Influencer marketing is proving to be indispensable for restaurant marketing in the new normal. Using a combination of alluring photos and videos of food, influencers work their magic to get their audiences to try out an outlet. Food influencers are thus the bridge between the restaurants and customers, making a variety of dining experiences accessible to the audience.
In return for their help, restaurants pay food influencers a certain amount of money, depending on their reach. For example, a mid-level influencer, who has 10-100k followers, may demand $250-$400 for their services. All you need to do is find the right influencers and approach them to market your delicious food.
If you want to raise the reputation of your restaurant, collaborating with a food influencer is always recommended. Since most customers today tend to engage with digital content across channels like podcasts, video sharing and online review sites, popular influencers can be the perfect brand ambassadors.
With minimal investment, you can reap the benefits of a lifetime. It will not only maximize your marketing but help in growing your business by attracting referrals.
7 Ways To Successfully Market Your Restaurant Utilizing Food Influencers
Let’s have a look at how food influencers can turn restaurant marketing campaigns into a big success.
1. Think & Choose Precisely
The first thing to think about is what kind of influencer will suit your brand best and convey your messaging in the best possible way. Even though finding the right food influencer is easy, you need to find one that shares the same or similar voice and tone as your brand. Analyze what your audience prefers and pick your influencer as per that. If your audience prefers funny, give them that. If they love bold and sophisticated, choose an influencer that has those qualities.
You must also consider the format and size of your restaurant while deciding on the food influencer. A fast-food influencer will be quite different from one best suited for talking about a fine-dine restaurant. A street food influencer will be even more different from the other two. If you own a small business, you must look for a micro-influencer. You can then approach bigger names as your business grows.
2. Target The Community
Focus on one social media platform that best suits your brand and target your audience with the help of your preferred blogger. Keep in mind that in the food business word of mouth actually plays a huge role in driving success. Figure out which platforms are the most popular with your target audience, for example, Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, and choose your influencer accordingly. You must give them content they are likely to find the most valuable through your food influencer.
3. Provide A Fresh Experience
By nature, human beings like to experiment and explore new things. To stand out from the crowd, make sure your restaurant offers something unique and special. Even if you’ve dedicated and loyal food influencers, they won’t post about the same thing over and over again. On the other hand, if your style is compelling and different from your fellow competitors, a lot of bloggers will want to feature you. Constantly reinventing your theme, service or food can be a very effective marketing strategy.
4. Gather Feedbacks & Reviews Utilizing Food Influencers
The most common issue with trying out new outlets is finding out whether it is worth visiting before getting there. A little feedback from a trusted expert can solve all your worries. These days before trying anything new, people look for reviews and recommendations. An honest review regarding a restaurant can drive a lot of customers to give it a try.
The in-depth reviews done by the food influencers really help customers in deciding what to eat and what not to. This puts special emphasis on your special delicacies. In case, there’s room for improvement, these reviews can also come in handy. Besides taking reviews from food influencers, you can also launch your products through them and see if it gets enough popularity or not.
5. Events And Appearances
Have you ever thought about hosting events to attract a large group of people? Isn’t it a good idea for running a marketing campaign for your brand? With the help of food influencers, you can host large scale events where people will be likely to share pictures and videos on various platforms. These types of events bring like-minded people together who are looking for fun things to do and enjoying the experience. When you have an established influencer on your side, it drives more traffic on such special days.
6. Conduct Contest And Giveaways
Influencers regularly host contests and giveaways for increasing their reach. For instance, the influencers often ask their followers to like the restaurant’s social media page, post a picture of themselves with the food, tag the restaurant in their posts, etc. The person with the most number of entries/posts is declared the winner. The increase in online engagement will directly contribute to footfall.
7. Launch A Brand Movement With Food Influencers
You can come up with your own brand movement with the help of influencer marketing. Since influencers know their audience intimately, they can effectively run strategic campaigns. Decide on the campaign goals and KPIs, and leave the creative campaigning to your food influencer.
For example, create a viral hashtag that will resonate with your audience. The hashtag can be a slogan or tagline that will go with every post that you put up on social media. Have your influencer announce the date of the campaign amongst their followers. While the campaign is running, it is highly likely that many other influencers and followers will amplify your content, adding value to the campaign.
Food blogging is a modern method of advertising and restaurant owners must definitely give it a try. Take time to analyze which food blogger is highly influential and can greatly impact the customers. Approach them and use these ways to make the most of those food bloggers.
Read a similar article: Restaurant Influencer Marketing: How To Engage With Food Bloggers
