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Tags – Digital Marketing for Restaurants
Restaurants are tricky business.
Even if you have been complemented a thousand times for your delicious food, restaurants are one of the riskiest investments.
In fact, 60% of new restaurants do not survive their first year of operations, according to research from Ohio State University. If you push the timeframe to five years, the failure rate rises to 80%.
But, we tend to forget that the food itself is a secondary commodity from a restaurant’s perspective. It is more about the experience.
And, more importantly, it is about how you portray that experience.
The SEO Option
Restaurant-related keywords are searched quite frequently in our target cities. Following are some of the search volumes per month on average:
- Restaurants London – 110,000; Birmingham – 8,600; Leicester – 12,100.
- Indian Restaurants London – 22,200; Birmingham – 6,600; Leicester – 3,600
- Italian Restaurants London – 18,100; Birmingham – 5,400; Leicester – 1,600
- Romantics Restaurants London – 9,900; Birmingham – 1,000; Leicester – 170
- Posh Restaurants London – 2,400; Birmingham – 480; Leicester – 390
(4. And 5. are my tries to go specific and still pulling search numbers. People even search for “cool”, “trendy”, “Michelen Star” and so on restaurants, with healthy search volumes).
Source – Keyword Keg
Here, it is important to keep in mind that most restaurants are still operated quite traditionally. This means that most of these restaurants are not utilising digital options to their full potential.
In fact, the competition factor never exceeded 0.2 for any of the presented keywords. (A competition factor is measured from 0 to 1 – 1 being the highest).
To provide context, a competition factor shows a comparison between search volume and the number of available options that provide the product or service. For example, in comparison, our digital marketing keywords linger around 0.6 to 0.7 mark, while in the fashion industry, most keywords have maxed out at 1.
This does not mean that SEO will not work for high competition keywords. It just means it is harder to rank as the competition factor increases.
In short, SEO is an amazing opportunity for restaurants that are trying to stand out, at least as a starting point.
Beyond SEO
Even through SEO is our headline service, we suggest restaurant owners to focus on the experience- centricity of restaurants.
And, this means that Google and SEO become secondary for you.
If you want to stand out in the truest sense, you need to be active socially.
The Social Media Necessity
We come back to the experience-factor for restaurants.
And, this experience has a big social aspect to it. Probably, 99% of restaurant visits happen with more than a single person eating. And, you can be assured that each choice made by a group of people went through some form of discussion and comparative thinking. You are always measured against your competition.
This higher probability of social eating then means that you should be targeting social media.
Add this to the visual angle and the need for social media multiplies.
If you are not engaging people through the experiences on social media, keeping a few events in line, and sharing content visually, forget to stand out.
To help you out here, we have made a couple of videos around events, that you may find helpful:
In a business like this, SEO can only put you on the map. In reality, you need to add a couple of ingredients to your branding to get the sale through.
A website only serves the baseline purpose. Your digital property needs to be visually compelling enough. But, having a fluid website can be a real headache. A few changes here and there are fine. But, don’t expect to be editing your site every day to keep it fresh.
Put simply, Facebook and Instagram can be your best friends here.
Show the cake you made for someone’s birthday – even though your focus is a certain cuisine.
Have a special menu for an occasion, be quirky and put it out there.
Put simply, if you play your cards right, you have an audience there. Don’t let things get boring and pedestrian.
And, to learn more, get in touch with us today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
