When it comes to the restaurant business in Singapore, the competition is fierce. You need a well-planned restaurant marketing strategy to make your business stand out among the competition. According to a report, 93% Singaporeans use the internet everyday, and social media penetration in Singapore has increased by 9%. Thus, online restaurant promotion has become a necessity for attracting more customers and increasing the sources of revenue.
The rise of online food delivery in Singapore has also made having an online presence essential for restaurants.
The revenue in the Online Food Delivery segment amounts to US$164m and is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2018-2022) of 17.9%, resulting in a market volume of US$316m by 2022.
Thus, you can imagine the kind of impact a strong online presence can make on your restaurant business!
Online Restaurant Promotion Strategies
Online restaurant promotion strategies help you attract the desired audience and also builds a strong online presence of your restaurant. It gives you the freedom of targeting the desired customers, track the ads, monitor the conversion and does a lot more.
These techniques would help you design a strong restaurant marketing campaign to help lure in more customers.
1. Build A Smart Website
Even before you start promoting your business online, you need an interactive website where people can read about you and your services. Having a site is very important as your website would act as the landing page for your advertisement. The website should be responsive and mobile friendly as people find it easier to look up for information on their cell phones.
Some of the points to keep in mind while creating a website are:
- Your website should be easy to navigate
- The website loading time should be low
- It should have adequate information
- The website should be compatible with all the devices like Windows, MAC, cell phones etc.
- It should have original content
You can use third-party websites that allow you to design websites easily or you can hire a website designer and get the job done. You can also post the menu online and provide the facility of ordering food through your website. If the process of ordering food is made simple for the people, they are more likely to place an order then and there and increase the overall sales of the restaurant.
2. Show Up On Google
Google is one of the most popular search engines in the world, and promoting your restaurant on Google would help boost your business. Google provides you with different services to help promote your business like Google Ads, Google My Business and organic searches.
(i) Google Ads
Google Ads is a platform that allows you to run paid ads on Google or partner sites. It gives you the freedom to decide the budget and the keywords for which you would like to show your ads for. It is one of the most effective ways of showing up on Google’s top search results. For creating a Google ad, it is mandatory to have a website.
(ii) Google My Business
Google My Business is a free service that lets you list your restaurant business and show them to people searching for you locally. It shows the address of your restaurants along with the map. This is a good way of reaching out to local customers.
(iii) Organic Listing
Organic listing is something that can’t be paid for. To show up on Google’s organic searches, your website needs to have a good quality score i.e. if the content is relevant to the search query, how original the content on the site is, etc.
Google itself decides organic listings and showing up here is subjective to what the customer is looking for.
Online restaurant promotion on Google is a good idea as this would help you reach out to more customers globally as well as locally.
3. Utilize Social Media Marketing
With millions of people using social media, you cannot ignore the fact that it is one of the fastest and the easiest way of reaching out to your potential customers. With almost 3.62 million people using social media in Singapore, you can only imagine the kind of impact social media marketing could have on your sales.
It is very important to have a conversation with your customers over social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. if you are not doing so, you are missing out!
Social media is an excellent platform for building brand awareness. It allows you to share content that lets your customers know about an upcoming event, offers or special discounts.
Online Restaurant Promotion Strategies For Social Media
If you are ready to promote your restaurant on social media these tips would help you plan out a good campaign –
- Content planning: It is essential to decide the kind of content you wish to post online. You can post engaging content like a recipe for preparing one of the mocktails you serve. Exciting content keeps people coming back to your social media and also to your restaurant.
- Regularity: It is very essential to update your social media profile regularly. This would ensure that people keep seeing your restaurant on their feeds. If you are irregular with your posts, your customers might forget about you. Your aim is to be noticed and regularity helps you achieve that.
- Originality: Being original is imperative. The posts that you share online should be freshly curated. People like originality and appreciate something different. Posting original content is a good way of engaging more people.
- Tracking your success: Simply posting on social media is not enough; you need to track and analyze if social media marketing is working good for you or not. This helps you understand if you need to invest more time into your social media account for engaging more people.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the oldest form of online restaurant promotion strategy. It is known to be one of the most effective ways of marketing. The first and the most crucial step of email marketing is building your customer’s email database.
This can be done by taking feedbacks from your customers and asking them to provide you with their email address. An easy way of taking feedbacks and building your database is by using a new age feedback app that would help cut down the manual work. The email should be attractive, have images and appealing content. You can also add a call to action button along with your email text if required, a call to action button helps your customers interact with your email.
You can use a CRM (central customer management) software to keep your customers updated through email. These software help schedule your emails and customize them and make it customer specific.
This is a perfect way of reaching out to people who have previously interacted with your restaurant and to have them coming back.
5. Online Listings
There are a number of restaurant review and listing sites for restaurants in Singapore. Listing your restaurant on various online restaurant listing websites gives your customers the freedom to add a review about your restaurant. These days before visiting any restaurant people often check these websites to read about the restaurant and also to see what others have to say about that place. Online listings provide you with a platform for adding details about your business like the address, website link, etc.
Here is a list of online restaurant listing websites you can choose to promote your restaurant at:
- HungryGoWhere
- Yelp
- Soshiok
- Openrice
Using these websites is a good way of reaching out to many people since they have a lot of traffic on their website. They provide you with a platform to reach out to their customers and make them yours!
6. Collaborating With Social Media Influencers
Seeking help from social media influencers is an excellent way of reaching out to potential customers and a great online restaurant promotion technique. You can collaborate with social media influencers to talk about your restaurant.
Through this kind of marketing, you can choose a “spokesperson” to post about your restaurant on their social media profiles. You need to keep in mind the person you are selecting to talk about your brand should be famous and have a charismatic personality since the objective of this kind of marketing is to take advantage of their ability to influence others decision. Using influencers for promoting your restaurant is very helpful since people are more likely to visit a place that a person they love or admire visits.
Online restaurant promotion is not about how much money you can spend rather how creative you are. A robust online presence ensures more interaction with your brand. Online advertisements are the best way of reaching out to the desired customers because you have the freedom to target the desired audience which increases the chances of people visiting your restaurant.
