The best restaurant marketing strategy.
Dinners are looking more than ever for information online, from your website and various sources.
Some of them, you know, like your reservation partners, your social media channels, advertising, or search engines, but also from many other places you might not realise provide information about your restaurant, like online maps, navigation services, directories, review sites, etc.
Dinners want to find you quickly.
If you own or run a restaurant, you must efficiently understand and manage all the touchpoints. For example, dinner would be present before it finally reaches your table. There are many of them, from visiting your website to reading reviews online, looking at information such as opening hours, how to get directions to your restaurants, etc.
UpToDate information anywhere is your most important asset; building a Robust Online Presence Marketing Strategy should be one, if not the most important, priority for your restaurant.
Restaurants have a unique advantage in one area to get more customers… ‘local’ or ‘near me’ searches. These are searches from dinners in your area or looking for information about your restaurant’s location. Therefore, in your marketing strategy, your Online Presence is one of the foundations to getting more dinners to your tables.
What Is a ‘Near Me’ Search?
A ‘near me search’ is a specific query typed or spoken by a dinner to find restaurants near their current location. These searches usually take place on a smartphone (since they are mainly conducted when the dinner is mobile). The intent is generally associated with making a reservation or finding the latest information at the search time. These searches occur on Google, other search engines, online maps, booking channels, and many other places. That last point is essential—this is not just about Google; dinner will look for information on many different sites besides Google, Bing, Yelp, Apple Maps, TripAdvisor, etc.
Example: ‘Restaurants near me’
‘Restaurants near me’ is the most popular ‘near me’ search query, with 6.2 million organic searches per month. But the story does not end there; in fact, food-related searches make up 3 of the top 5 positions in all ‘near me’ search queries, including ‘food near me’ (3.1 million) and ‘pizza near me’ (1.3 million).
What is so special about these types of search queries?
Dinners typing in ‘near me’ search queries usually want to do something at the time of the search; it can be to make a reservation, find out the latest opening hours, or order online on their way home. They know what they are looking for (in this case, food) and where they want it (near them), but they have not decided on the restaurant they will choose yet. If you are serious about making your restaurant successful, being aware of how vital ‘Near me’ searches are and taking care of them needs to be one of the top priorities.
How ‘Near Me’ Searches Changed Everything
Digital marketing has become one of the most critical focus areas for restaurants that want to gain more active diners looking for restaurants. The rise of smartphone use has driven this development. Statista states that since 2013, the share of smartphone search queries has grown from 27% to around 60% of the total search market.
This started one of the most significant changes in online users’ behaviour – the ability to stay online while on the move, using search engines and mapping apps to find local businesses when needed.
The restaurant industry is one of the biggest industries to benefit from this behaviour change. Online searches have multiplied, and now the time that passes between the moment dinners research and finds the information they are looking for to decide what restaurant to choose is much closer to the actual dining or order time.
It is fair to say that mobile search has completely changed the way dinners are searched over the last few years.
As we can see from Google Trends data, searches for the food and drink industry have continued at a high growth rate since July 2014.
Our knowledge of the hospitality and food and beverage industry suggests that restaurants must focus on optimising their online presence to attract more diners from relevant local searches.
One action you should take during 2021 to promote your restaurant, get found and reach more diners is to make sure your information online is everywhere and UpToDate in as many places, websites, directories, and booking channels as you can. You never know where the next dinner will arrive from.
