1 – Your Social Media Profiles are Not Complete!
I cannot believe how many restaurant owners fail to make sure their hours are up-to-date. Make sure you’ve filled in your business category accurately, taken the necessary steps to verify your restaurant’s Facebook Page, including a properly sized logo as the profile picture, include a compelling image and tagline in your cover photos that is properly sized. Also, make sure you’re utilizing your Call-to-Action Button they provide you. Think about the main thing you want your customers or potential customers to do: Call Now? Get Directions? Order Now? Book Now? Make sure everything is up-to-date, including your username/handle (example: @MyRestaurant) and your “story” section on the right-hand side. Go through each of the settings on your page and consider how you want it configured.
2 – You Don’t Have a Loyalty Program in Place
Have you ever been somewhere that gave you a punch card to get something for free if you visit a certain number of times? Loyalty programs like these are extremely easy to implement and are very under-used. I would say 90% or more of the restaurants I frequent don’t have one of these in place – and the ones that do are KILLING IT! Here are my tips: Make the goal easily attainable, and make extremely valuable! Example: Make the threshold 5 visits. Once the guest visits the 5th time, give them a free entree (no purchase necessary) and give them a new card with 1 hold already punched. For new visitors that aren’t a part of the program yet, punch the first 3 holes on their first visit and say… “Oh! Dang, I messed up. I was supposed to only punch 1.” *wink*. They’ll be grateful and it will make it so there are only two more visits until they get the free entree. Now… this is the old-school method which is still highly effective today. There are plenty of complex methods that tie into your POS system that can be more advanced. The main point is that you can get this started today. Have a designer design some business cards and purchase a hole puncher that is a different shape like a star-shape. This will get you up and running really quickly. The next step up (instead) would be to implement scannable Messenger Codes. You’d include one on a table topper or in the book that the check comes in that prompts users to scan to “sign in”. The automated messenger marketing software could then check to see how many visits they have and if they’ve achieved the goal yet. This will help you keep an actual list of customers’ names, along with their email addresses, gender info, and whatever other information they provide you via the Facebook Messenger App. This is highly effective – and something we offer at Aycock Marketing.
3 – You Aren’t Actively Building a Subscriber List
Building a list of subscribers, email or Facebook Messenger, is a huge miss that most restaurant owners aren’t doing. You’re going day in and day out seeing customers and serving them the best of your abilities. You’re in the weeds making sure all your employees show up on time and that you have enough of them. You’re training staff. Having a list of subscribers does two important things: 1. It increases the value of your business. Should you want to sell your restaurant way down the line, your email list or Messenger list will be added value/assets to your business. 2. You can automatically remarket to customers. There are a ton of ways to do this, but the easy set-it-and-forget-it methods that come to mind are: Automated email marketing campaigns, automated Facebook Messenger marketing campaigns, and paid Facebook ads that specifically target only people on your list.
4 – You Haven’t Adopted Automated Messenger Marketing
Automated Facebook Messenger Marketing may be new to you. The way it works is your restaurant’s Facebook Page connects with some messaging software which allows you to build out pre-defined conversation paths (aka “flows”). Once you have designed these conversation “flows”, you can send users to them a number of ways: directly from your Facebook Page, from a paid Facebook ad, from an organic Facebook post, a scannable Facebook Messenger Code, a pop-up on your website, a landing page, or a chat window on your website. More ways may become available over time. After you have this software in place: Each time a customer messages your page through any of the above methods, they’ll automatically become a “subscriber”. This opens up the ability to continue the conversation with your customers and collect more information about them. Facebook will automatically provide the users’ first & last names and gender – but you can also collect unlimited amounts of custom data such as “favorite food”, “customer(y/n)”, “check total”, “birthday”, “email”, “phone”, etc. The possibilities for marketing your restaurant using Facebook Messenger are almost limitless.
5 – You Aren’t Spending Money on Facebook Ads
Okay… so maybe you’ve boosted a post on Facebook here and there, and maybe you haven’t. Regardless, this simply will not suffice. The restaurant owners that plan a marketing & advertising budget each month (or for the year) have an exceptionally higher likelihood of seeing the benefits. Planning and being intentional with where you spend your advertising dollars is essential for success. The fact is, Facebook is so dialed in and effective when used correctly that if you ran one solid campaign using marketing best-practices, you will never want to pay for a magazine or billboard ad again. You get eyeballs on your ads, you get defined numbers of how people interacted with your ads, and WHO interacted with them. If you don’t have time to get into learning how to advertise on Facebook, we recommend hiring a professional. Shameless plug… we’re experts in Facebook advertising for restaurants. Reach out if you have questions.
BONUS – You Are Marketing to Only One Visit (This will seriously turn your business around.)
Okay… so maybe you’re getting coupons in the hands of your locals and you’re getting people in the door – but the number of people that get a coupon VS the number of locals that actually come into your restaurant and USE the coupon is likely pretty low. Studies show that most restaurant owners spend between $40-80 just to get one person in the door to their restaurant! Our friend Jon Taffer from the docu-reality series Bar Rescue says “…Here’s something that nobody else will tell you. If somebody goes to a restaurant for the first time and has a flawless experience, the statistical likelihood of them doing a second visit is about 40%. The second time a customer comes and has a flawless experience, The statistical likelihood of a third visit is still about 42%. The third time they come, the statistical likelihood of a fourth visit is over 70%. You have to market to three visits, not one. This is the part everyone misses! (source)” This makes perfect sense and we always recommend our restaurant clients have 3 strong offers for their customers to help build strong relationships – which amount to greater loyalty and increased retention.
