to these occasions.

You can create quizzes on what team is going to win the next match and advertise your restaurant through them. You can advertise your menu according to the event coming up. Some suggestion would be;

• Thanksgiving Steak
• Christmas Cake
• New Year’s Burger

9. Building Good Relationship with Customers

About 25% of the restaurants don’t even make it past one year. And the biggest reason is ignoring customer relationship. Customers are an integral part of your business & their opinion matters a lot. Some customers are good appreciating the food you serve to them while some customers put bad reviews about your restaurant. As a restaurant, you must realize that any kind of feedback has value for you, whether positive or negative.

Studies have shown that bad comment or a bad review on your page can significantly decrease your restaurant’s reputation. Negative reviews can make you devastated and may force you to lash out. Don’t let the anger take control of you instead be calm and sort it out with composure. If the customer’s experience was really bad, compensate them by offering them discounts on the next visit or sending them a gift. It will improve your restaurant’s reputation in the customer’s eyes & it may change that bad comment or review into a good one.

New customers visiting your Facebook page look for reviews posted on your page to build their perspective of your restaurant. Good reviews grab the attention of customers enticing them to buy from you. How do you get these reviews? Below are some tips to acquire good reviews for your Facebook page about your restaurant;

• Add a Facebook link on the receipt and ask them to put their experience on your Facebook page.
• People who usually comment on your posts may be loyal customers of your restaurant. Ask them to put a review on your Facebook emphasizing the fact that how much they mean to you. It will put them in a condition to write a good review about your restaurant.
• Food bloggers always have an eye on new restaurants so that they can share their experience of your restaurant on their blogs. You can invite them for dining and ask them to leave a review on your Facebook page too so that the people visiting the page can get a clear incentive of your restaurant’s ambiance and food.

10. Share your Recipes

While it may sound idiotic but people love to see how they can make restaurant-quality dishes at home. They would not be able to make those dishes with the perfection a chef would make but still the idea itself that they can try making it at home by following the recipe makes them happy.

You can share recipes from your menu so people can try those dishes at home or you can share basic recipes outside of your menu if you want to keep your recipes secret. Most people cannot afford to come to your restaurant every day so, giving them something of value such as recipes to your dishes can build a strong-trustworthy connection between you and your customers.

Recipes in the form of text are helpful but a video of the recipe showing every process is more appealing to people. People on their hunt to try out new food will encounter your page more easily if you post your recipes and make them shareable. Some of the recipes you could share with your fans could be;

• How to make guacamole?
• How to make salsa in 5 minutes?
• Cook a medium-rare steak perfectly.
• Our chef’s favorite appetizer.
• How to make whipped cream at home?

Final Words

Facebook is a hidden mine full of gems for restaurants. We hope the strategies we shared in this article will help you build a successful social media plan for your restaurant and grow your customer base.

Show your presence on Facebook and actively respond to people’s messages. Promote your page through paid advertising and share at least one post a day. You can post daily or you can schedule the posts beforehand.

Facebook marketing is itself a different niche than the restaurant industry and requires dedicated professionals to look after it.

If you like this blog and it helped you in any way, do remember to share it with your friends and leave a comment. You can also check out other blogs as well on our restaurant blog