Facebook Marketing for Restaurants: 10 Tips & Secrets

No matter if you’ve just created your restaurant’s Facebook account or you have been trying to get clients on this social media platform for a while, this tips will help you increase visibility, grow engagement and turn followers into customers.

1. Keep your customers engaged

The best restaurant social media accounts are the ones that understand their audience and know who they are speaking with. You need to think like your customer and learn why they would want to follow you and visit your restaurant. Craft your social media strategy around those ideas.

Here is what you can do to increase customer engagement:

End posts with a question: to encourage people to interact with your post. For example “What menu item are you craving now?”, or “What is your favorite combo meal at our restaurant?”;
Post polls in stories: it is easier for them to just click on a button than write an entire message.
Create games: something as simple as guess the ingredients in our new menu item will get people talking in the comments;
Reply to all comments and messages: it takes time for followers to interact with your page, and you should show them you appreciate the effort, even if it’s just a simple thanks or other small remark. Never underestimate the power of the magical words “Please” and “Thank you”.

2. Make your branding visible

Do you want people to consider your restaurant the local hotspot in the neighborhood? If so, you’ll need to have a tone that you consistently use across all social media channels. To find your tone of voice, start by branding your restaurant. Here are a few tips:

Add your logo on social media images: so people who are scrolling on Facebook and stumble on one of your mouth-watering images can immediately identify the restaurant;
Make the tone of voice consistent in every caption: this way, followers will start to recognize your restaurant whenever they see a new post.

For a complete guide on restaurant branding, check out our in-depth guide:

12 Restaurant Branding Ideas to Build a Memorable Presence

3. Start taking orders on Facebook

Facebook marketing for restaurants can help you not just increase your visibility, but also your sales. As you can see from the image below, Facebook also provides you with the opportunity to add an online ordering button on your page. For instance, check out the page of our restaurant demo below:

Related:

You’ll see that using our online ordering system with an integrated Facebook food ordering system will enable your customers to start placing simple and fast orders, just by visiting your Facebook page.

The best part is that it will only take you a few minutes to create an account and allow people to order directly from Facebook. You just have to customize the “Start Order” button on Facebook with the smart link we provide.

Let your Facebook page do the work for you. Add our smart link to your restaurant’s Facebook page to get more orders.

4. Share Mouth-watering Photos of your Food

Restaurant social media statistics show us that images are the most-shared type of posts on Facebook. If you aren’t sure about what to post, you can’t go wrong with posting some delicious looking food. Make sure you share lots of images of the delicious items on your menu and consider creating a look book of your Facebook restaurant menu.

Here are a couple more Facebook post ideas for restaurants:

Feature your ingredients: the trend of using organic, bio, or locally sourced ingredients has become quite the hype;
Pictures of your team having fun at work to show the great atmosphere at your restaurant;
Let your customers know that they can also hire your restaurants for private events: birthdays, office parties, etc;
Re-post images of your most loyal customers & thank them for their visit.

5. Have Exclusive Facebook Restaurant Offers

If you want to start doing Facebook marketing for restaurants with the goal to increase the retention rate, consider providing your followers with some exclusive offers. In fact, restaurant offers should be at the heart of your social media strategy. You can start by offering them 15% discount when placing their first online order.

If you want to create promotions that you can share on Facebook in seconds, discover the Promotions module from GloriaFood. You can set up a variety of offers, such as free delivery, free menu item or 2+1 deal that your clients won’t be able to resist.

6. Hold Contests

Another great idea for Facebook is to have contests or sweepstakes. They generate a lot of excitement, are very social events, and they encourage people to keep coming back to your social media page – not to mention your actual restaurant.

If you are looking for inspiration, we’ve created an article full of great ideas:

Facebook Contest Ideas to Increase Likes: Marketing for Restaurants

7. Geo-Target Your Ads

There’s a lot of neat things you can do with Facebook ads for restaurants, especially targeting the specific area your customers live in. To master Facebook marketing for restaurants, start incorporating ads in your strategy. Get inspired:

Target ads for users who have liked certain pages and certain things, for example people who like your competitor’s page or generic pages about your type of cuisine;
Geo-tag posts, which is ideal if you have several locations;
If you have a themed restaurant, such as one built around a sport, then you can target your ads to people in the area that have liked pages related to sports.

8. Include Videos in Your Shares

Because the average attention span of people has decreased over the years, short videos have become the preferred form of entertainment for many customers. Therefore, to ace Facebook marketing for restaurants, start adding videos on your feed.

Check out these ideas:

Your chef preparing a meal;
A customer unboxing an online order;
Your chef teaching followers how to cook a simple recipe;
Your staff recommending their favorite dish at the restaurant;
Behind-the-scenes life at the restaurant.

8. Be Transparent & Admit when You’re Wrong

No restaurant is perfect. You won’t knock it out of the park each and every time. With that said, you should always be transparent and do your best to respond to customers as quickly as possible. Quickly resolving a situation is something that separates good restaurants from the bad.

It also helps to avoid playing favorites with people who have large social followings. Just because someone has more or less than that doesn’t make them any more or less valuable of a customer. Make sure that you respond to people in a timely manner no matter how many followers they have. Aim to respond to as many people as possible too, whether they have something positive or negative to say.

9. Responding to Your Customers is Key

Engaging with the audience is something all the best restaurant Facebook pages want to do. At the same time, you also want to show your audience how engaged you are, too. Make sure that you address their concerns, answer their questions, and acknowledge when people post on your page. It takes time for them to do that, and you should respect that time, even if it’s just a simple thanks or other small remark. Never underestimate the power of the magical words “Please” and “Thank you”.

10. Tell Your Followers about Your Legacy & Culture

As a restaurant, you’ve been put in a pretty unique situation. You have the chance to showcase your food and recipes to people. You can teach them about where a dish comes from and showcase how it is made. This is content that never gets old.

Plus, it doesn’t even need to be original. There’s plenty of content out there on YouTube. All you have to do is find it and put in front of the audience. Funny restaurant posts get a lot of attention, but there are more ways to give value to people than making them laugh. You can even educate your fans about your own restaurant through a simple “About Us” content for restaurant – where you share your story.

Practice Effective Facebook Marketing for Restaurants Today

One of the best things about restaurant Facebook marketing is that there are so many different tactics to employ. The best restaurant Facebook pages have a wide variety of content, from funny restaurant Facebook posts to “how-to” videos to interviews with staff and customers – and more.

Take a look at some of the latest restaurant social media trends and employ these best practices for Facebook marketing for restaurants to take your marketing efforts to the next level! You can use a social media scheduler to schedule posts on Facebook in advance to optimize your content strategy.

Andreea Dobrila

Andreea Dobrila is a proven web copywriter & marketing strategist. She pushes online restaurants on the fast-track to quickly growing their online sales. Win more business by using her bulletproof tips & secrets.

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Facebook Marketing for Restaurants: 10 Tips & Secrets

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